UN experts assail ‘inhuman treatment’ of Guantanamo detainees
- For the first time, the US has allowed a UN investigator to visit the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba, which opened in 2002
- UN Special Rapporteur said last the 30 men held there are subject ‘to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law’
With nearly constant surveillance, gruelling isolation and limited family access, the treatment of the last 30 Guantanamo detainees is “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” UN rights experts said as they reported on their first visit to the US military prison.
UN Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ni Aolain said mistreatment at the prison on an American naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounted to violations of detainees’ fundamental rights and freedoms.
The detainees, held close to two decades after being seized as suspects following the 2001 al-Qaeda attack on the United States, have endured a litany of abuse, including forced cell extractions, poor medical and mental healthcare, said Ni Aolain.
The detainees also have had inadequate access to family either by in-person visits or calls, she said in a press briefing on Monday.
“The totality of all of these practices and omissions … amounts in my assessment to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law,” she said.
Ni Aolain, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, travelled to Guantanamo with a team in February after UN rights experts had sought to visit the prison for two decades.