Irish UN rights chiefs denounce 'detention without trial and torture' at Guantánamo

The 'arbitrary detention without trial accompanied by torture or ill-treatment' was slammed by experts including Prof Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism.

Two Irish UN human rights chiefs have led condemnations of the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, on the 20th anniversary of its first detainees.

Almost 800 Muslim males have been held over that time at the base, located on Cuban soil, since 2002, all but a handful without charge or trial, said Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism, and Professor of Law at Queen’s University, Belfast. 

She and Siobhán Mullally, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking, and a group of other “UN experts” issued an agreed statement strongly criticising US authorities for the continuing use of the facility, established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Their statement condemned the facility as a site of “unparalleled notoriety” and said its continued operation was “a stain” on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law.

Arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment

“Twenty years of practising arbitrary detention without trial, accompanied by torture or ill-treatment is unacceptable for any government, particularly a government which has a stated claim to protecting human rights,” said the independent experts, appointed by the Human Rights Council.

The experts call on the US to shut this facility and “close this ugly chapter of unrelenting human rights violations”.

The statement said that, in 2003, the facility was holding 700 prisoners. “Twenty years later, 39 detainees remain but only nine of them have been charged with or convicted of crimes, 13 have been cleared for transfer,” it said.

It said that between 2002 and 2021 nine detainees had died in custody, two from natural causes and seven reportedly after taking their own lives. “None had been charged or convicted of a crime,” it said: 

Despite forceful, repeated and unequivocal condemnation of the operation of this horrific detention and prison complex with its associated trial processes, the United States continues to detain persons many of whom have never been charged with any crime. 

“Guantánamo Bay is a site of unparalleled notoriety, defined by the systematic use of torture, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment against hundreds of men.” 

'Systematic lack of accountability'

The experts said Guantánamo Bay was also a profound symbol of the systematic lack of accountability for and censorship of the practice of state-sponsored torture and ill treatment and the unacceptable impunity granted to those responsible.

“When a state fails to hold accountable those who have authorized and practised torture and other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment it sends a signal of complacency and acquiescence to the world,” they said.

Last December, while he signed into law a $770bn defence bill, US president Joe Biden criticised legislative restrictions, including those which thwarted efforts to close Guantánamo.