Rule of law must be upheld in Guantanamo Bay

Speech by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP delivered to European Parliament on Tue 9th Mar 2004

Ludford (ELDR), draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs. - Mr President, the General Secretary of the American National Council of Churches has recently branded the denial of human rights at Guantanamo Bay as a sin against God. I do not take a religious perspective, but it is clear that it is not only Europeans who feel strongly that the situation at Guantanamo Bay offends against our sense of justice. One of the senior justices in the United Kingdom, Lord Steyn, branded the proposed military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay as a stain on US justice and the term 'kangaroo court' springs to mind. The British Court of Appeal has branded the detention of prisoners there as a legal black hole.

The Bush administration has argued that the Geneva Conventions are obsolete when it comes to dealing with terrorists and has chosen to apply neither these conventional laws of war nor the criminal law in which human rights norms should apply, that is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the US Constitution. It has tried to straddle both by inventing a new, residual category of 'unlawful combatant' in the potentially unlimited war on terror, which is transformed from a metaphorical to a literal term. However, that status is unknown in international law.

Sadly, the denial of the prisoners' right to access to normal civil courts and the protection of the US Constitution has been backed by the US courts on the grounds that Guantanamo Bay - even though the US is in actual control of the base - is not sovereign US territory. But it is welcome that the Supreme Court has now said it would decide on whether the US courts have jurisdiction.

I would end by saying that I regret the absence of the Council in this debate since, as Commissioner Patten has pointed out, the Commission does not have jurisdiction, and the failure of the Council to adopt a common position and a strategy to implement the upholding of the rule of law in Guantanamo Bay is a sad omission.