'Cruel, Inhuman, Degrading': First UN Investigator On US Detention Centre At Guantanamo Bay

Ní Aoláin noted “significant improvement” made to the confinement of detainees but expressed “serious concerns” about the continued detention of 30 men

The first independent investigator from the United Nations to visit the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay on Monday said that the 30 men held there are subject to “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.” The 2001 New York attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people  were “crimes against humanity”, said the investigator, Irish law professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, adding that US use of torture violated international human rights law, stated a report by the Assosciated Press. 

In many cases, the victims and survivors were deprived of justice because information obtained by torture cannot be used at trials, Ní Aoláin, said at a news conference launching her 23-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. 

The UN investigator said her visit marked the first time a US administration has allowed a U.N. investigator to visit the facility, which opened in 2002.

Ní Aoláin praised the Biden administration for leading by example by opening up Guantanamo and “being prepared to address the hardest human rights issues,” and urged other countries that have barred U.N. access to detention facilities to follow suit. 

She said she was given access to everything she asked for including holding meetings at the facility in Cuba with “high value” and “non-high value” detainees.

Ní Aoláin noted “significant improvement” made to the confinement of detainees but expressed “serious concerns” about the continued detention of 30 men, who she said face severe insecurity, suffering and anxiety. 

The examples she cited included 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 it’s ongoing,” the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism said. “Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention. ”

In a submission to the Human Rights Council, the United States said that the special investigator’s findings “are solely her own” and “the United States disagrees in significant respects with many factual and legal assertions” in her report.