U.N. rights chief: Guantanamo chapter not yet closed

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. human rights chief said on Wednesday the United States still had much to do to close the chapter of its Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects and should itself accept detainees for resettlement.

High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay also warned against "half-measures" and said the role of lawyers and doctors implicated in torture should be examined.

In January, Pillay welcomed a decision by newly inaugurated U.S. President Barack Obama to close within a year the camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, opened by the former Bush administration after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In a statement on Wednesday marking an international day to support torture victims, she again praised Obama for upholding a U.N. ban on torture but said "there is still much to do before the Guantanamo chapter is truly brought to a close."

"Its remaining inmates must either be tried before a court of law -- like any other suspected criminal -- or set free," Pillay said, adding that those who risked ill-treatment in their own countries must be given new homes elsewhere.

In recent weeks, several countries have agreed to take some Guantanamo inmates. Pillay urged others to follow suit, "including first and foremost the United States itself."

Attorney General Eric Holder said last week the U.S. government had decided the fate of about half the detainees, of whom more than 200 are still being held. Some U.S. lawmakers have voiced concern about bringing them to the United States.

Obama has said some of the prisoners may end up being held without trial, and Holder said in those cases there would likely be some form of periodic review of their status.

But Pillay said "there should be no half-measures, or new creative ways to treat people as criminals when they have not been found guilty of any crime.

"Guantanamo showed that torture and unlawful forms of detention can all too easily creep back in to practice during times of stress, and there is still a long way to go before the moral high ground lost since 9/11 can be fully reclaimed."

One practice carried out on detainees at Guantanamo was "waterboarding," or simulated drowning, which human rights groups call torture. Obama has banned the practice.

Pillay said the U.N. anti-torture convention made clear that those who order or inflict torture "cannot be exonerated, and the roles of certain lawyers, as well as doctors who have attended torture sessions, should also be scrutinized."

Some former U.S. Justice Department lawyers wrote memos saying certain rights considerations should take a back seat to the fight against terrorism.

Pillay conceded that what happened at Guantanamo "pales in comparison" to torture taking place in prisons in some other countries which she described as "some of the darkest corners of our planet." She called on world leaders to send a clear message "that torture will no longer be tolerated."

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)