http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051125145621.bhul86on.html
Agence France-Presse
November 25, 2005
US ran Guantanamo-style prison in Kosovo: European
rights envoy
PARIS - The US ran a detention centre in Kosovo that
resembled "a smaller version of Guantanamo," the
Council of Europe's human rights commissioner charged
Friday in an interview with France's Le Monde
newspaper.
Alvaro Gil-Robles told the daily that he had inspected
the centre, located within the US military Camp
Bondsteel, in 2002 to investigate reports of
extrajudicial arrests by NATO-led peacekeepers.
The conditions there "shocked" him, he said.
He described the facility as "small wooden huts ringed
by tall barbed wire", each housing "between 15 and 20
prisoners... wearing orange boiler-suits like the ones
worn by Guantanamo inmates".
President George W. Bush's government has been under
fire from human rights organisations and lawyers for
keeping suspects detained in the US "war on terror"
locked up without charges and without access to
lawyers for years in a military base in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba.
Most recently, the United States has also been accused
of maintaining a network of so-called "black sites" -
CIA detention centres in foreign countries, notably in
Asia and in eastern Europe - where suspects are
subjected to vigorous interrogation techniques that
critics say amount to torture.
Gil-Robles said he had no evidence that Camp Bondsteel
was linked to the alleged secret CIA operations.
"But I do believe that an explanation should be given
for this base in Kosovo, as for other potentially
suspect sites" in Europe, he told the paper.
The rights envoy said he had decided to speak out
following reports of the CIA prisons in eastern Europe
and the launch of an investigation into whether they
exist by the Council of Europe, a pan-European body
guaranteeing human rights in its 46 member states.
Camp Bondsteel, a base located south of Pristina and
operated exclusively by the US military, acts as the
main detention centre for KFOR, the NATO-led Kosovo
peacekeeping force deployed in the UN-administered
province in June
According to Le Monde, detainees at Camp Bondsteel had
no access to a lawyer, and did not fall under any
legal jurisdiction.
"Among the detainees there were bearded men. Some were
reading the Koran," Gil-Robles told the paper.
"A female US soldier, on the prison staff, told me
that she had just arrived after having served at the
Guantanamo base," he said.
The envoy said he had asked for the facilities to be
dismantled, and had received assurances the following
year that this had been done.
