In a strongly worded report, the UN Rights Experts have said that with nearly constant surveillance, gruelling isolation and limited family access, the treatment of the last 30 Guantanamo detainees is "cruel, inhuman and degrading.
This is for the first time, the US has allowed a UN investigator team to visit the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba, which opened in 2002.
The UN Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ni Aolain said that 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.
Introducing the team’s report, she said that Washington was yet to address the most glaring rights violation related to the detainees: their secret seizure and transfer - or rendition – to Guantanamo in the early 2000s, and, for many, enduring extensive torture by US operatives in the first years after the September 11 attacks.
#GuantanamoCamp #USAHumanRightsAbuse #GuantanamoBay ~HT.99~PR.153~
