The United States yesterday invited three UN human rights investigators, including the one who examines torture allegations, to visit the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in a bid to show "we have nothing to hide."
Human rights activists have criticized the United States for the indefinite detention of the roughly 505 detainees being held at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon said the three would be permitted to observe operations at Guantanamo "and ask questions of the command, staff and US officials who would accompany them."
But Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman on detainee issues, said they would not be allowed to speak to detainees because that was the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Pentagon said the invitations were extended to Austria's Manfred Nowak, special investigator for the United Nations on torture, Pakistan's Asma Jahangir, who focuses on religious freedom, and Algeria's Leila Zerrougui, who looks into arbitrary detention.
"This goes to our desire to show that we have nothing to hide," Ballesteros said.
The three rights experts announced they would respond to the invitation at a news conference on Monday at UN headquarters in New York.
"Although department policy does not provide for such visits to military detention facilities, the department has determined on an exceptional basis to extend this invitation," the Pentagon said in a statement. "The department strives for transparency in our operation to the extent possible in light of security and operational requirements and the need to ensure the safety of our forces."
Criticism by human rights groups has escalated in recent weeks with the US military's disclosure that it was force-feeding Guantanamo detainees staging an ongoing hunger strike over their conditions and lack of legal rights.
The Pentagon has defended its treatment of prisoners and denied that torture has occurred at the Guantanamo facility, which opened in January 2002, just months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Most of the detainees were seized in Afghanistan.
Men who have been released from Guantanamo have stated they were tortured there. The International Committee of the Red Cross last year accused the US military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on Guantanamo prisoners. An FBI agent wrote in a memo that became public last year that Pentagon interrogators used "torture techniques" at Guantanamo.
The United States has classified the detainees as "enemy combatants" and denied them rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Only four detainees have been charged with crimes.