U.S. and British policies like apartheid-era government: Tutu [View All]

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Archbishop Desmond Tutu accused the United States and Britain on Monday of pursuing policies like those of South Africa's apartheid-era government by detaining terrorism suspects without trial.

At an event to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR), the Nobel laureate said the detention of suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a "huge blot on a democracy."

"Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government," Tutu told a news conference in Cape Town.

Tutu is chairman of the Elders, a group of prominent international statesmen that includes former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and his Mozambican-born wife Graca Machel.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071210/wl_nm/safrica_rights_usa_dc