UN Report on Gitmo Alleges Torture

The freedom hatin' United Nations is preparing to release a report on the operations of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

As can be expected, the foreigners are able to see things more clearly than the terror-intimidated Americans.

The Los Angeles Times has seen a copy of the report, which "concludes that the U.S. treatment of them violates their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constitutes torture."

It also urges the United States to close the military prison in Cuba and bring the captives to trial on U.S. territory, charging that Washington's justification for the continued detention is a distortion of international law.

The report, compiled by five U.N. envoys who interviewed former prisoners, detainees' lawyers and families, and U.S. officials, is the product of an 18-month investigation ordered by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The team did not have access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Nonetheless, its findings--— notably a conclusion that the violent force-feeding of hunger strikers, incidents of excessive violence used in transporting prisoners and combinations of interrogation techniques "must be assessed as amounting to torture" --— are likely to stoke U.S. and international criticism of the prison...

"We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the U.S. government," said Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and one of the envoys. "There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture."

Kinda like I carefully consider the arguments of wine bottle-wielding street people until I can get a safe distance away.

The report said some of the treatment of detainees met the definition of torture under the U.N. Convention Against Torture: The acts were committed by government officials, with a clear purpose, inflicting severe pain or suffering against victims in a position of powerlessness.

The findings also concluded that the simultaneous use of several interrogation techniques --— prolonged solitary confinement, exposure to extreme temperatures, noise and light; forced shaving and other techniques that exploit religious beliefs or cause intimidation and humiliation--constituted inhumane treatment and, in some cases, reached the threshold of torture.

Nowak said that the U.N. team was "particularly concerned" about the force-feeding of hunger strikers through nasal tubes that detainees said were brutally inserted and removed, causing intense pain, bleeding and vomiting.

"It remains a current phenomenon," Nowak said.

International Red Cross guidelines state: "Doctors should never be party to actual coercive feeding. Such actions can be considered a form of torture and under no circumstances should doctors participate in them on the pretext of saving the hunger striker's life."

Even the British, from whom much spooky instruction has been received by the U.S. over the years, allowed IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands to starve himself to death.