British tabloids blasted the story around the world: The Americans
had removed Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to a secret torture camp
in Cuba! Photographs showed prisoners gagged and shackled, and
crammed into cells exposed to the elements. Amnesty International
demanded immediate access to the scene of these abuses. Mary
Robinson, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, chimed in, along with
other prominent human rights advocates and a supporting chorus of
left-wing politicians in Europe. Unwilling to be left behind, the
Inter-national Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), self-declared
"guardian" of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of war
prisoners, weighed in with its own expressions of outrage.
The furor died down in less than a week as the facts became known.
The prisoners, some of whom had been involved in a violent prison
revolt in Afghanistan, had been restrained in transit but not within
their prison cells in Guantanamo. Officials from the ICRC who visited
the site soon confirmed that prisoners were receiving adequate food
and medical attention, and that their makeshift prison offered no
less protection from the elements than the hastily constructed
facilities set up for their American guards.
