- "You do not defeat terrorism by adopting methods
of terrorists," said Waite speaking alongside the families of British
and French prisoners at the launch of a campaign for Guantanamo prisoners
to be treated in accordance with international law.
-
- LONDON - Former hostage Terry
Waite, who was held in captivity by Islamic extremists for almost five
years in Lebanon, said the United States was using terrorist methods in
its treatment of detainees at a prison camp in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
"You do not defeat terrorism by adopting methods of terrorists,"
said Waite speaking alongside the families of British and French prisoners
at the launch of a campaign for Guantanamo prisoners to be treated in accordance
with international law.
-
- "I know what it's like to have no rights,"
Waite told a press conference the day before he and other representatives
of the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission take their campaign to New York
and then Washington.
-
- "My family know what it is like to have no
information about me, even whether I am alive or dead," Waite said
Friday.
-
- "There are many families around the world who
are in this same position now because of Guantanamo Bay," he said.
-
- Five British detainees who are set to be freed by
US authorities from Guantanamo Bay will be back in Britain next week, Maxine
Fiddler, the sister of one of those to be released and also a member of
the commission, said earlier Friday.
-
- "All that we know is that the Britons are being
brought home sometime next week," she told BBC radio, adding she had
not been given a specific date for her brother's return.
-
- The five are among nine Britons, and a total of
more than 650 prisoners, at the isolated US naval base where US President
George W. Bush's administration has been holding non-American suspects
in its "war on terror".
-
- Guantanamo "detainees have been hooded, shackled
and, I understand, kept in cages which in itself amounts to mental torture,"
Waite said. "There are reports that they have been subjected to very
severe hardship in order to extract information.
-
- "I was blindfolded, shackled, kept in solitary
confinement and interrogated," he said.
-
- This "should not be happening in a civilized
nation", Waite said. "I have no truck with terrorism and what
happened in the United States on September 11 was a terrible tragedy.
-
- "But I firmly believe that if you are going
to deal with this problem you should follow due process," he said.
-
- "Some of these people may be guilty and some
of them may be innocent," he added. "None of us will know unless
they follow due process."
-
- The delegation, which includes actors and leading
human rights activists Corin and Vanessa Redgrave, novelist Margaret Drabble
and family members of European detainees, will submit letters to Bush at
the White House on Monday.
-
- It will also lobby US legislators and appeal to
the public about the prisoners' plight, dividing their time between New
York and Washington before flying home on Thursday next week.
-
- The team is also planning to meet Democratic Party
presidential hopeful John Kerry, who has criticized the US-led invasion
of Iraq.
-
- "Our message is very simple," Corin Redgrave
told journalists: "America has given the world a model of democracy
which is founded on the rule of law, on fundamental human rights, including
the right to fair trial, the right to silence." "Guantanamo offers
an alternative model to the world, a model where no rights are sustained."
-
- Waite, 64, was held from January 1987 until November
1991 -- much of the time in solitary confinement -- by a shadowy group
calling itself Islamic Jihad.
-
- He was kidnapped while trying to negotiate the release
of Western hostages in his capacity as a special envoy for the Archbishop
of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican church.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Agence France Presse
|