Guantanamo | The United States perpetrators of “crimes against humanity”?

The United States may have been guilty of “crimes against humanity” by detaining terrorist suspects in Guantánamo prison for years without offering them the possibility of asserting their innocence, or even sometimes of knowing the nature exact evidence against them.

This warning appears in a new report by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations which reviews the slippages that occurred within the establishment located on the island of Cuba by recounting the troubles of a detainee of Palestinian origin, Abu Zubaydah.

The 52-year-old was apprehended in 2002 in Pakistan and subsequently transferred to a series of CIA-supervised secret prisons in Europe, Africa and Asia.

He was tortured several times before being taken to Guantánamo in 2006, where he remains detained today.

Abu Zubaydah has never been formally charged by the US authorities, who refuse to release him despite numerous calls to do so by human rights organizations over the years.

Link to Al-Qaeda?

The detainee was initially suspected by the United States of being a close associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He was the target of such extreme interrogation practices that the intelligence services demanded that he be held “in solitary confinement and incommunicado for the rest of his life”.

The Palestinian national was notably confined in August 2002 for more than 250 hours in a wooden box in the shape of a coffin and subjected dozens of times to simulated drowning, at least once forcing his interrogators to “resuscitate” him.

In the absence of incriminating evidence, the US government admitted in 2008 that Abu Zubaydah had no connection to al-Qaeda, but refused to release him, arguing that he continued to pose a security risk to the country.

The detainee, who was only able to benefit from the services of a lawyer after several years of detention, was subjected three times in twenty years to a process of review of status marked by irregularities which did not change anything to his situation.

On two occasions, he was represented by a soldier without legal training who did not know the details of his case at the hearing.

Attempting to take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling stating that Guantánamo detainees could challenge their detention in US courts, he made a request that went unanswered.

He has also repeatedly asked the authorities at Guantánamo to accuse him before the military commissions set up for this purpose, without success.

Reason still “unknown”

The UN group of experts notes that the detention for security reasons of an individual outside the framework of an armed conflict requires proof of a “direct and imminent” threat which has never been demonstrated in the case of Abu Zubaydah.

The real reason for his prolonged detention “remains unknown”, they note in the report, while stressing that the CIA’s request that he never be released clearly continues to weigh in the equation.

The UN group scratches half a dozen countries that have assisted the United States in the process.

Experts, who are concerned about Abu Zubaydah’s mental and physical health, are calling for him to be released “immediately” and be compensated for what he suffered.

They also urge the States in question to order the holding of independent investigations to identify the persons responsible for the abuses suffered and to punish them.

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention notes, in the same breath, that the conclusions advanced with regard to the situation of Abu Zubaydah apply to the case of several other detainees at Guantánamo and illustrate a worrying practice which could ultimately form the basis of charges of crimes against humanity.

The European Court of Human Rights rendered another decision in favor of the detainee in 2018 by ordering Lithuania to pay him $150,000 for agreeing to the opening of a secret prison where he was tortured.

He had also drawn attention to his situation a few years ago by disclosing, through his lawyers, a series of illustrations showing how he was tortured.

Director of Human Rights in Practice, Helen Duffy, who represents Abu Zubaydah, said her client’s experience illustrated the “worst drifts of the war on terrorism” launched by the United States in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“We must recognize that the war on terrorism, as it has been waged for 20 years, is a failure. But we cannot claim to learn from it as long as we continue to repeat our worst excesses,” she noted.