Britain Wants U.S. to Explain Guantanamo Bay Photos
By Mike Peacock
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said Sunday it wanted an explanation from the United States about published photographs showing Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners on a U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay kneeling and tightly manacled.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement that ``prisoners, regardless of their technical status, should be treated humanely and in accordance with customary international law.''
``We have always made that clear and the Americans have said they share this view...As for the photographs of detainees published today, I have asked our officials in Guantanamo Bay to establish with the U.S. the circumstances in which these photographs were taken.''
Human rights groups have already expressed horror that the prisoners were shackled and blindfolded for the long flight to the camp in Cuba, destined for 6-foot by 8-foot enclosures with roofs and floors but only chain-link walls.
Britain said Friday that a team of its officials had arrived at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay to visit three of the al Qaeda detainees there who say they are Britons.
Blair has been an unflinching ally of the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But at home, friends and opponents are increasingly uneasy at images of manacled prisoners at the compound dubbed ``Camp X-Ray.''
They warned that the pictures could cost Blair and President Bush (news - web sites) the moral high ground in their ``war on terror.''
CONTROVERSIAL PICTURES
Sunday newspapers in Britain carried photographs of prisoners in red overalls -- eyes and ears covered, with their arms tightly shackled -- kneeling behind wire fences.
``Manacled hand and foot, they kneel in submission. Is this how Bush and Blair defend our civilization?'' the normally right-wing Mail Sunday asked on its front page.
Tony Lloyd, an MP in Blair's Labor Party and a former foreign office minister, told BBC Television: ``The treatment does seem to be way below the standards you would expect.''
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell asked: ``What sort of effect will these pictures have in capitals like Cairo or Amman? I don't believe we will successfully fight a campaign against terror if we publicly treat people in the way in which these photographs suggest.''
A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross is at the U.S. base on the eastern tip of Cuba to inspect the prison and interview each detainee. Their findings will not be made public.
U.S. officials, who consider the prisoners from Afghanistan (news - web sites) dangerous and possibly suicidal, said some had made clear after reaching Guantanamo Bay that they still wanted to hurt and kill Americans.
The United States has denied the detainees prisoner-of-war status, a designation that would give them extensive rights under the Geneva Convention.
Both the Red Cross and U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson have said they consider the captives to be prisoners of war.
The British parliament's cross-party Human Rights Committee is pressing for a meeting with U.S. ambassador to Britain William Farish this week over conditions in the prison camp and the legal status of the men detained there.