OSCE distances itself from comments on Guantanamo

VIENNA, Mar 10 (Reuters) A pan-European security organisation distanced itself from comments by a Belgian academic that inmates at the US Guantanamo Bay prison were treated better than prisoners in Belgium.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Alain Grignard, who made the comparison after accompanying an OSCE parliamentary delegation to the prison camp in Cuba where suspected Islamic militants are held without trial, did not work for the 55-nation body nor speak on its behalf.

Grignard sparked controversy by telling a news conference on the group's return from Guantanamo: ''At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons.'' Grignard is deputy head of the Belgian federal police anti-terrorism unit in Brussels, but said he was making his comments in a private capacity as a university professor.

An OSCE spokesman said in a statement yesterday that Grignard ''accompanied the delegation despatched by the Parliamentary Assembly, based in Copenhagen, but he was not employed or commissioned by the OSCE''.

The spokesman declined to comment on Grignard's views, other than to say they were not made on behalf of the OSCE.

Many of the 500 inmates in the prison at the US naval base on the Cuban coast have been held for four years without trial.

The prisoners were mainly detained in Afghanistan and are held as pat of President George W Bush's ''war on terror''.

The United States is a member of the 55-country OSCE.

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