Activists in prisoner-style orange boiler suits staged demonstrations around the world Friday to mark six years since the US prison camp opened at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
From London to Sydney, activists mobilised by human rights organisation Amnesty International and others called for the camp to be shut, six years to the day since it received its first prisoners seized in the ”war on terror”.
About 200 people turned out in the drizzle in Washington for a march from the US Congress to the nearby Supreme Court, called by numerous rights groups.
”Shut down Guantánamo, counter terror with justice,” they chanted.
The Supreme Court is to rule in the coming months on whether prisoners at Guantánamo Bay can challenge their detention in civilian courts. Currently they face special military tribunals at the base, outside US soil.
In London, about 100 people assembled near the US embassy, wearing the orange suits similar to those worn by detainees. Protestors took turns overnight in steel cages before the heavily-fortified embassy.
”Guards” in military uniform, some with dogs, barked orders at the ”detainees”.
”This is really to show our rage against the fact that this black hole facility continues to exist, that there are still 275 people outside any rule of law, and to demand its immediate closure,” said Amnesty’s international campaigns director, Sarah Burton.
Hundreds have been released from Guantánamo to various countries after being seized abroad in operations sparked by the attacks on the United States on September 11 2001.
About 275 remain, according to the US Department of Defence.
In Sydney, hundreds of people in orange jumpsuits and white face masks carried placards through the central business hub of Martin Place on Friday.
Another protest in the Australian city of Adelaide included Terry Hicks, whose son David — the recently-released so-called ”Aussie Taliban” — is one of only three Guantánamo detainees to have faced formal charges.
At a US military commission hearing last March he admitted providing material support for terrorism and completed his sentence in Australia last month.
”His views are the same as mine,” his father said. ”The best thing is to shut the place. The bottom line is: the place needs shutting, put people through proper processes of law.”
Demonstrations were more low-key elsewhere.
About 30 to 40 people gathered in Rome waving placards saying ”Close Guantánamo Now” and ”End Illegal Detentions”.
In Athens, about a dozen people — blindfolded and chained — protested outside the Greek Parliament, with a banner saying: ”Guantánamo: 50-star hotel.”
A similar small protest took place in freezing central Stockholm.
In Madrid, Amnesty’s Spanish branch presented the US embassy with a petition containing the signatures of 170 Spanish lawmakers demanding that the camp be closed.
In Africa, several human rights groups staged an hour-long sit-in outside the Mauritian justice ministry in Nouakchott to demand the government do more for the release of two nationals still held in Guantánamo Bay.
Nine rights groups were due to protest in the Moroccan capital Rabat on Friday evening, calling for guarantees of the fair treatment and trial of two nationals sent back from Guantánamo.
In Washington a petition, signed by 1 100 parliamentarians from across the world, and 100 000 other signatures from US citizens, was to be handed in to the White House.
A US court also on Friday turned down a claim by four British former detainees claiming they were tortured at the prison, saying accused officials acted as part of their jobs.
”The alleged tortious [wrongful] conduct was incidental to the defendants’ legitimate employment duties,” Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson wrote in the ruling.
The four — Ruhal Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Jamal Al-Harith — were released in 2004 without charge. – AFP
