UN report sheds light on US' 'cruel' action

UNITED NATIONS — A UN expert on Monday said the inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are subject to "ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law" and called on the US government to apologize for the inhuman treatment at the facility.

The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, said at a news conference releasing her 23-page report to the UN Human Rights Council that the 2001 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that killed nearly 3,000 people were "crimes against humanity".

But she said the US use of torture and rendition against alleged perpetrators and their associates in the years right after the attacks violated international human rights law — and in many cases deprived the victims and survivors of justice because information obtained by torture cannot be used at trials.

Ni Aolain said that 30 men still being held at the facility, which was established by former US President George W. Bush's administration in 2002 following the Sept 11,2001 attacks, are subject to "ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment".

Ni Aolain's trip to Guantanamo Bay was the first official visit to the site by a UN expert.

Although "significant improvements" have been made to the confinement of detainees, Ni Aolain expressed "serious concerns" over the continued detention of 30 men, who, she said, face severe insecurity, suffering and anxiety. She cited examples, including near-constant surveillance, forced removal from their cells and unjust use of restraints. "I observed that after two decades of custody, the suffering of those detained is profound and is ongoing.

"Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture, and arbitrary detention … And their past experiences of torture live with them in the present without any obvious end in sight, including because they have not received any adequate torture rehabilitation to date," said Ni Aolain.

Psychological harm

She said that despite the evident nature of the physical and psychological harms, the Guantanamo Bay detention infrastructure entails near-constant surveillance, forced cell extractions, undue use of restraints, and other arbitrary and human rights-noncompliant implementation of the standard operating procedures.

"The totality of all of these practices and omissions … have accumulative, compounding effects on the dignity and fundamental rights and freedoms of each detainee and amounts in my assessment to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law," she said.

The US government must ensure accountability for all violations of international law, both for victims of its counterterrorism practices, present and former detainees, and victims of terrorism, said Ni Aolain.

"I underscore the importance of apology, full remedy, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition to all victims. And these guarantees will be no less pressing in the years ahead."

Ni Aolain, concurrently a professor at the University of Minnesota and at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, said there was "a heartfelt response" by many detainees on seeing someone who was neither a lawyer nor associated with the detention center, some for the first time in 20 years. During the visit, she said, she and her team scrutinized every aspect of Guantanamo.

Many also suffer from the deprivation of support from their families and community "while living in a detention environment without trial for some, and without charge for others, for 21 years, hunger striking and force-feeding, self-harm and suicidal ideation (ideas), and accelerated aging", she said.

As for the 741 men who have been released from Guantanamo, she said, many were left on their own, lacking a legal identity, education and job training, adequate physical and mental healthcare, and continue to experience "sustained human rights violations", poverty, social exclusion and stigma.

In a letter to Ni Aolain on the report, Michele Taylor, the US envoy to UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, said the US does not accept all of her assessments. "We are committed to providing safe and humane treatment for detainees," Taylor wrote.

Agencies - Xinhua