Clinton Joins Calls to Close Guantanamo

Clinton Joins Calls to Close Guantanamo

"If we get a reputation for abusing people it puts our own soldiers much more at risk," said Clinton. (Reuters)

CAIRO, June 20, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Former US president Bill Clinton has joined a growing chorus of Democrat and Republican Senators pressing for the closure of the notorious Guantanamo detention camp.

"Well, it either needs to be closed down or cleaned up," Clinton told The Financial Times in an interview published Sunday, June 19, when asked whether Guantanamo should be closed.

"It is time that there are no more stories coming out of there about people being abused," he told the British business daily, becoming the most prominent US figure to join the debate over the infamous detention facility.

According to the daily, Clinton said the test for judging whether harsh treatment of alleged terrorist suspects was justified was whether it challenged the "fundamental nature" of American society.

"If the answer is Yes, you have already given the terrorists a profound victory."

The administration of US President George W. Bush has come under fire over reports of abuse at Guantanamo, where it holds more than 500 detainees from about 40 countries, most of them captured in Afghanistan.

Amnesty International earlier this week condemned the administration’s decision to expand the detention camp.

It stressed that Guantanamo has become " a symbol of abuse and represents a system of detention that is betraying the best US values and undermines international standards."

"Practical Reasoning"

Clinton said uniformed US military personnel have been "very outspoken" about abuses at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Aside from moral issues, there were two practical objections to the US military abusing prisoners, added the Democratic ex-president.

"If we get a reputation for abusing people it puts our own soldiers much more at risk and second, if you rough up somebody bad enough, they'll eventually tell you whatever you want to hear to get you to stop doing it."

Clinton was careful to avoid criticizing the administration on the issue of indefinite detention of suspects.

In three or four cases, his own administration had resorted to a US law that allows alleged suspected terrorists to be held beyond the normal length of time without trial, if bringing an indictment or trial would compromise intelligence sources, said The Financial Times.

"It sounds so reasonable but you're the guy that is in prison and you are not guilty, you could be held there three, four, five years and there has to be some limit to that," he told the daily.

Clinton's anti-Guantanamo attack crowned weeks of hot debates – both in Washington and abroad -- over the future of a facility branded "gulag of our time" by Amnesty.

Earlier this month, Democrat Senator Dick Durbin compared interrogation practices at Guantanamo with methods used by the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in Cambodia.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings," he has said.

The US military detailed on Friday, June 3, five cases in which Guantanamo jailers had desecrated copies of the Noble Qur’an, including one incident which occurred as recently as March.