RIGHTS: EU Asked to Get Tough over Guantanamo Prisoners

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Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Oct 1 2003 (IPS) - A group of Members of the European Parliament is demanding strong European Union pressure on the United States to ensure fair treatment of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

A cross-section of parties in the Citizens Rights Committee of the European Parliament is urging the European Union (EU) to suspend legal cooperation agreements with the United States if it is not satisfied over the human rights of prisoners at the detention centre at a U.S. naval base.

MEPs say the detainees held as al-Qaeda suspects must have fair trial or be released.

An estimated 650 detainees were captured by the U.S. mostly in Afghanistan or Pakistan as a part of its "war on terror". The United States says it has evidence that the detainees attended terrorist training camps or were involved in financing Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

There is no official list of those held. But more than 20 of them are believed to be EU citizens.

There have been several reports on mistreatment of the detainees. The U.S. authorities first issued photographs of them in bright orange jumpsuits, kneeling before U.S. soldiers. The BBC reported in August that there had been 31 attempted suicides.

For almost two years many of the detainees at the camp have had no contact with their families or lawyers.

At a public meeting in Brussels Tuesday family members and legal representatives of detainees from Sweden, Britain, Spain, France and Germany made emotional appeals for the rights of the detained. Several members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and members of lobby groups at the European Parliament attended the meeting.

"Where is the united diplomatic protest by the EU to President Bush?" asked Baroness Sarah Ludford, MEP and spokeswoman on justice and home affairs for the European Liberal Democrat group in the European Parliament. "If the EU stopped being wimpish and spoke with one strong voice, we could surely have real weight to reverse the third-class justice meted out to foreigners there," she told a press conference before the hearing.

She asked EU states to refuse to sign any new resolution on Iraq until the United States ends the "intolerable suffering" of the prisoners. "The U.S.. wants a UN Security Council resolution on internationalising the occupation of Iraq," she said. "We have a window of opportunity there. We should say ‘no way’ to President Bush, unless we get guarantees of fair trials or release for those detainees."

Baroness Ludford stressed that the European Parliament was lobbying not just for EU citizens but for the rights of all those held at Guantanamo. "It’s not just about EU citizens, but we believe that the EU is in the strongest position to put pressure on the U.S."

Anna Terron I Cusi, Spanish MEP and Member of the Party of European Socialists, told the press conference that the European Parliament cross-party group would ask the Council of Ministers of the EU to present "a common front vis-à-vis the United States, to see that those people who are European citizens do have a fair trial and everybody else as well."

Azmat Begg, father of one of the British detainees, asked the EU to put pressure on the United States to release his son, or allow him to face trial in Britain. "They have got the right to ask Mr Bush to release the prisoners because we cooperated a lot with them and this is the time to repay," he told the hearing.

His son Moazzam Begg has been told he will face military trial, but no date has been set for the hearing.