LONDON, Oct 12: Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett launched one of the British government’s sharpest attacks on Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, saying the US prison camp was ineffective and damaging.
“The continuing detention without fair trial of prisoners is unacceptable in terms of human rights. But it is also ineffective in terms of counter-terrorism,” Ms Beckett said at the launch of her department’s annual human rights report.
“It is widely argued now that the existence of the camp is as much a radicalising and discrediting influence as it is a safeguard to security,” she added.
The United States has been heavily criticised abroad over conditions at the Guantanamo base on Cuba, where it still holds some 450 inmates as enemy combatants.
Some have been held for more than four years without trial, branded as dangerous Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives.
Ms Beckett’s comments are among the strongest condemnations of Guantanamo by a senior minister in the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, US President George W. Bush’s staunchest ally in the Iraq war.
Last month Lord Charles Falconer, secretary of state for constitutional affairs and a close ally of Mr Blair, said keeping prisoners beyond the reach of law was a “shocking affront to the principles of democracy.”
The Foreign Office human rights report, published on Thursday, said Britain had made it clear to the US government that the circumstances under which detainees continue to be held in Guantanamo were unacceptable.—Reuters
