Christians Need to Speak Out on Gitmo and Other US Human Rights Abuses

The report is likely to fuel new Arab anger over the treatment of Iraqi inmates at Baghdad's U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison after Australian TV broadcast more images of abuse there.

"The United States government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay," the human rights' rapporteurs declared.

Until that happened, the U.S. government should "refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," they added.

Harsh conditions, such as placing detainees in solitary confinement, stripping them naked, subjecting them to severe temperatures, and threatening them with dogs could amount to torture, which is banned in all circumstances and in all wars.

"The excessive violence used in many cases during transportation ... and forced-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture," the report said.

In London, U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour told the BBC she saw no alternative to closing the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba where some 500 terrorism suspects are held, many of them for four years, without trial.

Speaking ahead of the release of the report, Arbour said that, although she did not endorse every recommendation it made, the United States should put inmates on trial or release them and shut down the prison.

Abu Ghraib abuse against international law: ICRC

By Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday the latest images of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison showed clear violations of international humanitarian law.

However, the Swiss-based body, whose confidential reports have previously accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on inmates at the Baghdad jail, declined to say whether it would raise the issue again with Washington. An Australian television station broadcast what it said were previously unpublished images of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the facility, fuelling Arab anger against the United States.

"We are shocked and dismayed at the mistreatment and abuse displayed in these images," ICRC spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas told Reuters in Geneva.

"The type of treatment in these images -- video or photos -- very clearly violates the rules of international humanitarian law which are designed to protect people detained in the context of armed conflict," she added.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions protecting people captured in conflict -- which the ICRC seeks to uphold -- "forbid torture as well as any cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under any circumstance," according to the spokeswoman.

The current affairs program "Dateline," on Australia's Special Broadcasting Service, said the images were recorded at the same time as the pictures of U.S. soldiers abusing Abu Ghraib detainees which caused international outrage in 2004.

AS people of faith, we need to stand up for human rights and dignity. We need to speak truth to power, and doing so is the only way is to follow Christ's path of loving both our neighbors and our enemies.