By Gideon Long
The U.S. government's leading lawyer defended the Guantanamo Bay prison camp on Tuesday, saying detainees there were granted state-of-the-art health care, good food and "unprecedented legal protection."
Responding to complaints by the United Nations, human rights groups, religious leaders and some national governments, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the camp was entirely lawful and essential to the protection of the United States.
"We operate Guantanamo because there's a necessity, a need, for the United States to detain enemy combatants somewhere," he said in a speech in London. "That was the genesis of Guantanamo. This need continues today."
Gonzales said all detainees at the camp in eastern Cuba were granted an assessment by U.S. authorities, a right of reply and a separate, formal hearing of their case before a three-member tribunal with a right to appeal.
"We are aware of no other nation in history that has afforded such protection for enemy combatants," he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Included among the 500 detainees at the camp are terrorist trainers, bomb makers, former bodyguards of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and potential suicide bombers, he said.
"Detainees are permitted access to state-of-the-art medical care, healthy meals consistent with their cultural and religious requirements and an opportunity to observe religious beliefs."
Organizations across the world, from the United Nations to the Vatican, have decried U.S. use of indefinite detentions without charge at Guantanamo. In four years, only 10 detainees from the camp have been formally charged with a crime.
Former detainees have also accused U.S. authorities of using torture at Guantanamo, a charge denied by the Pentagon.
"Some say that in pursuing the war on terror, America has failed to respect human rights and the rule of law," Gonzales said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
He said around 265 detainees had been either freed or transferred from Guantanamo since it opened in the wake of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
Of those, 15 had since been recaptured or killed.
