US Must Treat Guantánamo Torture Victims, Says United Nations Expert

The first United Nations investigator to be allowed inside the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba has implored the U.S. government to provide specialized rehabilitation treatment to the Muslim men and boys it tortured in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Enabling independent medical personnel to care for Guantánamo torture victims is essential given the ongoing nature of their physical and psychological injuries and is required for the U.S. to meet its obligations under international law, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, told The Guardian in an interview published Friday.

Ní Aoláin emphasized that existing medical treatment—both at the penal colony, where 30 men are still being detained indefinitely, and for former Gitmo prisoners released to other countries—is insufficient to address traumatic brain injuries, permanent disabilities, sleep disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other health issues.

"These men are all survivors of torture, a unique crime under international law, and in urgent need of care," she said. "Torture breaks a person, it is intended to render them helpless and powerless so that they cease to function psychologically, and in my conversations both with current and former detainees I observed the harms it caused."

In February, Ní Aoláin was given unprecedented access to the Guantánamo detention facility. In the report of her four-day visit, published last month, she underscored the "urgent need for comprehensive, evidence-based, trauma-focused torture rehabilitation, recognizing the detainees' complex psychological, psychosocial, cognitive, and behavioral needs." She added that "the U.S. government's failure to provide such care exacerbates the impacts of the horrific treatment or punishment they previously suffered and prolongs the consequences."

On Friday, she told The Guardian that "without exception, each individual I met exhibits medical conditions relating to the physical harm they experienced from rendition and torture, or profound psychological distress such as anxiety, depression, extreme trauma, and suicidal ideation."

"The dividing line between past and present is very narrow for these men. In some, it is non-existent: they inhabit bodies that are profoundly harmed by acts of torture."

As the newspaper reported: "The most extreme abuses occurred up to 20 years ago during the CIA's post-9/11 torture program of Muslim terror suspects. At least 119 men had torture methods inflicted on them, euphemistically known as 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'"

Despite the passage of time, Ní Aoláin stressed, the physical and mental consequences of the U.S. military's inhumane actions persist.

"The dividing line between past and present is very narrow for these men," the U.N. special rapporteur explained. "In some, it is non-existent: they inhabit bodies that are profoundly harmed by acts of torture."

Ní Aoláin, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and at Queens University in Belfast, observed that "the U.S. has some of the best torture treatment facilities and capability in the world, it exports it to others."

"But regrettably that hasn't been used for the men currently detained at Guantánamo," she lamented. "Not a single man who has been released from the detention facility has had adequate rehabilitation."

As The Guardian noted: "A key demand made by the U.N. rapporteur is that the detainees should be treated by independent medical personnel. Currently, they are seen by military doctors who wear uniform—that alone is triggering."

Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni citizen who was incarcerated without charges at Guantánamo for 14 years, endorsed Ní Aoláin's call for the U.S. government to act.

Adayfi claims that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, was present on at least one occasion when he and other prisoners were force-fed cans of Ensure in 2006 to break a hunger strike. The U.N. has classified force-feeding as a form of torture.

As Adayfi pointed out in April, "DeSantis still calls Guantánamo a 'terrorist detention facility,' even though back in 2006, the year he was there, an analysis of official documents found that the great majority of the Guantánamo prisoners were innocent men, imprisoned only because of mistaken identity or because they had been sold to the U.S. for bounty money."

"Regardless of these facts, DeSantis advocated keeping Guantánamo open in his 2016 testimony before the Subcommittee on National Security, in which he claimed that all detainees were 'hardened and unrepentant terrorist[s],' whose release 'risks harming America's national security,'" Adayfi wrote in Al Jazeera.

"At the time of DeSantis' speech, 80 prisoners remained at Guantánamo. I was one of them," he continued. "Of the 779 men held at Guantánamo since it opened in 2002, only 12 have been charged with crimes. Only two have been convicted."

Adayfi was just 18 years old when he was sent to Guantánamo in 2002. He was finally released in 2016 without ever being charged with a crime.

This January, on the 21st anniversary of Guantánamo's opening, human rights defenders urged President Joe Biden to immediately shut down the notorious facility. It remains open.