From Catholic News Service

Vatican official expresses concern about Guantanamo

By Carol Glatz - Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After visiting Cuba, a top Vatican official said he is concerned with the lack of human rights protections for prisoners in the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said that "at Guantanamo human dignity is not all that respected."

Though the cardinal was in Cuba Feb. 15-18, he did not visit the detention center located on a U.S. naval base at the southeastern end of the Caribbean island.

However, he told the Italian news agency ANSA March 6 that his council is concerned with the plight and conditions of all the world's prisoners.

"Even those who have committed crimes are still human persons" whose dignity must be respected, he said.

Concerning the situation at Guantanamo Bay, the cardinal said, "It seems clear that in that prison human dignity is not all that respected. ... Is not the lack of rights perhaps trampling on the dignity of man?"

He said all people have a right to a just and fair trial. Wherever in the world there are prisoners who lack such rights, including not knowing who their accusers are, he said, "We do not hesitate to defend them."

Several hundred people have been held in the detention center for more than three years. Most of the detainees were captured in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

Some human rights organizations have demanded entry to the detention center to check out accusations of cruel treatment of the detainees.

The Bush administration considers the Guantanamo detainees "unlawful enemy combatants" and therefore not covered by the Geneva Conventions' provisions for treatment of prisoners of war. It denies the detainees are being treated inhumanely.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Martino also criticized the treatment of prisoners in some Italian jails. He said human rights abuses against prisoners also included inhumane prison conditions, such as prison overcrowding.

He said he knew of cases where six people were being housed in a cell made for two people.

The Italian cardinal said he visited many penitentiaries and saw "terrible things."

"For example, people who live crammed in cells with no possibility to move around ... like lots of chickens in a chicken coop" and people who "have to stay crouched on their beds 24 hours a day because there is no room to move. This, too, is denying human dignity," he said.

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