WHY Is Guantanamo Still Open?
Human rights defenders marked 22 years since the opening of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba with renewed calls for President Joe Biden to fulfill his stated intention to close the notorious torture camp, where 30 men—16 of them cleared for release—remain behind bars.
Like most of the roughly 750 prisoners released from Guantánamo, the majority of remaining detainees have never been charged with any crime. Only one—Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al-Bahlul, a Yemeni national—has ever been convicted of terrorism-related charges under the highly controversial military commission regime established by the George W. Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"It is outrageous that 22 years after the U.S. government opened the Guantánamo detention camp to detain Muslim men beyond the reach of U.S. law, that this abuse of human rights continues today," Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.