UN Report: US Is Torturing Prisoners

LAT


A draft United Nations report on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay concludes that the US treatment of them violates their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constitutes torture.


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New York - A draft United Nations report on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay concludes that the US 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.