OSCE: Guantanamo better than Belgian jails

(UPI) -- Is Guantanamo a model prison? Not in the eyes of most observers. The United Nations and the European Parliament have called for the notorious American detention center to be closed immediately and slammed the practice of holding prisoners without trial for over three years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, both close allies of the Bush administration, have also urged Washington to shut the camp -- as have civil liberties groups the world over.

However, a preliminary report by a team of observers from Europe's biggest security organization paints a rosier picture of conditions at the controversial camp, which is situated on the island of Cuba.

"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Alain Grignard, the deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit. Grignard, who is also a professor of Islam at the University of Liege, served as an expert to a group of lawmakers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on a visit to Guantanamo Bay last week.

While admitting that conditions were not "idyllic," and that detaining prisoners for years without trial was a form of "psychological torture," Grignard -- who has inspected the camp five times -- told reporters in Brussels: "I have never witnessed acts of violence or things which shocked me in Guantanamo ... one should not confuse this center with Abu Ghraib."

European politicians and human rights groups have repeatedly rapped the U.S. military for its treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. But this torrent of criticism was undermined last month by a report on French prisons by the Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights organization. The author of the report, human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil Robles, said France had the shabbiest prisons of any country he had visited, with the exception of Moldova. One prison in central Paris was described as "catastrophic and unworthy of France," while another in Marseille was classified as "on the borderline of human dignity." Observing a dramatic rise in complaints about mistreatment of prisoners, Gil Robles said that French police operated with a "sense of impunity."

Members of the Belgian delegation noted that "tough" tactics had been used in the first years of of the Guantanamo's detention center's existence, but that guards had since adopted a "more European" approach in recent years. Noting that the mainly Muslim prisoners were given halal food and prayer mats, Grignard said: "I know no Belgian prison where each inmate receives its Muslim kit."

Belgium currently holds the rotating presidency of the OSCE, the 55-member security organization that also includes the United States.

The head of the delegation, Belgian Senate President Anne-Marie Lizin, also sketched a picture of Guantanamo that runs counter to widespread media reports of torture, prisoner abuse and denial of religious freedom at the U.S. naval base.

Lizin, who has visited prisons in Algeria, Bolivia and Yemen, said the prisoner cells in Guantanamo were "bigger than in Belgium." The senate leader said it was "unrealistic" to expect the Bush administration to shut the camp immediately, but repeated her call for its phased closure.

This is effectively what is happening anyway. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, 750 suspects have been detained at the U.S. Navy base. There are now less than 500, and 300-350 of these are expected to be transferred to their countries of origin in the short term, said the OSCE experts.

Amnesty International was furious with the observations by the OSCE team, which it said risked tarnishing the reputation of the Vienna-based body. The Belgian section of the civil liberties grouping said Lizin's preliminary report was "blinkered," accusing the senate leader of wearing the same black eye masks as prisoners during their transfer to the naval base from Afghanistan.

Lizin, who had previously been refused access to the camp, was granted official access on the condition she did not interview detainees. United Nations inspectors refused to visit the detention center because of the restrictions.

The OSCE is due to present its findings in July. "If this report does not denounce the complete absence of transparency regarding detention conditions, interrogation methods and the absence of detainee rights -- in short, the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law Guantanamo represents -- then it will be the whole of the OSCE that is discredited," said Amnesty in a statement.