GENEVA: The International Committee of the Red Cross has appointed a veteran Irish aid worker to head its Washington delegation. As part of the job Mr Geoff Loane will lead the organisation's work on behalf of the 600 people who continue to be detained without charge or trial at Camp Delta in the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr Loane, a 47-year-old former Western Health Board employee from Tipperary, will also be a key interlocutor with the US authorities on other operational matters related to the war on terror, including on-going conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He takes up his duties this weekend and will fly to Guantánamo Bay on Monday to discuss with military authorities the conditions and treatment at the controversial facility.
Mr Loane's appointment comes as the ICRC continues to deal with the fall-out from its own leaked report into conditions at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, amid concerns that interrogation techniques used in Camp Delta were exported to Iraq. The US administration confirmed this week that 24 interrogation techniques had been approved for use at Guantánamo Bay but denied that their use amounted to torture.
The ICRC maintains strict confidentiality around its visits to Guantánamo detainees but has expressed concern about "a worrying deterioration in the psychological health of a large number of them". Many detainees are known to suffer from depression, and several are reported to have attempted suicide. The ICRC continues to express concern about the absence of a clear legal framework for their detention.
Though he has worked for 16 years with the ICRC, Mr Loane's elevation to the Washington post has raised eyebrows in parts of the Geneva ICRC establishment. The appointment of a non-Swiss to such a sensitive position is unprecedented but he is known to have full backing of a senior management team.
The ICRC is a private, Swiss, independent organisation headquartered in Geneva and which, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, has been visiting people detained in connection with armed conflicts since 1915. In 2003, ICRC representatives visited more than 450,000 detainees in 80 countries.
Mr Loane is circumspect about the task ahead, but as someone who has worked as a psychiatric social worker for the Western Health Board, the mental health of the detainees is something he will be particularly keen to see improve.
An ICRC spokesperson said: "It is easy enough to imagine how stressful it would be for any human being to be in detention, but those in Guantánamo are beyond the law. After two years in captivity they still have no idea what the future holds and no recourse to any legal process."
At the beginning and end of each visit to Guantánamo, ICRC representatives discuss their findings with the military authorities in the camp as well as with appropriate authorities in Washington.
The ICRC has repeatedly expressed the view that Guantánamo is not an appropriate place to detain juveniles.
The main battleground between human rights organisations and the US authorities is now likely to be over any US move to put detainees on trial at a facility where plans have been drawn up for the installation of court rooms and execution chambers. The ICRC has refrained from any statement on the issue as it awaits a declaration from the US authorities on the procedures governing the military commissions which will oversee any judicial process.
The importance of the ICRC's role as a guardian and promoter of international humanitarian law was emphasised this week by the inclusion of a clause in the latest UN resolution on Iraq stipulating that all forces in the country must pledge to observe international humanitarian law.
ICRC officials believe they have scored some small victories in Iraq, such as a significant reduction in forced nudity at detention facilities, the ending of hooding by UK coalition forces, and generally improved living conditions for detainees.
The ICRC's head of press relations, Ms Antonella Notari, says the recent disclosures about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq have led to an upsurge in public interest in the Geneva Conventions, and a revalidation of their central tenets on the protection of victims of war.
However, it has also been revealed that the US military - even if it has allowed the ICRC access to Saddam Hussein - has also withheld information from the organisation on the location of other detainees, and also deliberately moved prisoners to avoid them being seen by ICRC delegates.
Mr Loane was first recruited to the ICRC through the Irish Red Cross to work in famine-stricken Ethiopia in 1985. He spent four years in Ethiopia before he was appointed regional relief co-ordinator based in Nairobi, Kenya, just as Somalia was on the point of implosion. He is credited with masterminding the ICRC relief operation in Somalia which saved countless lives during the early 1990s.
He was also a key player in the ICRC response to the Rwandan genocide and subsequently became the first non-Swiss to be appointed as an ICRC head of delegation in 1995, when he took over responsibility for east Africa. He returned to Ireland in 1998 and lectured on humanitarian affairs before rejoining the ICRC in 2000 as head of relief worldwide.