THE UNITED NATIONS special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, published an exhaustive investigation this week into human rights abuses at Guantánamo Bay. Following a historic visit to the detention center and interviews with current and former detainees, victims of the 9/11 attacks, and human rights lawyers, the report details delayed justice for the victims of terrorist attacks and ongoing injustice for the victims of torture.
At the core of the report is the problem of inexplicable indefinite detention. “Arbitrariness pervades the entirety of the Guantánamo detention infrastructure — rendering detainees vulnerable to human rights abuse and contributing to conditions, practices, or circumstances that lead to arbitrary detention,” the report says. Life beyond Guantánamo, for some men, is just another Guantánamo. Those who cannot be repatriated are instead sent to a “third” country like Kazakhstan, where former detainees have been met with more arbitrary detention, Ní Aoláin found.