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Date: November 25, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:11 pm
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Results for guantanamo
3 results foundAuthor: Deutschmann, Emanuel Title: Between Collaboration and Disobedience: The behavior of the Guantanomo Detainees and its Consequences Summary: The Guantanamo detainees find themselves in a prisoner-s-dilemma-like situation characterized by uncertainty where they may incriminate others, remain silent, or disobey. We examine their behavior under these conditions and how it influences their chances of getting a release recommendation. We use JTF-GTMO-authored memoranda on 765 detainees to create a social network of the accusations between detainees and an attribute dataset, which we analyze using multivariate regression and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. We find that the distribution of incriminating statements obeys a power law. Yemenites and Saudi Arabians heavily over-contribute in terms of incriminating statements and disobedient actions, whereas Afghans and Pakistanis under-contribute. Disobedient behaviour does not affect the likelihood of getting released, except for hunger strike, which has a negative effect. By releasing information on others, detainees do not improve their own situation but impair that of those they talk about. Details: Oxford, UK: University of Oxford, 2012. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: Sociology Working Papers Paper Number 2013-02: Accessed May 6, 2016 at: http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/2013-02.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/2013-02.pdf Shelf Number: 138962 Keywords: DetaineesGuantanamoTerrorismTerrorists |
Author: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Title: Towards the Closure of Guantanamo Summary: This report addresses the human rights situation of detainees held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a facility that has become a symbol of abuse around the world. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ("IACHR") was the first international instance to call upon the United States to take urgent steps to respect the basic rights of the detainees. Just two months after the arrival of the first prisoners in January of 2002, the IACHR called upon the State to ensure that their legal status would be determined by a competent authority, so as to clarify the applicable legal regime and corresponding rights. 2. Since then, the IACHR has closely followed the situation through different mechanisms and has repeatedly called for the immediate closure of the detention facility. As a further and hopefully final step in the monitoring of the situation, the IACHR issues this report in which it provides an assessment of the current situation from a human rights perspective as the basis to issue recommendations designed to assist the State in taking the steps necessary to close the facility. 3. The report, following a rights-based approach, focuses on three main areas of concern. First, it addresses the major issues surrounding the detainees' right to personal integrity, from the authorized use of torture in the early years of the Guantanamo detentions to more current issues such as prison conditions at Camp 7 and the U.S. Government's response to the hunger strikes. The IACHR reiterates its finding that the continuing and indefinite detention of individuals in Guantanamo, without the right to due process, is arbitrary and constitutes a clear violation of international law; reasons of public security cannot serve as a pretext for the indefinite detention of individuals without charge or trial. 4. The report then examines the detainees' access to justice and whether the judicial remedies available are adequate and effective. It analyses important questions that were left unresolved by the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush, such as the scope of the executive's authority to detain individuals under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as well as various substantive and procedural questions. The Commission outlines concerns with respect to the operation of presumptions and burdens of proof and their impact on access to effective remedies. 5. This chapter also assesses how military commissions operate in practice and the important challenges faced by detainees when exercising their right to legal representation. It further addresses the exclusive application of a separate regime to foreign Muslim men, an issue that presents an apparent targeting of individuals in relation to nationality, ethnicity and religion. In addition, this chapter analyses the functioning of the Periodic Review Board process established in 2011 as well as the lack of judicial review of claims relating to conditions of detention at Guantanamo. 6. Finally, the report looks at the various legal and political aspects involved in taking steps toward the closure of the detention facility and acknowledges some recent steps taken by the Executive. This chapter assesses the current situation of the three categories of detainees currently held at Guantanamo: detainees cleared for transfer; detainees facing criminal charges before military commissions; and detainees designated for continued detention. The IACHR analyzes the situation of the detainees from Yemen separately, an issue which is of key importance in the closure of the facility. It further elaborates on how transfers should be carried out in order to comply with international legal obligations and the principle of nonrefoulement. This chapter then analyzes the current state of proceedings before military commissions, a system that has proven to be slow, inefficient and out of line with due process guarantees. 7. The report concludes with some data that speaks for itself. According to official information, only 8% of Guantanamo detainees were characterized as "fighters" for Al-Qaeda or the Taliban; 93% were not captured by U.S. forces; and most were turned over to U.S. custody at a time in which the United States offered bounties for the capture of suspected terrorists. Only 1% of all prisoners ever held at Guantanamo have so far been convicted by a military commission; in two of those eight cases the material support conviction was overturned on appeal by federal courts. As of January 2015, the handful of ongoing prosecutions before military commissions remained stagnant at the pre-trial stage, having been in that stage for several years. 8. Based on its close analysis of the human rights situation of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, in this report the IACHR issues a series of recommendations in order to encourage the United States to properly fulfill its international human rights commitments in taking the steps necessary to close Guantanamo. The InterAmerican Commission also reiterates its call upon OAS Member States to consider receiving Guantanamo detainees in an effort to achieve the goal of closing the prison and to reaffirm the longstanding tradition of asylum and protection of refugees in the region. The recommendations are grouped following the same rights-based approach used in the analysis of the report. 9. With regard to the conditions of detention, the Inter-American Commission recommends that the United States ensure that detainees are held in accordance with international human rights standards; that conditions of detention are subject to accessible and effective judicial review; that detainees are provided with adequate medical, psychiatric and psychological care; and that their right to freedom of conscience and religion is respected. The Commission further recommends that the U.S. declassify all evidence of torture and ill-treatment; comply with the recommendations issued by the Committee Against Torture regarding the investigation of detainee abuse, redress for victims, and the end of the force-feeding of detainees; and establish an independent monitoring body to investigate the conditions of detention at Guantanamo Bay. Details: Washington, DC: IACHR, 2015. 137p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 20, 2018 at: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/towards-closure-guantanamo.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Cuba URL: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/towards-closure-guantanamo.pdf Shelf Number: 149535 Keywords: Detention FacilitiesGuantanamoHuman Rights Abuses |
Author: Roehm, Scott Title: Deprivation and Despair: The Crisis of Medical Care at Guantanamo Summary: From the inception more than 17 years ago of the Guantanamo Bay detention center located on the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, senior detention facility personnel have consistently lauded the quality of medical care provided to detainees there. For example, in 2005, Joint Task Force (JTF) Guantanamo's then-commander said the care was "as good as or better than anything we would offer our own soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines." In 2011, a Navy nurse and then deputy command surgeon for JTF Guantanamo made a similar claim: "The standard of care here is the best possible standard of care (the detainees) could get." In late 2017, Guantanamo's senior medical officer again echoed those sentiments: "Detainees receive timely, compassionate, quality healthcare...(which is)...comparable to that afforded our active duty service members on island." There have been many more such assertions in the intervening years and since. Following an in-depth review of publicly available information related to medical care at Guantanamo - both past and present - as well as consultations with independent civilian medical experts and detainees' lawyers, the Center for Victims of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights have determined that none of those assertions is accurate. To the contrary, notwithstanding Guantanamo's general inaccessibility to independent civilian medical professionals, over the years a handful of them have managed to access detainees, review medical records, and interface with Guantanamo's medical care system to a degree sufficient to document a host of systemic and longstanding deficiencies in care. These include: - Medical needs are subordinated to security functions. For example, prosecutors in a military commission case told the judge explicitly that the commander of Guantanamo's detention operations is free to disregard recommendations of Guantanamo's senior medical officer. - Detainees' medical records are devoid of physical and psychological trauma histories. This is largely a function of medical professionals' inability or unwillingness to ask detainees about torture or other traumatic experiences during their time in the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, or otherwise with respect to interrogations by U.S. forces - which has led to misdiagnoses and improper treatment. -In large part due to a history of medical complicity in torture, many detainees distrust military medical professionals which has led repeatedly to detainees reasonably refusing care that they need. Guantanamo officials withhold from detainees their own medical records, including through improper classification. -Both expertise and equipment are increasingly insufficient to address detainees' health needs. For example, a military cardiologist concluded that an obese detainee required testing for coronary artery disease, but that Guantanamo did not have the "means to test" him, and so the testing was not performed. With regard to mental health, effective torture rehabilitation services are not, and cannot be made, available at Guantanamo. - Detainees have been subjected to neglect. One detainee urgently required surgery for a condition he disclosed to Guantanamo medical personnel in 2007 - and they diagnosed independently in 2010 - but he did not receive surgery until 2018 and appears permanently damaged as a result. - Military medical professionals rotate rapidly in and out of Guantanamo, which has caused discontinuity of care. For example, one detainee recently had three primary care physicians in the course of three months. - Detainees' access to medical care and, in some cases, their exposure to medical harm, turn substantially on their involvement in litigation. For example, it appears extremely difficult, if not impossible, for detainees who are not in active litigation to access independent civilian medical professionals, and for those who are to address a medical need that is not related to the litigation. For detainees charged before the military commissions, prosecution interests have superseded medical interests, as with a detainee who was forced to attend court proceedings on a gurney writhing in pain while recovering from surgery. These deficiencies are exacerbated by - and in some cases a direct result of - the damage that the men have endured, and continue to endure, from torture and prolonged indefinite detention. It is long past time that the medical care deficiencies this report describes were acknowledged and addressed. Systemic change is necessary; these are not problems that well- intentioned military medical professionals - of which no doubt there are many, working now in an untenable environment - can resolve absent structural, operational, and cultural reform. Nor, in many respects, are they problems that can be fully resolved as long as the detention facility remains open. Guantanamo should be closed. Unless and until that happens, the Center for Victims of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights call upon Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary to adopt a series of recommendations aimed at meaningfully improving the status quo. These include, but are not limited to: lifting the legal ban on transferring detainees to the United States and mandating such transfers when detainees present with medical conditions that cannot be adequately evaluated and treated at Guantanamo; ensuring detainees have timely access to all of their medical records upon request while otherwise maintaining confidentiality of those records (especially with regard to access by prosecutors); and allowing meaningful and regular access to Guantanamo by civilian medical experts, including permitting such experts to evaluate detainees in an appropriate setting. If the United States declines to take the steps this report recommends, complex medical conditions that cannot be managed at Guantanamo should be expected to accelerate in frequency and escalate in severity. Details: New York: Physicians for Human Rights and The Center for Victims of Torture, 2019. 58p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 19, 2019 at: https://phr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PHR_CVT-Guantanamo-medical-crisis-report-June-2019-1.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://phr.org/our-work/resources/deprivation-and-despair/ Shelf Number: 156815 Keywords: DetaineeDetentionGuantanamoHuman Rights AbusesMedical CarePrison ConditionPrisonersTorture |