The authors of a UN report on "torture" at Guantanamo did not even visit the prison prison, according to the New York Sun.

Authors of a report commissioned by the U.N. claiming that detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being tortured by American military personnel failed to visit the prison, despite an invitation from the American authorities.

"Any report that they may be writing would certainly suffer from the opportunity that was offered to them to go down there and witness firsthand the operations at Guantanamo," a Department of Defense spokesman, Bryan Whitman, told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday.

The U.N. representatives declined the invitation to visit Guantanamo because they were told that they would not be able to interview detainees during the visit, Mr. Whitman said. The 500 suspected terrorists, who are being kept without trial after being captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere, are regularly interviewed by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which does not report on the treatment of prisoners.

Members of investigation, who will deliver their report later this year to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, have spent 18 months investigating conditions at Guantanamo and have relied for information about the condition of prisoners upon anecdotes provided by released detainees and family members and lawyers of those who are or have been detained from France, Spain, and Britain. Information has also been gleaned from the Department of State.

A typical UN action; I suppose because Guantanamo Bay is not a 4 star resort they saw no reason to rouse themselves from their Park Avenue and Geneva, Switzerland based abodes.

Ed Lasky  2 15 06