Britain Wants US to Explain Guantanamo Prisoner Photos

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement that "prisoners, regardless of their technical status, should be treated humanely and in accordance with customary international law".

"We have always made that clear and the Americans have said they share this view...As for the photographs of detainees published today, I have asked our officials in Guantanamo Bay to establish with the US the circumstances in which these photographs were taken."

Human rights groups have already expressed horror that the prisoners were shackled and blindfolded for the long flight to the camp in Cuba, destined for 6-foot by 8-foot (2-metre by 2.6-metre) enclosures with roofs and floors but only chain-link walls.

Britain said on Friday that a team of its officials had arrived at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay to visit three of the al Qaeda detainees there who say they are Britons.

Blair has been an unflinching ally of the United States since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But at home, friends and opponents are increasingly uneasy at images of manacled prisoners at the compound dubbed "Camp X-Ray".

They warned that the pictures could cost Blair and President George W. Bush the moral high ground in their "war on terror".

(China Daily January 22, 2002)