MPs call for Guantanamo action
Sunday, 21 January 2007 12:00 AM
British MPs have called for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison camp "as soon as possible" after a recent visit.
Members of the foreign affairs select committee visited the high-security prison in Cuba last September, the first members of a foreign parliament to do so.
They concluded that the facilities for the 460 inmates are broadly comparable to those at Britain's high-security Belmarsh prison.
Although standards on diet and health provision were high, access to exercise and recreation, lawyers and the outside world remained extremely low and below minimum British standards.
MPs warned that the treatment of the prisoners threatened to undermine the Geneva convention on human rights and called on the international community to step up its efforts to work with the US to close the prison.
"We recommend that the government engage actively with the US administration and with the international community to assist the process of closing Guantanamo as soon as may be consistent with the overriding need to protect the public from terrorist threats," the report concludes.
Less than a quarter of the 395 prisoners held at the naval base are likely to face a tribunal in the near future.
Amnesty International's UK director, Kate Allen, said she was disappointed by the report's equivocal response to the suspected terrorists' current situation.
"We would have liked to have seen the committee unequivocally backing Amnesty International's long-standing call for Guantanamo to be closed immediately," she told the BBC.
Comment on the latest stories and political hot topics by clicking here
Newsletter sign up