Guantanamo closure too little too late: ex-inmate

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - The closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison will do little to erase the blot on the U.S. rights record unless other U.S. detention centers are also shut and inmates compensated, Afghan and Pakistani campaigners said on Thursday.

The comments come as President Barack Obama is expected to issue orders later in the day to close the Guantanamo prison and overhaul the treatment of terrorism suspects; a move aimed at swiftly restoring a U.S. image hurt by charges of torture.

"He is closing it in order to put an end to the criticism from human rights groups and also to get rid of the bad image it created for the Americans," said Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan who spent more than three years imprisoned at Guantanamo.

"But he needs to restore justice for prisoners who were persecuted there during investigations," he said. "There were innocent people imprisoned there. He needs to put on trial those who were involved in the persecution of inmates."

"The prison in Guantanamo is a flagrant violation of international and American laws," said Lal Gul Lal, the head of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, an independent non-governmental organization.

"If Obama's administration wants to get rid of the criticism and wants to implement justice then it should hand over to their respective countries all the prisoners it has in various prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere," he said. "If that does not happen the closure of Guantanamo will have no meaning."

Some 600 prisoners are currently detained at Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, Lal said, with more held at bases in Kandahar in the Afghan south and Khost in the east, some of them for long periods without charge.

A draft presidential executive order obtained by Reuters on Wednesday sets a one-year deadline to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, where foreign terrorism suspects have been detained for years without trial.