The White House on Thursday denied charges of abuse at its detention center for terrorism prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and rejected calls in a U.N. human rights report to close the facility. "These are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about that are there," spokesman Scott McClellan said. "The military treats the detainees humanely." McClellan told reporters that the International Committee of the Red Cross had "full access" to the detainees and suggested that the allegations of abuse and torture were propaganda by terrorists trained to make such charges. "We know al Qaida detainees are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations," McClellan said. "Some of this, from the reporting I've seen, appears to be a [repetition] of some of the allegations that have been made by lawyers for some of the detainees." Asked if Washington was rejecting calls to close the prison, McClellan said "nothing's changed" in the U.S. position. The U.N. report called for the United States to shut the prison, citing violations it said amounted to torture. Five U.N. experts concluded that "The United States government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay." The report charged that U.S. treatment of terrorism detainees at Guantanamo violated their rights to physical and mental health and in some cases amounted to torture. It also said that Washington's justification for holding the prisoners there was a distortion of international human rights treaties.
