Five people on an investigative panel say U.S. practices amount to torture.

Five people on an investigative panel say U.S. practices amount to torture.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday the United States should close the prison at Guantanamo Bay for terror suspects as soon as possible, backing a key conclusion of a U.N.-appointed independent panel.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected the call to shut the camp, saying the military treats all detainees humanely and "these are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about."
The panel's report, released Thursday in Geneva, said the United States must close the detention facility "without further delay" because it is effectively a torture camp where prisoners have no access to justice.
Annan told reporters he didn't necessarily agree with everything in the report, but "the basic premise, that we need to be careful to have a balance between effective action against terrorism and individual liberties and civil rights, I think is valid."
He said he supported the panel's opposition to people being held "in perpetuity" without being prosecuted in a public court. This is "something that is common under every legal system," he said.
Accused of torture
The 54-page report, summarizing an investigation by five U.N. experts, accused the United States of practices that "amount to torture" and demanded detainees be allowed a fair trial or be freed. The panel, which had sought access to Guantanamo Bay since 2002, refused a U.S. offer for three experts to visit the camp in November after being told they could not interview detainees.
Annan said the report by a U.N.-appointed independent panel was not a U.N. report but one by individual experts. "So we should see it in that light," he said.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the report will be presented to the U.N. Commission of Human Rights, which appointed the panel, when it convenes March 13 in Geneva.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator for torture who was one of the panel's experts, told The Associated Press in Geneva that the detainees at Guantanamo "should be released or brought before an independent court."
"That should not be done in Guantanamo Bay, but before ordinary U.S. courts, or courts in their countries of origin or perhaps an international tribunal," he said.
Secret detention center
The United States should allow "a full and independent investigation" at Guantanamo and also give the United Nations access to other detention centers, including secret ones, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, Nowak said by telephone from his office in Vienna, Austria.
The United States is holding about 490 men at the military detention center. They are accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or to Al-Qaida, but only a handful have been charged.
The U.N. investigators said photographic evidence -- corroborated by testimony of former prisoners -- showed detainees shackled, chained and hooded. Prisoners were beaten, stripped and shaved if they resisted, they said.
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