Former US chief prosecutor condemns ‘law-free zone’ of Guantánamo

Ten years on from its creation, calls are mounting from legal and human rights experts for closure of the ‘torture’ centre on Cuba

• • reddit this

• Ed Vulliamy in New York
• The Observer, Sunday 30 October 2011

A shackled detainee is taken from a vehicle for interrogation at Camp Delta, at the Guantanamo base in Cuba in 2006. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP

The former chief prosecutor for the US government at Guantánamo Bay has accused the administration he served of operating a “law-free zone” there, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the order to establish the detention camp on Cuba.

Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush’s executive order setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects.

Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as “torture” – were in breach of the US’s own statutes on torture, and added: “If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted.”

Continues >>