Guantánamo detainee question omitted from EU-US summit

By David Cronin

Date: 17/02/05

The detention without trial of several European citizens in Guantánamo Bay is unlikely to be discussed during next week's EU-US summit in Brussels (22 February).

Diplomats working for Luxembourg's EU presidency say the treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects in the American base in Cuba is being omitted from the agenda solely because of time constraints. The meeting between leaders of 25 EU states and George W. Bush will instead focus on such issues as improving transatlantic ties, police and judicial co-operation and achieving stability in the western Balkans.

Some French newspapers have reported in the past fortnight that a deal was imminent, under which the last three French nationals in the prison camp would be brought home.

But a spokeswoman for the US Mission to the EU said she was unaware that any such developments were in the pipeline.

In January, Amnesty International estimated that the 550 detainees who were still being held without charge in Guantánamo belong to more than 30 different nationalities.

While the US has acknowledged using such interrogation techniques as sleep deprivation, hooding, isolation and inflicting fear with dogs, the human rights organisation said that "evidence mounts these and other techniques have been more widely used than the authorities are willing to admit".

Most of the remaining EU citizens or residents being detained are from France Belgium and possibly the UK. The detainees also include nationals from aspiring EU states Bosnia and Turkey.

Civil liberties activists have heavily criticised the EU's reticence on Guantánamo. "I cannot really see why the EU presidency is not presenting a united front on this," said Stephen Jakobi from Fair Trials Abroad. "They do have a moral, though unfortunately not an international law, obligation to do something."

Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford cited reports that there are at least seven British residents still in Guantánamo, aside from the four who were returned to the UK last month. She took Tony Blair's government to task for not pursuing the case of Bisher al-Rawi, a London resident with an Iraqi passport, with sufficient vigour. "The answer the government has always given is that it is not able to represent people who are not UK nationals," she said. "So should this guy have first gone to Saddam or - after the invasion - to a non- existent government?

"The EU has never formally addressed the Guantánamo issue as an issue of common foreign and security policy or of human rights policy.

"They have always bottled out in the last three years. No doubt, I will be told, there have been discreet representations. But quite simply, that is not good enough," she added.

Article reports that the detention without trial of several European citizens in Guantánamo Bay was unlikely to be discussed during the Brussels EU-US summit on 22 February 2004. Diplomats working for Luxembourg's EU Presidency said that the treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects in the American base in Cuba was being omitted from the agenda solely because of time constraints. The meeting between leaders of 25 EU states and George W. Bush would instead focus on such issues as improving transatlantic ties, police and judicial co-operation and achieving stability in the western Balkans.