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Red Cross to Visit "Camp X-Ray"
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| Detainee at Guantanamo
escorted by U.S. troops |
WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Pentagon announced that a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was slated Thursday to visit the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to inspect conditions under which some 80 Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners are being held.
The visit comes amid growing international concern about the prisoners' murky legal status and their treatment at the isolated U.S. military outpost on Cuba's southeastern coast.
The team, including a doctor and linguists, was scheduled to arrive at the base at 2200 GMT and was expected to stay at least a day, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said. An ICRC spokesman in Geneva said the team expected to stay a week and meet individually with detainees.
ICRC spokesman Darcy Christen said the organization has been told it will be given individual access to all the prisoners coming from Afghanistan. Christen said six to 10 of the detainees were British or French nationals.
The prisoners "are getting very, very humane treatment, and I am confident that's what the ICRC will find," Clarke said. "They will find what happens to be true - that people are being treated very humanely, that they are being given appropriate food three times a day, they are being given medical treatment.
Clarke alleged that some prisoners in Guantanamo have threatened to kill Americans.
"Which again just underscores just how dangerous these people are, and why every security precaution has to be taken," she said.
The prisoners are being held at a temporary outdoor detention facility called "Camp X-Ray," where each has a separate cell with a concrete floor, wooden roof and chain-link walls. They have a mat to sleep on and two towels, one to be used as prayer rug.
The prisoners' situation has raised eyebrows since U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's assertion last week that they were not prisoners of war but "unlawful combatants" with no rights under the Geneva Convention.
Human rights groups and experts also have weighed in with criticism and questions about the treatment of the prisoners and their legal status, with the U.S. death penalty and the prospect of military trials prominent among their concerns.
Some advocates assert that all of the Afghan prisoners should be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions until their status is resolved.
The U.S. military in Afghanistan was detaining another 343 detainees, Clarke said.
She said the Pentagon's general counsel, William Haynes, was at the Guantanamo naval base Tuesday with a group of military lawyers to work through the procedures and policies that will be applied to prisoners.
"They are working on ... the policies and procedures that are going to be the guidelines, if you will, for the military tribunals; the policies and procedures by which we sort the detainees - who goes where, who goes back and when and under what circumstances," she said.
Rumsfeld said Wednesday that prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo had not begun yet because procedures were still being worked out. But he has made clear that the first U.S. priority is to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda and prevent future attacks by the group.
The United States has yet to identify the detainees in its custody.
In Britain, the fate of three detained Britons has become a hot political issue for the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, torn between support for Washington and his duty to defend the rights of his countrymen.
The movement of prisoners - hooded, shaved and shackled for the 27-hour flight from Kandahar - has so far gone without incident.
"They are being given showers, exercise. They are being given the opportunity to pray if they want to," she said.
Meanwhile in Pakistan, police said Thursday they arrested seven members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, including three foreigners.
The foreigners were identified as nationals from Britain, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, officials said. Four others were Pakistanis. The seven were arrested at a checkpoint in Daudkhel town, Mianwali district, about 124 miles southwest of Islamabad.
"They confirmed they were members of al-Qaeda" a police spokesman told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity.
Police had been searching for their vehicle after it was involved in a road accident earlier in the day.
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