US Guantanamo 'unacceptable', warns Beckett
Regional-USA, Politics, 10/12/2006

The detention of terrorist suspects without trial or charge at US concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is unacceptable and counterproductive, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Thursday.

In the most direct criticism of the camp by a British cabinet minister, Beckett warned that its setting up nearly five years ago to house hundreds of prisoners outside US jurisdiction may be doing more harm than good in the fight against terrorism.

"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," she said.

"It is widely argued now that the existence of the camp is as much a radicalising and destabilizing influence as it is a safeguard to security," the foreign secretary added.

Prime Minister Tony Blair so far has gone no further than calling the camp an "anomaly" which sooner or later must end, but two other cabinet ministers, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, spoke out against it earlier this year.

Launching the Foreign Office's annual human rights report, Beckett warned that repressive regimes around the world were using the fight against terrorism as an excuse for tightening restrictions on the human rights of their own citizens.

But the report argued that it was a "complete fallacy" to draw a link between the "legitimate national security" measures of democratic regimes and the repressive acts of authoritarian states.

The foreign secretary said that she was aware of accusations that the British government's use of deportation with assurances undermined Britain's long-term commitment against torture, but insisted they were false.

"That's not true. We have been given assurances and we are building the means to verify that the human rights of returnees will be respected," she said.

Britain has been seeking assurances from countries such as Jordan and Algeria that terror suspects deported there will not face torture on their return, but Beckett insisted that this did not undermine the UK's long-standing opposition to the use of torture.

Previous Stories:
  Rice sees progress in war on terror since 9/11   (9/11/2006)
  US: Geneva Conventions to apply to detainees   (7/12/2006)
  Call for closing of US detention in Guantánamo   (7/8/2006)

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