OSCE study finds that Gitmo is better than Belgian or French prisons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A French prison.
BRUSSELS, March 7, 2006 (UPI) -- Is Guantanamo a model prison? Not in the eyes of most observers. The United Nations and the European Parliament have called for the notorious American detention center to be closed immediately and slammed the practice of holding prisoners without trial for over three years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, both close allies of the Bush administration, have also urged Washington to shut the camp -- as have civil liberties groups the world over.
However, a preliminary report by a team of observers from Europe's biggest security organization paints a rosier picture of conditions at the controversial camp, which is situated on the island of Cuba.
"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Alain Grignard, the deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit. Grignard, who is also a professor of Islam at the University of Liege, served as an expert to a group of lawmakers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on a visit to Guantanamo Bay last week.
While admitting that conditions were not "idyllic," and that detaining prisoners for years without trial was a form of "psychological torture," Grignard -- who has inspected the camp five times -- told reporters in Brussels: "I have never witnessed acts of violence or things which shocked me in Guantanamo ... one should not confuse this center with Abu Ghraib."
European politicians and human rights groups have repeatedly rapped the U.S. military for its treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. But this torrent of criticism was undermined last month by a report on French prisons by the Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights organization. The author of the report, human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil Robles, said France had the shabbiest prisons of any country he had visited, with the exception of Moldova. One prison in central Paris was described as "catastrophic and unworthy of France," while another in Marseille was classified as "on the borderline of human dignity." Observing a dramatic rise in complaints about mistreatment of prisoners, Gil Robles said that French police operated with a "sense of impunity."
http://www.postchronicle.com/news/se..._2129526.shtml
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A French prison.
BRUSSELS, March 7, 2006 (UPI) -- Is Guantanamo a model prison? Not in the eyes of most observers. The United Nations and the European Parliament have called for the notorious American detention center to be closed immediately and slammed the practice of holding prisoners without trial for over three years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, both close allies of the Bush administration, have also urged Washington to shut the camp -- as have civil liberties groups the world over.
However, a preliminary report by a team of observers from Europe's biggest security organization paints a rosier picture of conditions at the controversial camp, which is situated on the island of Cuba.
"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Alain Grignard, the deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit. Grignard, who is also a professor of Islam at the University of Liege, served as an expert to a group of lawmakers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on a visit to Guantanamo Bay last week.
While admitting that conditions were not "idyllic," and that detaining prisoners for years without trial was a form of "psychological torture," Grignard -- who has inspected the camp five times -- told reporters in Brussels: "I have never witnessed acts of violence or things which shocked me in Guantanamo ... one should not confuse this center with Abu Ghraib."
European politicians and human rights groups have repeatedly rapped the U.S. military for its treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. But this torrent of criticism was undermined last month by a report on French prisons by the Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights organization. The author of the report, human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil Robles, said France had the shabbiest prisons of any country he had visited, with the exception of Moldova. One prison in central Paris was described as "catastrophic and unworthy of France," while another in Marseille was classified as "on the borderline of human dignity." Observing a dramatic rise in complaints about mistreatment of prisoners, Gil Robles said that French police operated with a "sense of impunity."
http://www.postchronicle.com/news/se..._2129526.shtml
