U.N. Official Calls for Closing of Guantanamo Bay

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/u-n-official-calls-for-closing-of-guantanamo-bay-20130405#ixzz2PgNpmEEQ



UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

U.N. Official Calls for Closing of Guantanamo Bay
By John Knefel
April 5, 2013 3:40 PM ET

A high-ranking United Nations official called for the closing of Guantanamo Bay today in one of the strongest statements issued by the U.N. in recent memory. Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the prison camps must be shuttered and that they are in a "clear breach of international law."

The statement comes amid mounting pressure to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, due in part to an increasingly dire two-month hunger strike. As many as 130 of the 166 detainees are currently on hunger strike, according to defense attorneys, though the Pentagon puts the number at closer to 40. Eleven detainees are being fed through a tube that's snaked through their nostrils. Of those 11, at least three have been hospitalized for dehydration.

Pillay excoriated the Obama administration and Congress, saying, "The continuing indefinite incarceration of many of the detainees amounts to arbitrary detention." Of the 166 men still held at Guantanamo, 86 have been cleared for release by the Obama administration and relevant agencies. Some of those men had also previously been cleared by the Bush administration. That means, in no uncertain terms, that they have been detained unjustly, that they never posed a threat to the U.S., and they are extremely unlikely to pose a threat to the U.S. if released. Nine men have died at Guantanamo – four on Obama's watch – including most recently Adnan Latif, a Yemeni who had been repeatedly cleared for transfer.

"We must be clear about this," Pillay said in the statement. "The United States is in clear breach not just of its own commitments but also of international laws and standards that it is obliged to uphold." Pillay called for the immediate release of every detainee who has been cleared, and also said that if and when detainees are charged they should be tried in civilian court, not the alternate military commission system now in place at Guantanamo.