Washington, DC – Prison in Guantanamo BayCuba, turns 23 on Saturday.
For Mansoor Adayfi, a former inmate of the prison, the anniversary marks 23 years of “injustice, lawlessness, abuse of power, torture and indefinite detention.”
Only 15 prisoners remain at the United States military prison, known as Gitmo, which once held about 800 Muslim men – a dwindling number that gives hope to advocates that the facility will eventually be closed, turning a page on the dark chapter of history it represents. .
But Adayfi, who now works as the Guantanamo Project Coordinator at the advocacy group CAGE International, says that truly closing Gitmo means delivering justice to current and former detainees.
“The United States must acknowledge its wrongdoing, it must issue a formal, formal apology to the victims, to the survivors,” Adayfi told Al Jazeera. “There must be reparation, compensation and accountability.”
Guantanamo was opened in 2002 to house prisoners from the so-called “war on terror”, in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the USA.
The detainees were arrested in countries around the world on suspicion of being linked to al-Qaeda and other groups. Many endured horrific torture in secret detention facilities, known as black sites, before being transferred to Guantanamo.
At Gitmo, detainees had few legal rights. Even those cleared for release through Guantanamo’s alternative justice system, known as military commissions, remained imprisoned for years without any recourse to challenge their detention.
And so the prison became synonymous with the worst abuses of the US government in the post-9/11 era.
In recent weeks, the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden has accelerated the transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo, ahead of the end of his term on January 20.
On Monday, the US government released 11 people Yemeni detainees and moved them to Oman. Last month, two prisoners were transferred to Tunisia and Kenya.
‘Crazy’
Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights (SWHR) program at Amnesty International USA, said closing the facility is possible.
She said the remaining prisoners could be transferred to other countries or to the US, where they would go through the US justice system.
In 2015, Congress introduced a ban on the transfer of prisoners from Gitmo to US soil. But Eviatar believes the White House can work with lawmakers to lift the ban, especially with so few inmates left at the facility.
“It’s a symbol of lawlessness, Islamophobia,” Eviatar said of Guantanamo.
“It is a complete violation of human rights. For the United States, which has detained so many people for so long without rights, without charge or trial, this is simply appalling. And the fact that it’s still going on today, 23 years later, is crazy.”
Barack Obama made closing prisons one of his top promises when he ran for president in 2008, but after taking office, his plans faced strong opposition from Republicans. Toward the end of his second term, Obama expressed regret through failure to close the plant at the beginning of his presidential term.
Of the 15 remaining Gitmo prisoners, three are eligible for release, according to the Pentagon. Three others may go before Guantanamo’s periodic review board, which evaluates it whether detainees they are safe to transfer.
“We still hope that President Biden will be able to transfer more prisoners before he leaves office,” Eviatar told Al Jazeera.
Although President-elect Donald Trump has previously promised to keep the prison open, Eviatar said he may find the prison ineffective.
Plea deals
But the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a Quaker social justice advocacy group, stressed the urgency for Biden to act before Trump takes office.
“With President-elect Trump strongly opposed to closing Guantanamo, the need for President Biden to close the prison is more urgent than ever,” Devra Baxter, program assistant for militarism and human rights at FCNL, said in a statement.
“Closing Guantanamo will only happen with the transfer of the last three men who have yet to be charged with a crime and the completion of plea agreements with those who have.”
However, instead of finalizing plea deals for the prisoners, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sought to void plea deals for the three 9/11 suspects, which had been reached with military prosecutors to spare the prisoners the death penalty, in exchange for guilty pleas.
Now the courts they estimate the validity of the treaties and Austin’s veto against them.
Eviatar said Austin’s effort to scuttle the plea deals amounted to political interference.
“It is a very strange situation. I don’t understand why the Biden administration, which says it wanted to close Guantanamo, would then want the Secretary of Defense to come in and cut the plea deals. It doesn’t make sense.”
CAGE’s Adayfi said the plea deal debacle shows that there is no functioning justice system at Guantanamo.
“It’s a big joke,” he said. “There is no justice in Guantanamo. There is no law. There is absolutely nothing. It is one of the biggest violations of human rights in the 21st century.”
Adayfi added that the US can have its ideals of freedom, democracy and human rights or Guantanamo, but not both.
“I believe they have Guantanamo,” he said.
