By George Jones, Political Editor
Last Updated: 12:35am GMT 22/01/2007
Facilities for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay and Belmarsh prison in
London are "broadly comparable", MPs said yesterday.
But while the controversial American base in Cuba scores highly on diet
and health provisions, it fails to achieve minimum UK standards on
access to recreation, to lawyers and the outside world.
Members of the foreign affairs committee visited the detention centre
for "enemy combatants" in September — the first members of a national
parliament, other than the US Congress, to have access.
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It was set up after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and 395
prisoners are held there, including 10 British residents, whom the
Government says it is not obliged to try to bring home.
According to the human rights charity Reprieve, these 10 are of non-UK
nationalities but with "long and serious ties with this country or who
have indefinite leave to remain".
The report by the seven MPs said many of those detained were "real
threat to public safety".
It concluded that the Government was right to stick to its policy of not
accepting consular responsibility for non-British nationals — including
the former British residents detained at Guantanamo Bay.
The MPs said abuse of detainees had "almost certainly taken place in the
past", but they believed it was unlikely now.
The report urged the Government to work with the US on alternatives to
Guantanamo Bay so it could be shut as soon as possible.
The chairman of the committee, Mike Gapes, said: "The problem is, if you
closed it straight away what do you do with the people that are there?
Some of them no doubt could be sent back to their country of origin and
be of no threat. But there are people there that are dangerous."
Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative chairman of the all-party group on
extraordinary rendition — the extra-judicial process of sending
prisoners to countries other than the United States for interrogation —
said the report would be a "deep disappointment" because the committee
had not acknowledged the moral responsibility to British residents in
Guantanamo.
Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of Reprieve which represents 38
prisoners at the base, said the report was "full of factual errors" and
based on a "show tour".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/22/nprisons22.xml
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