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Taliban Captives Should Go Gome, says Rights
Group The US has no legal basis for holding
members of the Taliban at Guantanamo Bay, the organisation Human Rights
Watch said in a letter to the American defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
The intervention comes amid growing calls for access to prisoners held by
the US following September 11 and the war in Afghanistan.
The group, which with Amnesty International has been monitoring the
situation of prisoners, said yesterday that there were three types of
prisoners at the US camp in Cuba, who should be released.
They were "Taliban soldiers who were detained in the now-concluded war
between the US and the government of Afghanistan, unless they are being
prosecuted for war crimes; civilians who have no meaningful connection to
al-Qaida or the Taliban and probably should never have been sent to
Guantanamo in the first place; and suspected terrorists whose detention
had nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan, unless they are charged
with a crime and prosecuted".
"There are people being held at Guantanamo who shouldn't be there,"said
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
"The US cannot simply hold the detainees for as long as it wants."
Attempts to provide legal representation for those held at Guantanamo Bay
have so far been unsuccessful.
Human Rights Watch claims the Taliban soldiers captured during the war
should have been repatriated following the formation of the government of
Hamid Karzai.
Mr Roth suggested that, under the Geneva convention, the US should release
those soldiers unless they are being charged with war crimes or other
criminal offences.
Source : Duncan
Campbell - The Guardian |
