Guantanamo Bay

Speech by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP on Mon 21st Feb 2005

Ludford (ALDE). - Mr President, Parliament has consistently campaigned against illegal internment in Guantanamo Bay. Most of the EU nationals have now been released - certainly all nine British citizens - but around a dozen people who have legal residence in an EU country, for instance as refugees, are still there.

There are five people from the UK whose names we know: Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna, Jamal Abdullah, Shaker Aamer and Omar Deghayes. Reports tell of degrading and inhuman treatment, even torture. Omar Deghayes claims that he has been blinded in one eye with pepper spray. Twenty years ago he came as a refugee from Libya, where his father was killed by the Gaddafi regime. Libyan officials have visited him and threatened him with deportation to Libya and death.

This was obviously done with the collusion of the US Government. In fact, it sent a plane to Tripoli to pick them up. It must have been done also with the collusion of the UK Government. It cannot be allowed to hide behind the Vienna Convention. It has a moral and - I contend - legal obligation to intervene and rescue these people or put them on trial. Otherwise the pretensions of the EU to have a human rights policy ring hollow.