‘Tony Blair was accused last night by the Archbishop of
York of helping the US to run “Idi Amin-style” tactics in the war on terror. 

Mr
Blair was challenged by Dr John Sentamu after refusing to condemn Guantanamo
Bay beyond calling the prison camp run by the US in Cuba an “anomaly”.’ 

Blair
Condones Amin - Style Tactics Against Terrorism: Says Archbishop 

Still not so much as peep from the guardians of our
so-called moral values.

From the ABC

Doctors condemn Guantanamo force-feeding
A letter signed by about 260 doctors says the force-feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is unethical.
It demands that the American Medical Association and other bodies punish medical personnel who carry it out.
The letter appears in tomorrow's issue of British medical weekly The Lancet.
The signatories include doctors who work in British and US hospitals, and physicians who are members of organisations that defend medical ethics and combat torture.
A US military spokesman has said the force-feeding at Guantanamo Bay is being carried out in a humane manner and only when needed to keep prisoners alive.
But at least one inmate has alleged through his lawyer that it amounts to torture.
-------------------------
May be they should let them have cake?

From Al jazeera

A Canadian teenager who is alleged to have killed a US army medic has refused to participate in his hearing at a Guantanamo tribunal.

Omar Khadr, a 19-year-old suspected by the US military of recieving al-Qaeda training, addressed the presiding officer at his pre-trial hearing at the US naval base in Cuba, saying: "I say with my respect to you and everybody else here that I am boycotting these procedures until I [am] treated humanely and fair."

............

Khadr was 15 when he was captured. His lawyers believe that trying him for crimes allegedly committed as a juvenile violates international law. If convicted, Khadr would face life in prison.

So far, only 10 of the 490 Guantanamo detainees have been charged with war crimes. Khadr is one of four scheduled for pre-trial hearings this week. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to the legitimacy of the tribunals last month and is expected to make a judgment by July.

read more at Aljazeera

From the ABC

Guantanamo detainees injured in riot
By North America correspondent Michael Rowland, AFP

The US commander at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp says detainees have staged a fake suicide attempt before attacking guards with fan blades and other improvised weapons.

Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo says six detainees were injured in "the most violent outbreak" at the facility since it was opened in January 2002.

Rear Admiral Harris says detainees smothered the floor with human excrement and soapy water to make it slippery before guards rushed in, believing they were saving a man from hanging himself.

He says guards fired rubber bullets at the detainees after the guards were attacked with "broken light fixtures, fan blades" and other improvised weapons.

Rear Admiral Harris insists "minimum force was used to quell the disturbance".

Colonel Mike Bumgarner says "detainees were jumping out of the beds on top of the guards" and some guards had been knocked to the floor.

"Frankly we were losing the fight at that point," he said.

He says the six detainees received minor injuries.

Earlier in the day, two other detainees attempted suicide by overdosing on prescription drugs.

They are both unconscious in the detention centre hospital.

The ambush was reported on the day a UN panel called on the United States to close the camp for Al Qaeda and Taliban "enemy combatants" in Cuba.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs says it is not aware if Australian detainee David Hicks was involved in the unrest.

read more at the ABC

-----------------------
After four of five years of incarceration with no charge and no hope one would do something or rather whatever... By the time the prisoners be presented in front of a court, they'd be totally insane! And what about the jailers themselves? Soldiers or dummies of the Yes sir kind? Three bag full, sir! Day in day out keeping tabs on people who really don't matter in the end. What a job! What a career for donks! Close this abomination down! It is a pox on western civilisation

It's a bit like a yo-yo Gus ..... 

‘The United Nations Committee
Against Torture issued a report
yesterday which called on the U.S. to “close any secret ‘war on terror’
detention facilities abroad and the Guantanamo
Bay camp in Cuba.” The report also said “detainees should not be returned
to any country where they could face a ‘real
risk’ of being tortured.”’ 

whilst in the heartland of
truth & justice itself ..... 

‘A US court has dismissed a
lawsuit brought by a German citizen who says he was kidnapped and beaten by the
CIA.  

Khaled
el-Masri aimed to sue former CIA chief George Tenet and other officials for
their alleged role in the "extraordinary rendition" programme.   

Mr
el-Masri says he was picked up in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Kabul,
Afghanistan, where he alleges torture.’  

CIA 'Torture'
Lawsuit Thrown Out

‘The prison camps at Guantanamo
Bay were gripped by a series of uprisings and disturbances last week which
suggest a state of near revolt, it emerged yesterday. 

Reports from within the
controversial detention centre in Cuba claim the base's military commanders
believe there were links between a series of suicide attempts, medical
emergencies and the violent clashes between 20 inmates and guards on Thursday. 

It was "probably the most
violent outbreak" in the camp's four-year history, claimed Rear Admiral
Harry Harris, the detention and interrogation centre's commander. "These
are dangerous men and determined jihadists," he said. 

The base's authorities suspect
the incidents were co-ordinated and fed off each other, but one former inmate
and two lawyers raised substantial doubts about the US military's account of
the disturbances.’ 

Breaking
Point: Inside Story Of The Guantanamo Uprising

Despite Condoleezza Rice’s
insistence that "No one would like to shut down Guantanamo more than this
administration," Bloomberg
reports, "They're settling in for the long haul at the US military
prison at Guantanamo Bay, with work almost complete on a new $30 million
state-of-the-art detention facility. 

“US anti-terror policies
worldwide significantly undermined human rights in 2005,"
according to Amnesty
International's newest annual report. "The US relentlessly pursued its
'war on terror' under a shroud of secrecy, unlawfully transferring terror
suspects around the world, ignoring allegations of torture and ill-treatment
refusing to close the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay." 

elsewhere, the Guardian
reports ……  

‘The United States' reported use
of secret CIA-run prisons for terrorism suspects amounts to a policy of
"disappearances", human rights watchdog Amnesty International said
today in its annual report. 

In a sometimes scathing
assessment of Washington's rights record, the London based group also raised
serious concerns about detainees held without trial in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and
Afghanistan. 

Washington had failed to bring to
account those potentially guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity, it
added.’ 

Amnesty Attacks
US 'Disappearances' 

whilst BBC Newsnight reports
….. 

US Navy Senior
Council Says Bush Administration Open To War Crime Charges 

meanwhile, the LA Times says
…. 

‘Saying goodbye to Guantanamo
would be more than a symbolic change of policy. 

Confining detainees in a
geographically isolated location encourages abuses by authorities and despair
and disruption among inmates; witness last week's detainee suicide attempts and
subsequent attack on guards. 

But appearances are important
too. As British Atty. Gen. Lord Goldsmith said in calling for the closing of
Guantanamo: "The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom,
of liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol."’ 

Gitmo,
Get Gone

From the Independent

The children of Guantanamo Bay
The 'IoS' reveals today that more than 60 of the detainees of the US camp were under 18 at the time of their capture, some as young as 14

By Severin Carrell
Published: 28 May 2006
The notorious US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay has been hit by fresh allegations of human rights abuses, with claims that dozens of children were sent there - some as young as 14 years old.

Lawyers in London estimate that more than 60 detainees held at the terrorists' prison camp were boys under 18 when they were captured.

They include at least 10 detainees still held at the US base in Cuba who were 14 or 15 when they were seized - including child soldiers who were held in solitary confinement, repeatedly interrogated and allegedly tortured.

The disclosures threaten to plunge the Bush administration into a fresh row with Britain, its closest ally in the war on terror, only days after the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, repeated his demands for the closure of the detention facility. It was, he said, a "symbol of injustice".

read more at the independent...

------------------------

Gus: Not a peep from our bald brown-noser... I suppose he's waiting to see the "official report from the US that will whitewash the stuff for "security" reasons and why not throw a sprinkling of "national interest"...

From the ABC

Guantanamo suicides a 'good PR move'
A senior US State Department official has described the triple suicide at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as "a good public relations move".

Three prisoners, two Saudis and a Yemeni, hanged themselves in their cells with clothes and bed sheets.

They are the first captives to die at Guantanamo since the US started sending suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban captives there in 2002.

Deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, has dismissed the suggestions of some human rights lawyers and organisations that the suicides were the result of mounting desperation.

Ms Graffy told the BBC the deaths were "a tactic to further the jihadi cause".

"Taking their own lives was not necessary but it certainly is a good PR move to draw attention," she said.

read more at the ABC

-----------------------------

Gus-speak:
After spending three or four years at the five star Gitmo resort with its superb gourmet food tailored to your need and its daily entertainment of quiz mastery with one's head under water to prompt any answer, it's obvious some of the guests want to repay the host and promote the joint.

Hoping to join the great Hang Yourdickcheney inc. publicity firm, they ultimately can show they are fully fledged public relation graduate from this sunny holiday palace — so hot on the vacation circuit, there's more security guards than guests. And management gives you free orange clothes so you know you are protected from the sun harmful rays that you might see once in a fortnight for five minutes...

It is quite weird really to read all the rigmarole about the Yanks and Zarqawi... After having bombed his place, I suppose to kill him, not just to do a bit of instant backyard blitz around his place... we get these kind thoughts from the dispensers of double 500 pounds bombs...

"""General Casey... said American troops sought to minister aid to the injured Qaeda leader, but added that it was too late.

"He died while American soldiers were attempting to save his life," General Casey said."""

I suppose the Americans bombed Zarqawi to save his life and to brighten his day with the fact he had won a free holiday at Gitmo — the best resort on earth? And give Zarqawi the opportunity to become a famous PR artist by hanging himself in his ensuite? That would make sense... would it not?

Yes Gus, "official" statements from the bushit spinmeisters are becoming increasingly macabre ....

Whilst uncle donny's war machine continues to wreak death & destruction on inncocent civilians in Iraq & Afghanistan, in asymmetrical sync with its proxy in Palestine, little bushit expressed "serious concern" that 3 guests had decided to permanently check-out of his 5 star cuban zoo.

Junior's latest mouthpiece, ex-Fox News hysteric, Tony Snow, said that bushit "wants to make sure that this thing is done right from all points of view", just like don corleone.

Snow went on to claim that the great decider had directed that the 
bodies of the detainees who had allegedly commited suicide, including one who was only 21 years of age, should be
"treated humanely & with cultural sensitivity", to show respect for
Muslim traditions regarding the dead .......

...... just like they did in lamenting the failure of US troops to save al- Zaquawi's life - after dropping 2 X 500lb bombs on him - whilst publicly displaying a blown-up photo of the dead alleged super terrorist, mounted in a gold frame. I don't know why they just didn't stick his head up on a pike outside the out house?

Meanwhile, having recently returned from his refresher training in "core amerikan values", Rear Admiral Harry Harris ("crazy harry" to his friends), commandante of the cuban zoo, demonstrated remarkable cultural sensitivity by claiming that the dead detainees had suicided in an act of "asymmetrical warfare against the US" & they had "no regard for American lives or their own".

Sounds just like the UK police spokesperson who apologised for any inconvenience caused to the two British "terra suspects", after their house had been invaded & nearly demolished by 250 heavily armed police & one of them had been shot.

Ya just gotta love that cultural sensitivity ......