UNITED NATIONS: The first United Nations (UN) independent investigator to visit the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay said on Monday that the thirty men imprisoned there are subject to cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment under international law.
The investigator, Irish law professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, said at a press conference launching her twenty-three-page report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that the 2001 attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington that killed about 3,000 people were crimes against humanity. But she said the use of severe torture and rendition by the US against alleged attackers and their after the attacks seriously violated international human rights law.
She said her visit marked the first time the US administration has permitted a UN investigator to go into the detention center, which established in 2002, AP reported.
UN investigator lauds Biden administration
Ní Aoláin lauded the Biden administration for setting example by opening up Guantanamo and “being prepared to address the serious human rights issues,” and emphasized on other countries that have restricted UN access to prisons to follow suit
Ní Aoláin said she was provided access to everything she asked for, including conducting meetings at the prison in Cuba with “high value” and “non-high value” prisoners.
The US said in a submission to the HRC on the report’s findings that the findings of special investigator are completely her own and the US disagrees in significant respects with many legal and factual assertions in her report.
Ní Aoláin said considerable improvements have been made to the confinement of prisoners, but expressed her concerns about the continued detention of thirty men, who she said face extreme insecurity, anxiety, and suffering. She cited examples including forced removal from their cells, near constant surveillance, and unjust use of restraints.
Ní Aoláin that she observed that after two decades of imprisonment, the suffering of those incarcerated is profound, and it is ongoing. Every single detainee she met with lives with the extraordinory harms that follow from systematic practices of torture, rendition, and arbitrary detention.
