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Human Rights Protest As PoWs Arrive At US Base
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| Prisoners of War may indure long brutal detenion
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U.S. NAVAL BASE, GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Jan. 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A plane carrying the first group of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan arrived at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, on Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, news agencies reported.
Twenty chained and hooded prisoners left a U.S. military base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
"The first group of al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees are arriving, or have arrived, at a detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.
In a hardline comment to reporters' questions, Rumsfeld declared the detainees were "unlawful combatants" and technically have no rights under the Geneva Convention.
"They will be handled not as prisoners of war, because they're not, but as unlawful combatants," he said. "As I understand it, technically, unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention."
Amnesty International expressed concern over reports that the prisoners had been hooded and sedated during the 20-hour flight from Afghanistan, the British paper the Guardian online reported.
Amnesty also raised questions over conditions at Guantanamo Bay, "Housing detainees in Guantanamo in 6ft-by-8ft, chain-link 'cages' at least partially open to the elements would also fall below minimum standards for humane treatment," Amnesty said.
"Standards for the treatment of detainees require adequate shelter from the elements. The age size would be less than that considered acceptable under U.S. standards for ordinary prisoners confined to cells."
Human Rights Watch questioned Rumsfeld's designation, saying international law called for all detainees, including unlawful combatants, to be treated humanely.
"The United States may not pick and choose among them to decide who is entitled to decent treatment," Jamie Fellner, director of the watchdog group's U.S. program, said in a statement, the Guardian reported.
The prisoners are in a legal limbo, facing interrogation and indefinite detention as the United States decides whether to hold military trials or dispose of them in some other way.
Rumsfeld, however, has indicated that the prisoners may face long periods in detention, telling reporters Thursday that "you don't hurry through this."
The New York-based pressure group Human Rights Watch has called on the Pentagon to use the same regulations as a military court martial, in which proceedings are public and defendants can choose their own lawyer.
It also called on Rumsfeld to use the tribunals only for people involved in armed conflict against the U.S.
"The first plane with 20 detainees arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," confirmed Myers. "We got the - we were notified here at approximately 13:50 our time (1850 GMT)."
Reporters saw a military C-141 cargo plane circle over Guantanamo Bay and touch down on the airstrip inside the base on the eastern tip of Cuba.
The landing was seen by about two-dozen journalists on a hill overlooking the strip about a mile away on the Cuban side. Two nearby Cuban soldiers, at their closest post to the fence of the U.S. base, watched the plane's landing with binoculars.
The plane was one of several that arrived at the base Friday, but was the first met by U.S. troops - about 20 of them - and several light armored vehicles. They were waiting on the tarmac for the plane to arrive.
At their detention camp, known as "Camp X-Ray," the prisoners will be isolated in temporary, individual cells with walls of chain-link fence and metal roofs, where they will sleep on mats under halogen floodlights. Barbed wire and watchtowers surround the camp.
The size of the temporary cells - 6 feet by 8 feet - also is smaller than “that considered acceptable under U.S. standards for ordinary prisoners,” the international human rights group Amnesty International has said.
Amnesty expressed concerns saying the plan to house detainees in "cages" would "fall below minimum standards for humane treatment."
The Pentagon barred journalists from taking pictures of the prisoners on their arrival in Cuba. Authorities gave no reason, but the Geneva Convention says prisoners of war must be protected “against insults and public curiosity.”
Military officials also told reporters they wouldn't even be allowed to bring tape recorders to capture the sound of the plane landing.
At Guantanamo, the detainees were to be taken to another side of the camp, where they would be photographed, fingerprinted and issued orange jumpsuits, Navy spokesman Lt. Bill Salvin said.
The Guantanamo base is one of America's oldest overseas outposts. The U.S. military first seized Guantanamo Bay in 1898 during the Spanish-American War.
The name of the detainees' camp, Camp X-ray, dates from the 1990s, when tens of thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants were held at the base, said spokesman Chief Petty Officer Richard Evans. The name's origin is unclear, though other camps also were given call-sign names such as Alpha, Beta and Charlie, he said.
The departure of the 20 leaves 361 prisoners at the base in Kandahar - 30 more were brought there after Thursday's flight - and 19 at the air base in Bagram, north of Kabul. One prisoner - American John Walker Lindh, found fighting alongside the Taliban - remaines on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea.
The number of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters handed over to U.S. forces has climbed to 445, Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added.
Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War
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