U.S. Rebuffs U.N. Requests for Guantanamo Visits, Data on CIA Prisons

By GottaLaff

Heavy sigh:

The Obama administration has declined requests from U.N. human rights investigators for information on secret prisons and for private interviews with inmates at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.N. officials said, dampening their hopes of greater U.S. cooperation on human rights issues.

The rebuffs are the latest instances of the U.S. government resisting international human rights organizations' efforts to learn about Bush administration practices. [...]

U.S. officials said that they support the work of the U.N. human rights researchers but that they are constrained in releasing information on sensitive intelligence matters. They insist that they have not formally closed the door on visits to Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. efforts to engage the United Nations have been slowed because several key diplomatic positions in the Obama administration are still open or have just been filled.

"The Obama administration has taken aggressive action on this issue from day one, upholding our nation's fundamental values while making the American people safer," Mark Kornblau, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in a statement. "The President banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, initiated a review of all pending cases at Guantanamo, and ordered that facility closed within one year."

Many U.N. human rights advocates acknowledge that President Obama has ended the worst practices of the Bush administration, including harsh interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, that the United Nations considers torture. But they say the old practices damaged the international human rights system, making it easier for brutal regimes to justify abuses. [...]

In March, Philip Alston, the U.N. official researching extrajudicial executions, criticized the Obama administration's refusal to rule out the use of military commissions or to investigate past practices.

But Alston, an Australian lawyer who teaches at New York University, said he has little power to compel the administration to change course. He said the United States' measured response to his report had diluted its impact; U.S. officials said they appreciated it but disagreed with portions. "By playing the good guy, not making a fuss, not even taking on any of the issues, the U.S. shrewdly helped to play the whole thing down," he said. He has since moved on to work on other nations.

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.