London, England - The leader of the world's Anglicans branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay an "extraordinary legal anomaly" on Sunday and said it set a dangerous precedent for dictators around the world.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans, also described Islamist extremism as "appalling" and terrorism as "an insult to God and man."
"I think what we've got in Guantanamo is an extraordinary legal anomaly ... creating a new category of custody," Williams said in an interview with BBC television in Sudan during a visit there with the United Nations World Food Programme.
"These are people who don't have the sort of legal access we would probably assume to be important," he said, referring to the nearly 500 foreigners held at the naval base in Cuba.
"Any message given that any state can just override some of the basic habeas corpus-type provisions is going to be very welcome to tyrants elsewhere in the world, now and in the future," Williams said.
"What, in 10 years time, are people going to be able to say about a system that tolerates this?"
The Anglican Church has frequently joined human rights groups is condemning the indefinite detentions and lack of legal rights for prisoners at the camp.
Only 10 Guantanamo detainees have been formally charged with a crime and U.N. rights investigators have urged Washington to close the camp.
Former detainees, lawyers representing inmates and U.N. human rights investigators have accused the United States of using torture at Guantanamo, a charge denied by the
Pentagon.
INSULT TO GOD AND MAN
Williams said he had "no time for terrorism" and "no brief for Muslim extremism." "I think it's appalling. I think it's an insult to God and man," he said.
In a wide-ranging interview, Williams also acknowledged the Anglican Communion, a grouping of loosely associated churches across 164 countries, faced the possibility of schism over the issue of homosexual clergy.
"If there is a rupture, it's going to be a more visible rupture (than it would be in other Christian churches)," he said. "(The Anglican Communion) is not just going to settle down quietly into being a federation."
"My anxiety about it is that if the Communion is broken we may be left with even less than a federation."
The church has been in anguish over the question of gay clergy since American Anglicans chose to ordain Gene Robinson as the church's first openly gay bishop and Canadian Anglicans approved same-sex marriages.
The moves sparked howls of protests from traditionalists who said the North American churches were betraying the basic tenets of Christianity.
African church leaders in particular fear that if Anglicanism takes a lenient line on homosexuality, its followers will turn to more conservative Christian churches or Islam.