British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has asked US President George W. Bush to send home the four remaining Britons in Guantanamo Bay, amid mounting calls for the British government to increase its pressure on Washington to end alleged human rights abuses.
Court papers reveal the UK prime minister's direct plea to Bush. They form the British government's formal defense to a legal action brought by lawyers for two of the remaining prisoners seeking a court order compelling Britain to formally demand their return.
The UK's defense states: "The United Kingdom government is continuing to seek the return of the four remaining prisoners and the prime minister has made a direct request to President Bush to that effect."
The four prisoners alleged by the US to be terrorists have been held without trial, charge or access to lawyers for up to two and one-half years. Blair has been condemned for doing too little to secure their release from conditions that have caused worldwide outrage.
On Friday the UK attorney-general Lord Goldsmith said the military tribunals planned by the US at Guantanamo Bay broke international standards. In a speech made after months of talks with US officials, Lord Goldsmith said the right to a fair trial was inviolable.
"We in the UK have been unable to accept that the US military tribunals proposed for those detained at Guantanamo Bay offer sufficient guarantees of a fair trial in accordance with international standards," he said.
Louise Christian, the lawyer who brought the legal action, said the UK government had been very likely to lose.
The court papers say that Washington fears the Britons will pose a danger if released: "The US government has expressed security concerns regarding the return of these prisoners." They also reveal that the US snubbed an earlier UK request for the return.
On March 29 a British government letter to Christian made no mention of Blair's direct intervention with Bush.
After this month's UK election defeats, disquiet grew among rank-and-file members of Blair's Labour Party about Blair's closeness to the White House. The former UK foreign secretary, Robin Cook, said: "It's striking how little we have received in return for all Tony Blair has done for the Bush administration."
The case against the British government is now likely to be adjourned, because the lawyers of the Guantanamo prisoners feel their demands have been met.
Christian said the looming case forced the UK government's hand: "They would have been in quite serious trouble in the court case. We would have had a very good chance of success. They know the level of judicial concern about Guantanamo Bay."
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS