AMNESTY LASHES OUT
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International wrote U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressing its concern for the detainees’ treatment.
“Amnesty supports the position of the International Committee of the Red Cross that people captured in the Afghan war and held at Guantanamo Bay should be presumed prisoners of war,” Avner Gidron, a spokesman for Amnesty International at its London headquarters, told MSNBC.com.
“We’re concerned that the U.S. is placing these people in Guantanamo Bay in a sort of legal limbo by not having officially charged them with anything and not offering them the most basic legal protection to ensure fairness,” he said.
During open debate on the House of Commons floor on Monday, one of the Labor government’s own members, Jeremy Corbyn, challenged the detainees’ treatment.
“Is it legal? What law is being applied?” he asked rhetorically. Corbyn added that the international community should not be “illegally taking people out of Afghanistan
DEATH PENALTY CONTROVERSY
Since the Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay is not on American soil, the detainees are not protected under U.S. law, and may not be given access to legal counsel or an appeals process.
Gidron said Amnesty International was worried about U.S. plans for trying the prisoners before military commissions where there is no presumption of innocence and no appeals process.
Britain, meanwhile, typically refuses to grant extradition to countries where suspects may face capital punishment, which U.S. prosecutors are likely to seek in some cases. Like most countries in Europe, the United Kingdom is party to the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans the death penalty.
It is unclear if British officials will object to the prospect of British nationals facing a possible death penalty.
At least one British national, Scotsman James McLintock, is also being held in Pakistan, suspected of links to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.
The 37-year-old Muslim convert — called the “tartan Taliban” by British newspapers — was allegedly picked up by U.S. and Pakistani authorities as he tried to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan with a convoy of al-Qaida fighters last month.
British lawmakers have left open the possibility that Britons found to have fought against U.S. and British troops could face treason charges if they return home.