[prisoner-rights] Guantanamo: Three years of lawlessness

Detainees Still Held Indefinitely Without Basic Rights

(Washington D.C., January 11, 2005) ­ Three years after it was created,
the U.S.  prison camp at Guantanamo remains an enclave outside the law,
Human Rights Watch said today.

As the Pentagon prepares to build a permanent prison at its Guantanamo
naval base, the U.S. government continues to detain people indefinitely
without charge or trial or without applying the Geneva Conventions. The
Bush administration still rejects any serious inquiry into the mounting
evidence that U.S. officials have tortured or mistreated prisoners at
Guantanamo.

“Guantanamo has become the Bermuda Triangle of human rights. Basic rights
vanish there,” said Wendy Patten, U.S. Advocacy Director at Human Rights
Watch. “By flouting international law in its treatment of detainees, the
Bush administration has drawn worldwide criticism and undermined support
for U.S. counterterrorism efforts.”

The United States currently holds some 550 people as “enemy combatants” at
Guantanamo. Although gathering intelligence has been a central U.S.
justification for the detentions, some U.S. officials say most of the
detainees are no longer considered of intelligence value. Recently, senior
administration officials have indicated that the Pentagon intends to move
away from regular interrogation of most detainees, and to provide less
restrictive conditions of detention for many of those whom the U.S.
government does not want to release.

Three years on, the U.S. government still ignores the need to provide
legal justification for those who remain in detention. The Pentagon
evidently intends to hold detainees at Guantanamo for years to come
without charge or trial. The Pentagon has constructed a permanent
high-security prison at the base and plans to build another permanent
prison for 200 medium-security detainees.

“The Bush administration is claiming the power to lock people up without
due process, possibly for the rest of their lives,” said Patten.

There is growing evidence that detainees at Guantanamo have suffered
torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Reports by FBI
agents who witnessed detainee abuse have recently emerged, adding to the
statements of former detainees describing the use of painful stress
positions, extended solitary confinement, use of military dogs to threaten
detainees and prolonged exposure to extremes of heat, cold and noise. Some
of this ill-treatment included interrogation methods previously authorized
by the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Although the Pentagon has announced it will investigate the recent
allegations of abuse contained in the FBI documents, another internal
inquiry is unlikely to produce meaningful results. An inquiry by the Navy
inspector general into the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo involved
only two days at the naval base, and did not include any interviews with
detainees. His inquiry found only a handful of minor infractions.

“Another internal investigation is not the answer,” said Patten. “What’s
needed is an independent evaluation of how the detainees have been treated
and of who authorized or condoned the abuse.”

Three years after the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo, the fate of
the military commissions created to try them is also uncertain. Only four
of the some 550 detainees at Guantanamo currently face charges, either for
war crimes or other crimes. After a federal court in November ruled that
the commissions did not meet the requirements of the Geneva Conventions or
basic guarantees for fair trials, the Pentagon suspended proceedings in
all of the cases. Human Rights Watch has consistently criticized the
military commissions as fundamentally flawed, lacking the rules and
structure necessary to ensure fair trials.

“It’s time for the administration to pull the plug on the military
commissions,"  said Patten. "The U.S. government should use courts-martial
and federal courts to prosecute detainees accused of war crimes or other
serious offenses."

Human Rights Watch Press release