More than any other issue, the United States's detention of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after the 9/11 attacks and treatment of prisoners in Iraq has divided European and American opinion, notwithstanding a mutual abhorrence of terrorism.
Horrifying impressions of how they have been treated were revived this week by detailed evidence released by lawyers acting for three British citizens. It reveals they were repeatedly beaten, shackled, interrogated at gunpoint, sexually humiliated and deprived of sleep. Last year Red Cross officials visiting the camp said it was not quite torture, but as close as you can get to it.
The US government claims the legal right to detain prisoners as unlawful combatants and deny them a lawyer on the grounds that the country is at war. The detainees come from some 40 countries including the US itself. Since they are not on US territory and are not members of established armies, they are considered not to be prisoners of war entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, even though US officials insist these norms are usually adhered to.
British officials have promised to investigate claims that British military personnel were involved in the interrogations and acknowledge that they could be prosecuted under British law. The US Supreme Court has now ruled that Guantánamo Bay detainees must be given access to US courts, while this week military tribunals began hearings on whether the 580 prisoners there are indeed "enemy combatants". This is seen as the Bush administration's response to the Supreme Court judgment and has been dismissed as a sham by US legal activists taking up the prisoners' case. As one of them put it, the core issue at stake is whether any prison is beyond the law.
Opinion in Europe takes it for granted that this cannot be. Hence the shocked reaction to revelations that Iraqi prisoners were tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad this year under the direction of commanding officers who had previously worked in Guantánamo. It is welcome that the issue has now been taken up by US legal activists - belatedly so, to be sure; this is partly explained by the profound psychological difference between US public opinion, which believes the country is at war and that in most European countries where no such assumption is made.
Guantánamo Bay is an unacceptable prison, which violates international legal conventions on the treatment of detainees. It should be closed and its inmates given full rights under the Geneva Conventions.