CUBA: A four-member team from the International Committee of the Red Cross was due to visit the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba last night, to inspect conditions under which 80 Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners are being held, the Pentagon said.
The visit comes amid growing international concern about the prisoners' murky legal status and their treatment. The team, including a doctor and a linguist, was expected to stay at least a day, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Ms Victoria Clarke, said. An ICRC spokesman in Washington said the team would stay for several days and would expect to meet individually with detainees.
The prisoners "are getting very, very humane treatment, and I am confident that's what the ICRC will find," Ms Clarke said.
Last week the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, asserted the men were not prisoners of war but "unlawful combatants" with no rights under the Geneva Convention.
So far 80 prisoners have been transferred to Guantanamo from Afghanistan, pending a US decision on how and when to bring them to trial. Another 343 were being detained by the US military in Afghanistan, Ms Clarke said.
She said the Pentagon's general counsel, Mr William Haynes, was at Guantanamo on Tuesday with military lawyers to work through the procedures and policies that will be applied to prisoners.
Mr Rumsfeld said on Wednesday that prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo had not begun yet, but he has made clear that the US priority is to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda and prevent future terrorist attacks. The US has yet to identify the detainees in its custody.
In Geneva, the ICRC spokesman, Mr Darcy Christen,said it was told it will be given individual access to all the prisoners. He said six to 10 of the detainees were British or French nationals.
"The usual modality of visits of the ICRC is that we ask to have private interviews with prisoners so that they are free to talk, that we ask to see every prisoner, that we ask to have access to all the premises of the detention place, that we register the prisoners," he said
Ms Nathalie Watteville, an ICRC spokeswoman in Washington, said: "Everything we see, everything we hear over there, everything about the treatment and the conditions of detention is dealt with on a confidential bilateral basis with the detainee authorities."
The ICRC, which visits 220,000 prisoners a year, has already visited 4,800 prisoners in Afghanistan, including those held by the Northern Alliance and by coalition forces, she said.
In Britain, the UK government has made clear it wanted independent confirmation that the three prisoners claiming to hold British citizenship at Guantanamo were being treated properly.
But despite assurances from Mr Rumsfeld that the prisoners' treatment was "reasonably consistent" with the Geneva Convention, the British government insisted it wanted independent corroboration.
The Leader of the Commons, Mr Robin Cook, told reporters: "I am not sure you would take Mr Rumsfeld's views as independent corroboration. He is a man of robust views." At the Foreign Office senior diplomats also said they would not be satisfied until the prisoners had been seen by the Red Cross and British officials.
Human rights groups and experts also have weighed in with criticism and questions about the treatment of the prisoners and their legal status, with the US death penalty and the prospect of military trials prominent among their concerns.
Ms Clarke said some prisoners in Guantanamo had threatened to kill Americans, "which again just underscores just how dangerous these people are, and why every security precaution has to be taken," she said.
The prisoners are being held at a temporary outdoor facility called "Camp X-Ray" where each has a separate cell with a concrete floor, wooden roof and chain-link walls. - (AFP)