Guantanamo must close

7.12.55pm GMT Thu 16th Feb 2006

Sarah with former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg

The European Parliament has backed the United Nations call for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp operated by the US in Cuba opened in 2002.

Liberal Democrat European justice spokeswoman Baroness Sarah Ludford, who is also vice-chair of the European Parliament's temporary committee investigating CIA 'torture flights' and jails in Europe, said:

"Guantanamo is a scandal. The founding fathers of the United States must be turning in their graves at the constitutional outrage whereby America practises illegal detention, ill-treatment and even torture."

"Dozens of European residents are still there after 4 years, 9 of them legal British residents including my London constituents Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna and Omar Deghayes. Jack Straw is not lifting a finger to help them, and the government has failed to promise that when released, their right of residence in the UK will be respected."

"The EU is failing to live up to its human rights pretensions by not putting concerted joint pressure on the US to respect international law and close down Guantanamo as well as its other jails around the world."

"The human rights abuses of the war on terror damage relations with Muslims in our own societies and stoke hatred of the Western world which can act as a recruiting-sergeant for terrorism. It would be anti-American not to care also about the loss of US moral authority in the world."