John McCarthy slams Guantanamo

Guantanamo detention is inhumane, says former hostage

The former Beirut hostage John McCarthy has denounced America's treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay as "inhumane and uncivilised".

McCarthy compared the plight of the detainees with his five years in captivity in the 1980s in Lebanon.

Speaking to the BBC, he said it was amazing that the US authorities had been allowed to get away with their activities in Camp Delta in Cuba.

It was announced last week that five UK inmates would be returned home.

The remaining four detainees with British citizenship at Guantanamo Bay will stay to stand trial before a military commission for alleged links to al Qaeda and the former Taleban regime in Afghanistan.

Hostage

Mr McCarthy, who was kidnapped by Islamic militants in Beirut in 1986, told the BBC Radio Four Today programme:

I can have some understanding of what it is like to be forced to wear a hood or blindfold and to be chained up John McCarthy

"It seems to me that in this apparent war on terror, which is apparently to sustain and maintain and protect civilisation, we are treating these people in such an inhumane and uncivilised way."

Their case was even more extraordinary than his own, he thought.

" Whilst Brian Keenan, myself, Terry Waite and others were picked up in the streets of Beirut and then held there, these people were arrested and detained in Afghanistan and then shipped somewhere else," said Mr McCarthy.

"They may not even know where they are on the planet, which would add to the terror I would imagine they experienced, I mean the trauma.

"I can have some understanding of what it is like to be forced to wear a hood or blindfold and to be chained up as these prisoners appear to be."

A film has been made about John McCarthy's imprisonment together with Belfast-born Brian Keenan with whom he shared most of his incarceration.

The film - Blind Fight - is receiving its UK charity premiere in London today (Monday).