CLOSE GUANTANAMO

Mounting world outrage over abuses at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is reaching a climax. The most recent criticism has come in a lengthy review of U.S. policies by a United Nations panel of human rights officials that condemned the treatment of terrorism suspects and called for shutting down the camp.

Publication of the report by a special committee of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights came after several world leaders friendly to the Bush administration said the base should be closed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen are among them, while Britain’s Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has called the existence of the camp “unacceptable.”

In a speech in London, he said that the prison camp had become “a symbol to many – right or wrong- of injustice” and that “the historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol.”

President Bush, responding to the flurry of demands, told German television two weeks ago that he would like to close the camp but was awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on whether the prisoners may be tried by military tribunals or must be tried by civil courts with historic rights of open trial, facing accusers, cross examination and appeal to higher courts. Supreme Court action is expected by the end of June.

The blistering U.N. report accused the United States of continuing to impose practices that amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It said that, despite the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision granting detainees access to federal courts, “not a single habeas corpus petition has been decided on the merits by a United States federal court.”

The Bush administration dismissed the criticisms and complained that the U.N. investigators had rejected an offer to visit the Guantanamo facility. The committee said that the U.S. invitation ruled out any private interviews with the detainees. It said it had to rely instead on U.S. answers to a questionnaire and interviews with former detainees and lawyers for current prisoners.

The United States also complained about the panel’s “problematic approach” to the force-feeding of detainees on hunger strikes, or, as an administration official phrased it, “authorized involuntary feeding arrangements, monitored by health care professionals to preserve the life and health of the detainees.” The U.N. report said detainees should be free to stop eating if they chose to do so.

White House and State Department spokesmen have denied any U.S. abuse or torture of prisoners, at Guantanamo or anywhere else. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a February speech, “Every once in a while someone pops up and gets some press for saying, ‘Oh let’s close Guantanamo Bay.’ Well, if someone has a better idea, I’d like to hear it.”

The time has come to stop that nonsense and take prompt steps to halt the torturous interrogations, which have produced little if any useful intelligence; transfer the detainees to a proper U.S. prison on U.S. territory; either bring them to trial or set them free; and once and for all remove a world-famous blemish on America’s historic reputation as a free and law-abiding country.