Members of the European Union and the Organization of American States, as well as non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, protested against the legal status and physical condition of detainees at Guantánamo. Human Rights Watch criticized the Bush administration in its World Report 2003 for this designation: “Washington has ignored human rights standards in its own treatment of terrorism suspects. He refused to apply the Geneva Conventions to prisoners of war in Afghanistan and misused the term “illegal combatant” to apply to criminal suspects on American soil. On 25 May 2005, Amnesty International published its annual report, which described the institution as the “gulag of our time”. [23] [245] Lord Steyn called it a “monstrous failure of justice” because. The military will act as interrogators, prosecutors and defense lawyers, judges and, if death sentences are imposed, executioners. The trials will be held behind closed doors. None of the guarantees of a fair trial must be respected. [246] Another senior British judge, Justice Collins, said of the detention center, “America`s idea that torture is different from that of the UK. [247] In early December 2003, the media reported that military lawyers appointed to defend alleged terrorists detained by the United States at Guantánamo Bay had expressed concern about the legal process of military commissions. The British newspaper The Guardian[248] reported that a team of lawyers had been dismissed after complaining that the rules governing future military commissions prohibited them from properly representing their clients. Vanity Fair of New York reported that some of the lawyers felt their ethical obligations had been violated by the lawsuit.

[249] The Pentagon has strongly rejected the allegations contained in these media reports. On 5 May 2007, it was reported that many lawyers were dismissed and that some detainees refused to see their lawyers, while others refused to mail from their lawyers or refused to provide information about their cases (see also Postal Privileges for Guantánamo Detainees). [250] In response to these concerns, the George W. Bush administration made two decisions at the heart of the Guantanamo controversies: the first was the choice of the site itself; the second was the conclusion that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detention of Al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners. Much of the legal reasoning behind these decisions was overturned years later by the U.S. Supreme Court. On 4 August 2004, the Tipton Three, former detainees who had been returned to Britain in March of that year (and released by the British authorities within 24 hours of their return), filed a report in the United States claiming that they and others had been permanently severely abused in the camp. [211] They claimed that false confessions were obtained under duress, under conditions amounting to torture. They said conditions deteriorated after Maj.

Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller took over the camp, including prolonged solitary confinement for prisoners. They claimed that the abuses took place with the knowledge of the intelligence services. Their allegations are currently being investigated by the UK government. At that time, five British residents were still imprisoned: Amin Khalil Al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna, Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer, Jamal Abdullah and Omar Deghayes. [212] [best source needed] The experts said Guantanamo Bay is also a profound symbol of the systematic lack of accountability and censorship for the practice of state-sponsored torture and ill-treatment and the unacceptable impunity accorded to those responsible. “When a state fails to hold accountable those who authorized and practised torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, it sends a signal of complacency and acquiescence to the world,” they said.

The mistreatment of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few black sheep” acting on their own. The fact is that senior U.S. government officials have gathered information about the use of aggressive techniques, redefined the law to give the appearance of its legality, and authorized its use against prisoners. These efforts have undermined our ability to gather accurate information that could save lives, strengthened the hands of our enemies, and undermined our moral authority. [157] An April 2011 report in PLoS Medicine reviewed the cases of nine individuals seeking evidence of torture and ill-treatment and documentation by basic medical staff by reviewing relevant medical and court records (client affidavits, lawyers` notes and summaries, and affidavits of medical experts). The findings of these nine local cases suggest that doctors and psychiatric staff assigned to the Ministry of Defence neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm, and detainees complained of “abusive interrogation methods compatible with torture under the UN Convention against Torture, as well as the more restrictive definition of torture in the United States, which was in effect at that time.” [195] In its legal justification [PDF] for the decision, the government stated that Al-Qaeda detainees were part of a non-state group that was not a party to the Geneva Conventions. Although Afghanistan is a party to the conventions, Taliban prisoners also do not enjoy POW protection because they do not meet the criteria for prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention, the government said.