Rumsfeld says no U.N. access to Guantanamo inmates

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Spurning a request by U.N. human rights investigators, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday the United States will not allow them to meet with detainees at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

Rumsfeld also told a Pentagon news conference that prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were staging a hunger strike that began in early August as a successful ploy to attract media attention.

The three U.N. investigators, including one who focuses on torture, said on Monday they would turn down an invitation extended by the Pentagon on Friday to visit Guantanamo unless they were permitted to interview the detainees. The invitation came nearly four years after the visits were first requested.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. government will not change its policy of giving such access to detainees only to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a neutral body that keeps its findings confidential.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051102/ts_nm/security_guantanamo_dc

Could it be...... torture

Isn't the point to make people aware of human rights abuses?

who would be the victims of the torture?

I bet that the military isn't going to be interviewed privately, either.

So what do they do, ask the chairs? Get out a forensic kit, check for blood and urine and pieces of koran?

making Amurka safer by bombing the crap out of and occupying a nation that was no threat to us.... some think this has been an attempt to attract media attention.

<snip>
Asked about the motivation of the hunger strikers, Rumsfeld said, "Well, I suppose that what they're trying to do is to capture press attention, obviously, and they've succeeded."

He added, "There are a number of people who go on a diet where they don't eat for a period and then go off of it at some point. And then they rotate and other people do that."

<snip>

The judge said detainees' lawyers had presented "deeply troubling" allegations of U.S. personnel violently shoving feeding tubes as thick as a finger through the men's noses and into their stomachs without anesthesia or sedatives, with detainees vomiting blood as U.S. personnel mocked them.

...because Saddam refused to let weapons inspectors in?

Pot, meet kettle.

Welcome to DU, Blackthorn! :hi:

take a wrong turn someday and get himself captured by them thar al kaidy fellers. No tellin whut they'll do.

:mad:

besides, wtf is ANYONE gonna do about it?



peace