Explained: What US does to Guantanamo Bay detainees? First-ever UN report reveals

Washington DC

In the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the US military helicopters dropped flyers in remote villages of northern Afghanistan, appealing to ordinary Afghans to turn in a member of Al Qaeda or Taliban. They promised ordinary Afghans "enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life". Typically, a person would get five to seven thousand dollars to purportedly turn in one such member, far more than most people in the country made in an entire year.

"The result was an explosion of human trafficking", wrote Mark Fallon, the deputy commander of Guantanamo's Criminal Investigation Task Force, in his memoir 'Unjustifiable Means'. 

"What better way to enrich yourself, while resolving old grudges, than to finger a neighbor who was your enemy, regardless of his support for either Al Qaeda or the Taliban?," Michael Lehnert, a Marine Corps major general who briefly served as the detention camp’s first commander, said in his testimony to the US Congress.

"The Northern Alliance [Taliban's opponent] would jam so many detainees into Conex shipping containers that they started to die of suffocation. Not wanting to lose their bounties, the captors sprayed the tops of the boxes with machine guns to open ventilation holes. A lot of these prisoners were actually looking forward to being handed over to the Americans, figuring it would be pretty obvious they weren't Al Qaeda," Fallon was quoted as having told the US Congress by New Yorker.

Twenty years on, 780 detainees later, most detained via such flyers-for-money routes, Guantanamo Bay detention centre still holds 30 detainees — 19 of them without any charges — according to the first-ever UN human rights report on the operations of the detention facility.

Also watch | 20 years since the opening of Guantanamo Bay, the infamous US prison

Of the currently detained 30 prisoners, five are accused of plotting the attacks of September 11, 2001.

This was the first time that a UN special rapporteur was granted access to Cuba's Guantanamo Bay detention facility operated by the United States. 

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and at Queens University in Belfast, was granted access as an independent UN monitor. 

She spent four days at Guantanamo Bay prison and spoke to each of the 34 prisoners detained there. During the course of her visit, four men were repatriated or resettled, the report says, putting the current number of Guantanamo detainees at 30. 

UN arrived "too late": Guantanamo detainees

The report says that in every meeting the UN Special Rapporteur  (SR) held with a detainee or a former detainee, she was told "with great regret" that she had arrived "too late" while referring to the systemic torture, "cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment inflicted over time".

"The US government is under a continued obligation to ensure accountability, make full reparation for the injuries caused, and offer appropriate guarantees of non-repetition for violations committed post-9/ 11," the UN report said.

"The world has and will not forget. Without accountability, there is no moving forward on Guantanamo," it added.

How does the US operate the Guantanamo Bay detention facility?

The UN report says that "arbitrariness pervades the entirety of the Guantanamo detention infrastructure". 

Reflecting on the entire timeline of the operation of the detention facility, the report states that the "detainees were subject to sexual violence, including anal penetration". 

The report noted a desire for certain guard force personnel to "make their mark". Certain guard forces, previously associated with times of abuse, are rotated back to the facility.

Also read | Guantanamo ex-inmates emerge as key players in Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan 

This, the UN report added, exacerbates the state of fear, anxiety, and despair among detainees. 

At present, however, the living conditions in the camps have been brought up to international standards in many regards, including sleeping accommodation, sanitation, food and communal prayer. 

But detainees continue to be vulnerable to "human rights abuses".

The UN found that there were improvements in access to the families through calls and video conferences, but many detainees have avoided calls, "expressing dire fear that identifying their family members may subject them to reprisals from both the US government and their home states".

As far as the right to a fair trial is concerned, the UN report quotes one detainee as saying that while the conditions of confinement may have improved, "the legal conditions are worse than ever".

US response

The US government gave its response to the UN report in a letter from the ambassador to the human rights council, Michele Taylor. 

It said that the US believed that all United Nations member states should be "willing to open themselves to the scrutiny of outside observers".

The US, Taylor added, was confident that the “conditions of confinement at Guantánamo Bay are humane and reflect the United States’ respect for and protection of human rights for all who are within our custody”.

"Detainees live communally and prepare meals together; receive specialised medical and psychiatric care; are given full access to legal counsel; and communicate regularly with family members."

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