Washington, D.C. – The detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, turns 23 years old on Saturday.
For Mansoor Adayfi, a former prison inmate, the anniversary marks 23 years of “injustice, lawlessness, abuse of power, torture and indefinite detention.”
Only 15 prisoners remain at the US military prison known as Gitmo, which once housed about 800 Muslim men, a dwindling number that gives advocates hope that the facility will eventually be closed, turning the page on dark chapter of the history it represents. .
But Adayfi, who now serves as Project Guantánamo coordinator at the advocacy group CAGE International, says truly closing Gitmo means bringing justice to its current and former detainees.
“The United States must acknowledge its wrongdoings, it must issue an official and formal apology to the victims, to the survivors,” Adayfi told Al Jazeera. “There must be redress, compensation and accountability.”
Guantánamo was opened in 2002 to house prisoners from the so-called “war on terrorism,” a reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The detainees were arrested in countries around the world on suspicion of having links to Al Qaeda and other groups. Many suffered horrific torture in secret detention centers, known as black sites, before being transferred to Guantánamo.
At Gitmo, detainees had few legal rights. Even those who were cleared for release through Guantánamo's alternative justice system, known as military commissions, remained imprisoned for years without any recourse to challenge their detention.
And so the prison has become synonymous with the worst abuses of the US government in the post-9/11 era.
In recent weeks, outgoing President Joe Biden's administration has accelerated the transfer of inmates out of Guantánamo, ahead of the end of his term on January 20.
On Monday, the US government released 11 Yemeni detainees and resettled them in Oman. Last month, two inmates were transferred to Tunisia and Kenya.
'Crazy'
Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights (SWHR) program at Amnesty International USA, said it is possible to close the facilities.
He said the remaining detainees could be transferred to other countries or the United States, where they would go through the American justice system.
In 2015, Congress imposed 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 prisoners in the facility.
“It is a symbol of anarchy, of Islamophobia,” Eviatar said of Guantánamo.
“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, it is simply horrible. And the fact that this continues today, 23 years later, is crazy.”
Barack Obama made closing the prison one of his signature promises when he ran for president in 2008, but after taking office his plans faced strong Republican opposition. Toward the end of his second term, Obama expressed regret that he had not been able to close the facility early in his presidency.
Of the 15 remaining inmates at Gitmo, three are eligible for release, according to the Pentagon. Three others may appear before the Guantanamo Periodic Review Board, which evaluates whether it is safe to transfer detainees.
“We are still hopeful that President Biden can transfer more detainees before he leaves office,” Eviatar told Al Jazeera.
While President-elect Donald Trump previously pledged to keep the prison open, Eviatar said he might consider the facility inefficient.
Plea Agreements
But the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a Quaker group that advocates for social justice, stressed the urgency for Biden to act before Trump takes office.
“With President-elect Trump strongly opposed to closing Guantánamo, President Biden’s need 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 Guantánamo will only be achieved by transferring the last three men who have not yet been charged with a crime and finalizing agreements with those who have.”
However, instead of striking plea deals for inmates, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has sought to reject plea deals for three 9/11 suspects that had been reached with military prosecutors to spare inmates death penalty, in exchange for guilty pleas.
Now the courts are evaluating the validity of the agreements and Austin's veto against them.
Eviatar said Austin's push to unravel the plea deals amounts to political interference.
“It is a very strange situation. I don't understand why the Biden administration, which says it wanted to close Guantanamo, had the Secretary of Defense come in and stop the plea deals. “It doesn't make sense.”
CAGE's Adayfi said the plea deal debacle shows there is no functioning justice system at Guantanamo.
“It's a big joke,” he said. “There is no justice in Guantánamo. There is no law. There is absolutely nothing. “It is one of the greatest human rights violations of the 21st century.”
Adayfi added that the United States may have its ideals of freedom, democracy and human rights or Guantanamo, but not both.
“I think they have Guantanamo,” he said.
