Gitmo Not So Bad Says Belgian

"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Alain Grignard during an inspection tour the first week of March of Guantanamo, where less than 500 prisoners from the US war on terror are held. Grignard is the deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit and a professor of Islam at the University of Liege who served as an expert to lawmakers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on their visit to Guantanamo Bay.

Grignard noted that the Muslim prisoners were given halal food and prayer mats, saying, "I know no Belgian prison where each inmate receives its Muslim kit."

While Europeans castigate the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo, the Council of Europe, a European human rights organization, reports that European prisons are much worse. France has the worst prisons of any country in the world, save Moldava, where the French police act with a "sense of impunity."