I have been following the story of the three British citizens who were detained for two years at the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. Yesterday the three submitted a dossier that described unbelievable abuse, including accounts about how they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and interrogated at gunpoint while in US custody. The story received huge coverage in the UK, Germany, France, etc., but I searched in vain for reports in the NY Times, WaPo, etc. The pretrial hearing of Pvt. Lyndie England for her actions at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq did receive a great deal of press in the US. She has been demonized while her superiors get off without so much as a reprimand, in what is becoming a despicable whitewash.
Today it appears that the Red Cross is evaluating the report by the Gitmo detainees and – in a highly unusual public statement – has announced that abuses could amount to War Crimes under the Geneva Convention. Today’s edition of the Netzeitung has the story:
Die schweren Vorwürfe dreier ehemaliger Häftlinge gegen die USA wegen der Zustände im Lager Guantánamo Bay können ernsthafte Folgen für die US-Regierung haben. Das Internationale Rote Kreuz zieht in Betracht, dass es sich um systematische «unmenschliche Behandlung» der in Guantánamo internierten Gefangenen handeln könne, «einen ernsthaften Bruch der Genfer Konvention, wie er nicht selten als Kriegsverbrechen beschrieben wird», wie der Sprecher des Internationalen Komittees des Roten Kreuzes, Florian Westphal, sagte.
If it determined that War Crimes were indeed committed, the consequences for the US Government could be serious. I will be watching to see when (if) the US press starts doing its job.
