** GENEVA, Feb 16 (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday came under mounting international pressure to close its Guantanamo prison, with U.N. investigators saying detainees there faced treatment amounting to torture.
In a 40-page report, which had already been largely leaked, five United Nations special envoys said the United States was violating a host of human rights, including a ban on torture, arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial. **
But the findings could fuel anger among Arabs already incensed by images of abuse of Iraqi inmates at Baghdad’s U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison newly broadcast by Australian television.
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“The United States government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay,” the human rights rapporteurs declared.
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U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he did not agree with everything in the report, produced by independent experts for the inter-governmental U.N. Human Rights Commission, but he believed the prison should be closed as soon as possible.
“Sooner or later there will be a need to close Guantanamo and it will be up to the government to decide and hopefully to do it as soon as possible,” he told reporters in New York.
Amnesty International backed the call for shutting down Guantanamo, which it said represented “just the tip of the iceberg” of U.S.-run detention facilities worldwide.
“The U.S. can no longer make the case, morally or legally, for keeping it open,” the London-based human rights group said.
The report said harsh treatment, such as placing detainees in solitary confinement, stripping them naked, subjecting them to severe temperatures and threatening them with dogs could amount to torture, which is banned in all circumstances.
Communist Cuba, which has accused Washington of turning the base on the island’s southerastern tip into a “concentration camp,” said U.S. rejection of the report came as no surprise.
“The United States only accepts reports that are favorable. It is not surprising it continues to ignore the U.N. whenever convenient,” said Ricardo Alarcon, speaker of Cuba’s National Assembly.
http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nL16444703&imageid=&cap=
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“The United States only accepts reports that are favorable. It is not surprising it continues to ignore the U.N. whenever convenient,” said Ricardo Alarcon, speaker of Cuba’s National Assembly.** You got that right no doubt the arrogant US will make big hoo ha about Iran in few months time at the UN typical hypocritical behaviour and how the Iranians are big bad wolf even though Iran have not broken any laws unlike the US who break every international treaty they have signed from control on Nuclear weapons to environmental issues and now they claim they have not even tortured anyone at Guantanamo what a joke no one in the world belives that on one little bit!
.. UN was created by Israel.. USA follows Israel like dog following its tail. Now do the math.