BRITAIN: Four British ex-inmates of the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay sued Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday, saying they were tortured in violation of US and international law.
The four former detainees are seeking $10 million in damages but primarily want Mr Rumsfeld and other defendants to be held accountable for their actions.
Mr Eric Lewis, the lawyer leading the case, said: "This is a case about preserving an American ideal - the rule of law. It is un-American to torture people. It is un-American to hold people indefinitely without access to counsel, courts or family." The plaintiffs were picked up in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The federal court suit alleges they faced repeated beatings, death threats, interrogation at gunpoint, forced nakedness and menacing with unmuzzled dogs, among other mistreatment, during more than two years at Guantanamo Bay.
The suit comes as Amnesty International accused the US of failing to guard against torture and inhuman behaviour since launching its "war on terror" after 9/11. Amnesty condemned President Bush's response to 9/11, saying it had resulted in an "iconography of torture, cruelty and degradation".
Its report accused Washington of stepping on to a "well-trodden path of violating basic rights in the name of national security or 'military necessity'. The war mentality the government adopted has not been matched with a commitment to the laws of war and it has discarded fundamental human rights principles along the way." At best, Washington was guilty of setting conditions for torture and cruel treatment by lowering safeguards and failing to respond adequately to allegations of abuse, it said.
At worst, it had authorised interrogation techniques which flouted its international obligation to reject torture and ill-treatment under any circumstances.
The report, Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the 'war on terror', urged an independent inquiry into all US interrogation policies. - (Reuters)
