Meanwhile, the head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, called on the United States to open its detention centers at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere to human rights investigators if it wants to dispute allegations of abuse. Khan was responding to the Bush administration’s dismissal of the group’s allegation that the US was running a gulag and she defended the use of that word, gulag, in particular. Here is Irene Khan, speaking yesterday: “What we wanted to do is to send a strong message that Guantanamo, Bagram and this sort of network of prison, detention centres that have been created as part of this war on terror is actually undermining human rights in a dramatic way, can only evoke some of the worst features of human rights scandals of the past.” That was Irene Khan, the head of Amnesty International.