Washington, DC – The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, turns 23 on Saturday.
For Mansoor Adayfi, a former inmate on the jail, the anniversary marks 23 years of “injustice, lawlessness, abuse of energy, torture and indefinite detention”.
Solely 15 prisoners stay at the USA navy jail, generally known as Gitmo, which as soon as held about 800 Muslim males — a dwindling quantity that provides advocates hope that the ability will finally be shut down, turning the web page on the darkish chapter of historical past it represents.
However Adayfi, who now serves as a coordinator for the Guantanamo Undertaking on the advocacy group CAGE Worldwide, says actually closing down Gitmo means delivering justice to its present and former detainees.
“The US should acknowledge its wrongdoing, should challenge a proper, official apology to the victims, to the survivors,” Adayfi advised Al Jazeera. “There should be reparation, compensation and accountability.”
Guantanamo opened in 2002 to deal with prisoners from the so-called “battle on terror”, a response to the assaults on September 11, 2001, within the US.
Detainees had been arrested in international locations the world over on suspicions of ties to al-Qaeda and different teams. Many endured horrific torture at secret detention services, generally known as black websites, earlier than being transferred to Guantanamo.
At Gitmo, detainees had few authorized rights. Even these cleared for launch by Guantanamo’s various justice system, generally known as navy commissions, remained imprisoned for years with no recourse to problem their detention.
And so, the jail has develop into synonymous with the US authorities’s worst abuses within the post-9/11 period.
In latest weeks, the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden has accelerated the switch of inmates out of Guantanamo, forward of the top of his time period on January 20.
On Monday, the US authorities freed 11 Yemeni detainees and resettled them in Oman. Final month, two inmates had been transferred to Tunisia and Kenya.
‘Insane’
Daphne Eviatar, director of the Safety with Human Rights (SWHR) programme at Amnesty Worldwide USA, mentioned closing down the ability is feasible.
She mentioned the remaining detainees could possibly be transferred to different international locations or to the US, the place they’d undergo the American justice system.
Congress imposed a ban in 2015 on transferring Gitmo prisoners to US soil. However Eviatar believes the White Home can work with lawmakers to raise the prohibition, particularly with so few prisoners left on the facility.
“It’s an emblem of lawlessness, of Islamophobia,” Eviatar mentioned of Guantanamo.
“It’s a whole violation of human rights. For the USA, which has detained so many individuals for therefore lengthy with out rights, with out cost or trial, it’s simply horrific. And the truth that it’s ongoing at present, 23 years later, is insane.”
Barack Obama made closing down the jail one among his prime guarantees when he was operating for president in 2008, however after taking workplace, his plans confronted robust Republican opposition. In the direction of the top of his second time period, Obama expressed remorse over failing to close down the ability early in his presidency.
Of the 15 remaining Gitmo inmates, three are eligible for launch, in line with the Pentagon. Three others can go in entrance of Guantanamo’s Periodic Evaluate Board, which assesses whether detainees are secure to switch.
“We’re nonetheless hopeful that President Biden can switch extra detainees out earlier than he leaves workplace,” Eviatar advised Al Jazeera.
Whereas President-elect Donald Trump has beforehand pledged to maintain the jail open, Eviatar mentioned he might view the ability as inefficient.
Plea offers
However the Mates Committee on Nationwide Laws (FCNL), a Quaker social justice advocacy group, underscored the urgency for Biden to behave earlier than Trump takes workplace.
“With President-elect Trump strongly against closing Guantanamo, the necessity to President Biden to close the jail down is extra pressing than ever,” Devra Baxter, a programme assistant for militarism and human rights at FCNL, mentioned in an announcement.
“Closing Guantanamo will solely occur by the switch of the ultimate three males who’ve but to be charged with a criminal offense and finalizing plea offers with those that have.”
Nevertheless, fairly than finishing plea offers for the inmates, Secretary of Protection Lloyd Austin has sought to nix agreements for 3 9/11 suspects, which had been reached with navy prosecutors to spare the prisoners the dying penalties, in alternate for responsible pleas.
Now courts are assessing the validity of the agreements and Austin’s veto towards them.
Eviatar mentioned Austin’s push to scuttle the plea offers quantities to political interference.
“It’s a really unusual scenario. I don’t perceive why the Biden administration, which says it needed to shut Guantanamo, would then have the secretary of defence are available in and cease the plea agreements. It is not sensible.”
CAGE’s Adayfi mentioned the debacle over the plea agreements reveals that there isn’t any functioning justice system at Guantanamo.
“It’s an enormous joke,” he mentioned. “There’s no justice in Guantanamo. There’s no regulation. There may be completely nothing. It’s it is likely one of the largest human rights violations within the twenty first century.”
Adayfi added that the US can have its beliefs about freedom, democracy and human rights or Guantanamo, however not each.
“I imagine they’ve Guantanamo,” he mentioned.
