The UN's top human rights official on Thursday applauded new US President Barack Obama's decision to close Guantanamo jail and urged him to look also at prisoners' rights at US-run centres in Afghanistan and Iraq. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay also urged Obama to hold to account the perpetrators of torture or unlawful methods of interrogation carried out in the US "war on terror".
"As High Commissioner and spokesperson for victims of torture and incarceration all over the world, I welcome most heartily this commitment by President Obama to close Guantanamo," Pillay told Reuters. "I hope that it happens soon."
A draft executive order obtained by Reuters in Washington on Wednesday sets a one-year deadline to close the controversial US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where foreign terrorism suspects have been detained for years without trial.
The United States still holds about 250 men there and wants to try about 80 of them on terrorism charges. Pillay said European countries should take in some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release who cannot return to their homelands because of a risk they could be tortured or persecuted there.
"Europe co-operated in the first instance in the rendition and the unlawful removal of these persons from various countries," she said. Guantanamo Bay prison was established at a US naval base in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and the launching of the "war on terror" by the administration of President George W. Bush.
Pillay said that she believed Obama would ensure that US federal law applied to the detainees and that any trials were conducted in the ordinary courts rather than military commissions which she said should be disbanded. "I appeal to President Obama to also look into similar detention regimes which have been set up or supported by the US government in Afghanistan and Iraq and ensure that those detainees have judicial review of their detention and their prospects of release or trial," she said.
Obama will also ban abusive interrogations and order a review of detention policies for captured militants, according to congressional aides and a White House official. Military commissions would be halted during the review. "I think it is essential that the president sets up structures to look into effective accountability for past practices by perpetrators and interrogations and sets good practices in place," said Pillay, a former judge at the International Criminal Court.