The first-ever independent investigator to visit Guantánamo Bay says she arrived 'too late'

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin's visit marks the first time a US president has allowed an independent investigator inside the detention center.

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

• An independent UN investigator visited the Guantánamo Bay prison for the first time in February.
• She found those detained faced "deep and profound despair" and inhumane treatment.
• She has since called on the US to provide torture rehabilitation and educational resources.

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin — a human rights investigator with the United Nations — became the first person authorized by an American president to visit the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay.

She has now released her findings in a report released last month. It details evidence of inhumane treatment by US officials as well as physical and psychological trauma amongst those detained at the center.

Ní Aoláin found that officials were force-feeding prisoners on hunger strikes and that suicidal ideas and self-harm were prevalent across the population. As a result, those she met with "evidenced deep psychological harm and distress — including profound anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, stress and depression, and dependency," her report reads.

The men held at Guantánamo are also torture survivors, which has caused permanent disabilities, brain injuries, and chronic pain, according to the report. As a result, Ní Aoláin wrote that she is  "gravely concerned by the failure of the US government to provide torture rehabilitation programs," and called on the United States to provide these programs to both those who are still detained as well as those who have been released.

Ní Aoláin also called on US officials "to ensure training for medical personnel on the prohibition against torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and to provide full redress and remedy to torture victims, including as full rehabilitation as possible," the report reads.

The United States used the prison at Guantánamo Bay to detain men it believed to be connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Many of those detained were held indefinitely without trial, which led to international condemnation of the United States from human rights groups. The United States detained a total of 780 men at Guantánamo Bay. Many of them have since been transferred. Some of them died in prison. Today, 30 inmates still remain.

Ní Aoláin noted that while those detained now have access to books and classes on life skills, American officials should divert further resources to education and family reunification efforts. 

"Many of them were young men when they were detained and rendered to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba," Ní Aoláin told the Associated Press. "They're now old men, middle-aged men, who have to figure out how to go back into life." She said many of those she spoke to told her she came 'too late,' which she told the Associated Press was true.

The Biden administration disagrees with several of Ní Aoláin's legal and factual assertions but will still review her recommendations, the AP reported.

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