Posted on 03/06/2006 2:43:58 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
INMATES at Guantanamo Bay prison are treated better than in Belgian jails, an expert for Europe's biggest security organisation said today after a visit to the controversial US detention centre in Cuba.
But Alain Grignard, deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit, said holding people for many years without telling them what would happen to them is in itself "mental torture".
"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Mr Grignard.
He served as expert on a visit to Guantanamo Bay last week by a group of politicians from the assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Mr Grignard's comments came less than a month after a UN report said Guantanamo prison detainees faced treatment amounting to torture.
Many of the 500 inmates in the prison at the US naval base in Cuba have been held for four years without trial. The prisoners were mainly detained in Afghanistan and are held as pat of President George W. Bush's "war on terror".
Mr Grignard told a news conference prisoners' right to practice their religion, food, clothes and medical care were better than in Belgian prisons.
"I know no Belgian prison where each inmate receives its Muslim kit," Mr Grignard said.
Mr Grignard said Guantanamo was not "idyllic", but he had noticed dramatic improvements each time he visited the facility over the past two years.
The head of the OSCE lawmakers in the delegation said she was happy with the medical facilities at the camp, adding she believed they had been improved recently.
Anne-Marie Lizin, chair of the Belgian Senate, told reporters at the same news conference she saw no point in calling for immediate closure of the detention camp.
"There needs to be a timetable for closure," said Ms Lizin, but asking for immediate closure would have been unrealistic.
UN investigators last month demanded that the US government close the prison without further delay, alleging a host of violations of human rights and torture.
They did not visit the site because they were not allowed to conduct interviews with prisoners.
Ms Lizin said the OSCE parliamentary delegation was also unable to talk to prisoners but had discussed the situation with the International Red Cross, which has access to them.
The OSCE plans to prepare a report by the end of May, touching on the delegation's concerns including the legal situation of detainees, Ms Lizin said.
The US is a member of the 55-country OSCE.
There is a timetable.
They will all be released a few years after the war on terrorism is concluded.
They should be about 350 years young by then.
I got yer mental torture right here....
LOL!!!! The first one is more true than ANY of the media will admit!!!
"How does AI like them apples???"
Sounds like we need an investigation into human rights abuses in Belgium prisons (snicker).
Spread it around.
In other words, despite all of the hyperventilating, there is no torture at Guantanamo, and there has not been any torture either. Therefore it is necessary for people like me to invent a new meaning for the word "torture" so that we can continue to accuse the United States government of using torture.
Gitmo is the gulag. Dick Durbin says so.
Everyone at Gitmo enjoys better treatment than George Clooney's housekeeper or Baba Streisand's gardener.... of that I am reasonably confident!! Oh, except for the small matter of confinement behind bars, but hey, we're keeping these Islamo-fascists from getting themselves killed! Since they wouldn't really receive "72 virgins" but only "72 raisins" (there was an article awhile back about how the Koranic word really referred to white raisins, not virgins) we are doing them a huge favor by keeping them alive and feeding them 3 square meals a day in a tropical paradise..........
The comparison I would really like to see made by some leading commentators and pols is between the SMALL prison camp on the tip of Cuba called Gitmo and the HUGE prison camp that is Castro's Cuba, with 10 million or so inmates. All the Euro-twit "human rights" agitators ought to be raising hell about Castro's imprisonment and abuse of millions of innocent people instead of the US imprisonment and non-abuse of 500 or so TERRORISTS.
Sounds good. I propose the following timetable:
Works for me! I applaud you for putting so much thought into this schedule. You have really outdone yourself and I can't think of one thing you have left out!!
*G*
Consider it a labor of love. :)
He he he!!
Old but interesting BUMP!
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