Archbishop attacks US over camp

LONDON - The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has launched a passionate attack on President George W Bush, saying his administration's refusal to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp reflected "a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm".

The Church of England's second in command urged the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) to take legal action against the US if it fails to respond to a report by UN inspectors that Camp Delta should be shut immediately because prisoners are being tortured.

Sentamu's attack will strengthen the increasingly insistent international pressure for the Guantanamo prison camp to be closed.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for its closure, after similar appeals by Peter Hain, Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.

US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected UN charges of abuse at the US detention centre at Guantanamo and told told the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday the critics were "just flat wrong" to call for its closure. "There is no torture, there is no abuse. It's being handled honourably. I know Kofi Annan and there are a lot of things you can agree with him on, but he's just flat wrong," Rumsfeld said.

"We have several hundred terrorists, bad people, people if they went back out on the field would try to kill Americans. To close that place, and pretend there's no problem, just isn't realistic," he said.

The UN human rights experts who wrote the report were invited to Guantanamo Bay but declined after US authorities said they would not be permitted to interview the inmates.

Sentamu said the UNHRC should seek a writ of habeas corpus, compelling the US to bring those being detained at Guantanamo to court, to establish whether they are imprisoned lawfully.

"The American Government is breaking international law," he said. "If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial?

"Transparency and accountability are the other side of the coin of freedom and responsibility.

"We are all accountable for our actions in spite of circumstances. The events of 9/11 cannot erase the rule of law and international obligations. The US should try all 500 detainees at Guantanamo, who still include eight British residents, or free them without further delay."

Archbishop Tutu was alarmed that arguments used by the South African apartheid regime are now being used to justify anti-terror measures, show no sign of dissipating. Michael Winterbottom's film The Road to Guantanamo, a searing indictment of the US, depicting the ordeal of the three British prisoners from Tipton in the West Midlands, is the talk of the Berlin Film Festival.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS