{"id":238807,"date":"2023-07-17T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=238807"},"modified":"2023-07-17T10:06:52","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T09:06:52","slug":"gitmos-permanent-chains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/gitmos-permanent-chains\/","title":{"rendered":"Gitmo\u2019s Permanent Chains"},"content":{"rendered":"

A UN <\/em><\/strong>Report Finds Continued Abuses at the US <\/em><\/strong>Prison<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
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An image taken by the military on Jan. 11. 2002, shows the first 20 prisoners at Guant\u00e1namo Bay soon after their arrival.
Credit: Petty Officer 1st Class Shane T. McCoy\/U.S. Navy. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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7 Jul 2023 –<\/em> Now comes yet another little-noted UN report<\/a> on the continuing excesses and inhumanity at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, the post-9\/11 US military prison that only two decades ago set the standard for war crimes\u2014a standard that is now being eclipsed by the war in Ukraine. The report\u2019s author is Fionnuala D. N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in, the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the Queens University in Belfast, and an experienced human rights investigator. She based her report on a four-day visit to the island prison last February. She was given extraordinary access to the thirty-four prisoners who then remained in captivity, most of whom have been found guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place in Afghanistan at the wrong time. Thirty prisoners remain in Guant\u00e1namo today, sixteen of whom have been cleared for release.<\/p>\n

N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in is a brilliant observer. She is the first UN official ever to be allowed to visit the prison. She acknowledges that the basic living conditions of the remaining prisoners have been much improved in the recent years as the population of detainees dwindled, but those improvements, she writes, are offset for those still jailed by the \u201ccumulative effects of past rendition, disappearance, incommunicado detention, systematic torture and ill treatment, and continued detention,\u201d which \u201chave had severe and long-term psychological and physical consequences.\u201d She is especially critical, as were past observers, of what she found to be \u201cserious structural and institutional deficiencies in present care.\u201d She links those concerns with her unique observation that the medical and psychiatric care available \u201cmay trigger for some detainees previous experiences of torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.\u201d She noted that the US government\u2019s \u201cfailure to provide such care exacerbates the impact of the horrific treatment or punishment they previously suffered and prolongs the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her conclusion, N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in writes that every current or prior prisoner she met with speaks bitterly of the public perception that they are \u201cthe worst of the worst,\u201d despite the fact that most of them have never \u201cbeen charged, let alone convicted of a single crime.\u201d She adds: \u201cNone of the former detainees have been compensated by the US Government for the systematic crimes of extraordinary rendition, torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and arbitrary detention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her comprehensive report made little news in America, aside from a\u00a0summary<\/a>\u00a0by reporter Carol Rosenberg of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, who has made Guant\u00e1namo and its excesses her beat, and an Associated Press\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0that ran in the\u00a0Miami Herald<\/em>. I was unable to reach N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in, who is now on a month-long assignment, but last week she gave a brief\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0PBS NewsHour<\/em>. Asked why she believed the US government \u201cshould apologize to the detainees responsible for the deadliest attack in US history,\u201d she answered: \u201cThose who tortured [at Guant\u00e1namo and elsewhere] betrayed the rights of victims, because they ensured you couldn\u2019t have a fair trial. . . . In fact, victims of terrorism are due an apology for torture because it was the very torture that was done, sometimes in their name, that has prevented them from actually ensuring the fulfillment of their rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear. Torture is the most egregious and heinous of crimes. Even in situations of war we don\u2019t accept that people can torture. We say this to Russia. We say it to China. We say it to many, many countries across the globe. . . . You are not allowed to torture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden administration, obviously aware that Americans by and large care little about Guant\u00e1namo and the souls who have been wrongfully imprisoned there, left the response to UN Ambassador Mich\u00e8le Taylor. Her\u00a0reply<\/a>\u00a0to the report essentially said N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in had it all wrong. \u201cWe are committed to providing safe and humane treatment for detainees \u2026 in full accordance with international and US domestic law. Detainees live communally and prepare meals together; receive specialized medical and psychiatric care; are given full access to legal counsel; and communicate regularly with family members.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Biden issued a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0last month declaring his administration\u2019s opposition to \u201call forms of inhumane treatment\u201d and its commitment to \u201celiminating torture and assisting torture survivors as they heal and in their quests for justice.\u201d He cited abuses by the Russian military in Ukraine and inside Russia itself, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and credible reports of \u201ccruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment\u201d by the North Korean government.<\/p>\n

There is an account in N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in\u2019s report that depicts for me the senseless horror of Guant\u00e1namo, past and present, most vividly. Look again at the photo at the top of this article. It foretold the coming inhumanity for the early wave of alleged Al Qaeda terrorists. Many of those prisoners, as we now know, were grabbed in Afghanistan by CIA officers and Special Forces troops out of American anger and fear in the aftermath of 9\/11. Some were bought from local captors for fees ranging up to many thousands of dollars. Evidence of guilt was not a requirement in those early days.<\/p>\n

Here is N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in\u2019s angry account\u2014written in the third person; she is \u201cthe SR\u201d\u2014of how America flew those prisoners cleared for release in recent years to their new home countries:<\/p>\n

The SR is profoundly concerned that men cleared for transfer, against whom no crime has been charged and who are security cleared, continue to be shackled, blindfolded, and have their sensory organs covered up during long airplane transports. The SR was informed that during transfer from the detention facility to the aircraft, the detainee\u2019s hands and legs are restrained to ensure the safety of both US Government personnel and the detainee. Once a detainee is transferred to the custody of the US Air Force Air Mobility Command Detainee Movement Team, the team determines the restraints required for safety purposes. The SR finds such restraints and travel to be traumatic and retraumatizing and engages both inhuman and degrading treatment. She is further concerned that the Detainee Movement Team may be ill-prepared to tailor their treatment of the men in full respect of their human rights. She underscores that the very fact of the detainee\u2019s transfer indicates the security of their release. She finds the current modalities of travel constitute inhuman and degrading treatment under international law and are unjustified given the status of individuals who have been released following long-term arbitrary detention, many for over two decades. Although she was informed that all detainee transfers are accompanied by a medical team and that detainees are free to use the restroom onboard and eat prepared meals absent a security risk, she expresses serious concern, that several former detainees with whom she spoke were not given such liberties during flight, opening the door to further human rights abuse.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in was assured that the freed prisoners would have access to US embassies and consulates in the countries to which they were deported, and that American officials would check on their status in their new communities. In practice, she writes, the freed prisoners were unable to make contact with any American diplomats and she knew of one case in which a former prisoner was held in \u201cincommunicado detention\u201d by his host country for attempting to reach an American diplomat. It was even worse in two other host countries, where the returned prisoners were put under house arrest and in one case even tortured.<\/p>\n

All in all, as the UN\u2019s special rapporteur did not say, it could not be worse for those souls if they were found not guilty of wrongdoing and cast into hell for the rest of their days.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a> Seymour M. Hersh\u2019s investigative journalism and publishing awards include one Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his 2003 articles <\/em>\u201cLunch with the Chairman,\u201d \u201cSelective Intelligence,\u201d and<\/em> \u201cThe Stovepipe.\u201d In 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces; in 2005, he again received a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation\u2019s Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award, and his fifth George Polk Award, making him that award\u2019s most honored laureate. He lives in Washington DC.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2023\u00a0Seymour Hersh<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 scheerpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Jul 2023 – Now comes yet another little-noted UN Report\u00a0on the continuing excesses and inhumanity at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, the post-9\/11 US military prison that only two decades ago set the standard for war crimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":112964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[530,1810,1464,950,86,2571,112,2159,572,124,2200,70,965],"class_list":["post-238807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-cuba","tag-enhanced-interrogation","tag-guantanamo","tag-invasion","tag-occupation","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-pentagon","tag-rogue-states","tag-torture","tag-united-nations","tag-us-empire","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238807"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239534,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238807\/revisions\/239534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}