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Comparing Guantanamo To Auschwitz Offends Dutch

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The Associated Press

Published: October 28, 2007

WASHINGTON - Dutch lawmakers who recently visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat.

The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that 'Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.'

Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peters, a member of the Dutch Green Party, said she took notes of the remarks.

A Lantos aide said the lawmaker realizes the Guantanamo facility does harm to the reputation of the United States and has praised judges who ruled in favor of extending legal rights to prisoners.

'It was a diplomatically strange situation,' Peters said. 'The mere suggestion that the United States could be compared with Nazi Germany is so flawed.'

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