Best if Guantanamo closed: Blair

[cal04]

IT would be better if the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay was closed, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
Mr Blair's comments came as he was challenged at his regular monthly press conference at 10 Downing Street over fresh claims by British residents that they were handed over to the CIA by the British security service MI5, then taken to Guantanamo for torture.

Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna are among eight foreign nationals who have recently lived in the UK who are still in the detention camp in Cuba after more than three years. Their lawyer said they were arrested in the African state of Gambia in November 2002, then flown to the US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo.

He said they had been beaten, kicked and hit with blunt objects, held in solitary confinement, and kept in freezing conditions to induce hypothermia. Blair today said that some of the claims made by Guantanamo inmates were disputed. He stressed that their incarceration occurred in the context of the US authorities' reaction to the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, in which almost 3000 people died.

"I can't comment on individual cases. I think they are the subject of a court action," he said. "I have said that I think it would be better if it (Guantanamo) was closed for all the reasons that we have given over a long period of time.
"The only thing I always do to balance it out is remind people that it arose out of the circumstances of 9/11. "In fairness to the Americans, they dispute many of these claims that are made. "And there are things, certainly, that I have read about the circumstances of some of the British who were in Guantanamo that are strongly disputed in certain quarters."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18497781%255E1702,00.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. No Tony the bLiar; best is you & georgie & Cabal at the Hague.

War of aggression is "the supreme crime".
-Nuremberg Tribunal.

[Greeby]

2. No

The Hague doesn't hand down the death penalty

[LynnTheDem]

4. Even for george & his Cabal I don't believe in the death penalty.

Besides, life in prison would be far worse punishment to him.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

8. I would sentence them to work in a coal mine for life. n/t

[mom cat]

9. No. Changing diapers on babies born with DU deformities.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

10. Could we compromise on 20 hr workday half diaper half coal mine?n/t

[mom cat]

12. Ok. I could live with that!

:evilgrin:

[0007]

11. Prison for life is good enough for me. I want these cocksuckers

to remember every fucking day they were in power they were hated by not only their people but by the whole world.

[saigon68]

3. Where Else ? could the War Criminals attach wires to men's testicles

Cleveland or Dallas?

[David__77]

5. i.e., "Let's put them in secret prisons instead."

Blair wants a gentler face on an equally-rapacious imperialism.

[lostexpectation]

6. actual headline was unfair

he spouted this line with little enthusiasm and then didn't go into any of the many details that have come out in recent days about the UK's collusion with rendition he did as usual and said very little about it...

[onehandle]

7. Bad Poodle! Down, boy. Smack him on the nose, Karl.

Unconvincing blather from the lame duck PM.