Guantanamo Detainees

Written by Sarah Ludford MEP and published in Financial Times, Letters to the Editor on Thu 31st Jul 2003

It is reported that the US has agreed not to seek the death penalty for Australian or British detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in the Australian case not to use secret evidence or monitor his conversations with lawyers. It is a disgrace that the UK and Australia are prepared to accept these "concessions".

They are just an attempt to deflect pressure to ditch the fundamentally flawed military tribunals. Fair trials are not a matter for international barter. Justice for both the Guantanamo prisoners and the victims of terrorism cannot be secured through spurious and competing "favours" from a superpower to its faithful poodles.

What do common European external and internal justice & security policies mean if not concerted EU pressure to stop this travesty affecting nearly 700 people, including at least 15 European Union citizens? The EU must speak with a single voice, defending values of justice and freedom and upholding the rule of law.

In 1910 Winston Churchill said: "The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country". We must see an impartial judge in a civilian court, access to a proper defence, disclosure of evidence and a presumption of innocence. There has already been gross prejudice from the statements by President George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, that these are "bad people" and "dangerous killers".

I have never been anti-American but I am hugely disappointed that under the Bush administration the US is striking such a terrible blow to the prospect of success in the "war" on terror by undermining the avowedly shared transatlantic commitment to human rights.

Convictions secured through a kangaroo court in Guantanamo Bay will not bring justice for the victims of terrorism, and could in fact lead to more terrorist activity. No one in the EU or the US could possibly desire such an outcome. Our "civilisation" is being tested; we must be equal to the test.