20 years on, Biden should shut Guantánamo as soon as and for all | Opinions

At a latest demonstration exterior the White Home calling for the closure of the US army jail on the Guantánamo Bay naval base on the island of Cuba, a young person approached a colleague to ask what the protest was all about. He informed her he had by no means heard of the detention facility.

It has been 20 years and 4 presidential administrations since Guantánamo opened, however for these born since then, its terrifying tales sound extra just like the plot of a fictitious horror movie than actuality. It’s a disgraceful legacy we merely can not go on to future generations.

Opened in response to the September 11 assaults, Guantánamo has held nearly 780 Muslim males and boys. Earlier than they had been detained, many had been kidnapped, disappeared and brutally tortured in secret US-run prisons or by so-called allies within the “battle on terror”. In Guantánamo, they had been tortured, only a few had been charged with crimes, and none given a good trial. Kafkaesque army commissions set as much as strive them have confirmed ineffectual and unfair, denying defendants an neutral arbiter and entry to crucial proof. In the meantime, households of 9/11 victims have waited in useless for justice.

Amnesty Worldwide and plenty of others world wide have doggedly campaigned to shut the jail since its inception. President Joe Biden, like President Barack Obama earlier than him, has promised to shut it, however up to now has failed to take action.

The Biden administration transferred one detainee out of the power in July however has but to reestablish the particular envoy workplace within the Division of State devoted to the jail’s closure. Quite the opposite, the administration has lately introduced plans to construct a brand new courtroom at Guantánamo to proceed the work by the army commissions – the very reverse of a blueprint to close the place down.

It’s not nearly closing Guantánamo. It is usually about delivering accountability for the violations dedicated inside its setting. Final yr, testimonies from plenty of former detainees, together with Majid Khan, Abu Zubayda, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi, describing their abuse at US-operated “black websites” overseas and in Guantanamo, had been made public. Abu Zubaydah’s story was informed in a PBS documentary known as, the Without end Prisoner, the torture inflicted upon Slahi, who’s now a bestselling writer and human rights defender, was portrayed within the movie, The Mauritanian, whereas Khan informed a sentencing jury about enduring stress positions, beatings, forced-feeding utilizing tubes tipped with scorching sauce, and sodomy with a backyard hose.

The European Court docket of Human Rights has dominated in civil circumstances in opposition to Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland and Romania for his or her complicity within the torture and enforced disappearance of individuals within the context of the US rendition and secret detention programmes, however there has by no means been any significant accountability for the USA. From those that authorised torture on the highest ranges of the federal government to those that carried out the unlawful “enhanced interrogation methods”, nobody has ever been held accountable for the crimes dedicated. This could start with the declassification and full launch of the US Senate Choose Committee on Intelligence’s report on CIA torture.

Thirty-nine males stay in Guantánamo. 13 are nonetheless underneath indefinite detention, regardless of having been authorised for switch out – some greater than a decade in the past. Twelve face fees within the army commissions, whereas the opposite 14 live in a hellish limbo: not but cleared for a switch, but by no means charged with against the law. Their plight is a relic of the overriding rules which have prevailed at Guantánamo since its inception – cruelty and arbitrariness.

The US authorities should take swift motion to proper this fallacious. It should decide to the decision of every detainee’s case by their switch and launch with out additional delay and in accordance with worldwide legislation. Or if there may be ample admissible proof to prosecute internationally recognisable felony offences, this should be completed by truthful judicial decision earlier than a often constituted federal court docket with out recourse to the demise penalty.

Guantánamo stays an indelible stain on US historical past, a chapter the US authorities should now shut and by no means repeat. President Biden owes it to all of us – those that have skilled or watched Guantánamo with horror through the years, and new and future generations simply now studying about it – to close it down as soon as and for all.

The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.