WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- A prominent U.S. human rights group Friday renewed its call to close the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
Human Rights Watch in a statement described the continuing operation of the Guantanamo Bay facility on the island of Cuba as "a shameful blight on U.S. respect for human rights." The group said it "called on the Bush administration to bring criminal charges or release the nearly 400 detainees, and restore their access to federal court."
Guantanamo Bay received its first 20 detainees on Jan. 11, 2002. "Today, close to 400 men remain there without charge, unable to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before federal court," the HRW statement said.
"Detaining hundreds of men without charge at Guantanamo has been a legal and political debacle of historic proportions," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "It's time to close Guantanamo. The Bush administration should either charge or release the detainees trapped in a nightmarish limbo."
Human Rights watch said the Bush administration still tried to keep the operation of Guantanamo Bay confidential and continued to try to "insulate its actions from judicial review."
"After the (U.S.) Supreme Court ruled that detainees could challenge the lawfulness of their detention in courts, the Bush administration pushed legislation through Congress that revokes that right. The same legislation strips detainees of the right to challenge their treatment, even if they have been tortured, and even after they have been released," Human Rights Watch said.
"The first order of business for the new Congress should be to restore the detainees' right to habeas corpus," Roth said. "It's a vital mechanism for preventing abuse of detainees and for protecting people who shouldn't be in detention."
