Nearly constant surveillance, grueling solitary confinement and limited contact with family – the treatment of the last 30 prisoners at Guantánamo is, according to UN human rights experts, “cruel, inhumane and degrading”. This emerges from the report on his first visit to the US detention center, presented on Monday.
UN Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ni Aolain said the mistreatment in prison represented a violation of prisoners’ fundamental rights and freedoms.
The Tagesspiegel app Current news, background information and analysis directly on your smartphone. Plus the digital newspaper. Download here for free.
The prisoners were arrested as suspects after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and have been held at the camp in Cuba for nearly two decades. They suffered multiple abuses and received inadequate medical care, Ni Aolain told reporters. In addition, they did not have enough contact with their families, either through visits or phone calls.
Guantanamo should be closed
“The combination of all these practices and omissions (…) in my investigation amounts to continued cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law,” said the UN Special Rapporteur. She traveled to Guantánamo with a team in February after UN human rights experts fought for two decades to visit the prison.
Washington has yet to deal with the most egregious human rights violations related to the prisoners: their secret capture and transfer to Guantánamo in the early 2000s and the often massive torture by US authorities in the first years after the 9/11 attacks. .
Read too:
Frustration with car registration in Berlin Miles car sharer will register cars in Wiesbaden in the future Collapsed bridge renovated in twelve days What Berlin can learn from Philadelphia “Fickbands” for beautiful women Groupies were also systematically recruited in Bushido
Ni Aolain emphasized that closing the detention center, which is outside the jurisdiction of the US judiciary, remains a priority.
The US government set up the Guantanamo prison camp on a US naval base in Cuba after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. In the meantime, the controversial camp had nearly 800 prisoners. There are currently 30 people in custody there. (AFP)