I was held in Guantanamo detention centre for 14 years without ever being charged with a crime. I was sent there when I was 19. I didn’t know why I was being held, what I had done to be imprisoned or when I would be released.
Like many of the other men at Guantanamo, I believed that the United States (US) forces who held me would live up to their own ideals of law and justice and grant me the right to defend myself and prove my innocence. That never happened.
Instead, I was subjected to torture and continual harassment. I fought to be treated humanely and to be granted basic human rights, and after 14 years was released. Throughout my imprisonment, I imagined that one day the world would learn what happened to us and would demand accountability and justice. I thought once people knew, they would close this deplorable place.
It has been almost nine years since I was released. All this time, I have not stopped writing and giving interviews about what happened to me. The world knows, and yet, Guantanamo is still functioning.
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Earlier last month, we marked the 23rd anniversary of its creation. Then, in the same month, we marked the last day in office of yet another US president who promised to close it and did not. One has to wonder after all the reports by the United Nations and various human rights organisations, media reports, documentaries, books, etc – why is this symbol of injustice still standing?
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Guantanamo was established in the aftermath of 9/11, a tragic event that profoundly shook the world. In its wake, the US launched the so-called global “war on terror”, a campaign ostensibly aimed at combating terrorism but which, in reality, legalised torture, undermined international law and dehumanised an entire faith community.
Situated on the island of Cuba, outside US legal jurisdiction, Guantanamo detention centre was intentionally designed to circumvent constitutional protections and international norms, becoming a place where detainees could be held indefinitely without charge or trial.
The concept of indefinite detention is a direct affront to the principles of justice. Holding individuals without charge or trial defies the very foundation of legal systems worldwide. It denies detainees the opportunity to defend themselves and subjects them to years— sometimes decades— of suffering with no resolution in sight.
Guantanamo became a blueprint for other forms of extrajudicial detention, torture and human rights abuses worldwide. The prison’s legacy is evident in the proliferation of Central Intelligence Agency black sites, the normalisation of Islamophobia and the erosion of international norms designed to protect human dignity.
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The global war on terror—with Guantanamo as its most infamous symbol—institutionalised policies that dehumanised Muslims. It fuelled Islamophobic rhetoric, justified invasive surveillance programmes and stigmatised entire communities as potential threats.
The US took the lead on all this, and many states followed suit, using US “war on terror” rhetoric to justify attacks on whole communities. The consequences have been devastating for Muslim and other vulnerable communities.
At its peak, Guantanamo held approximately 680 men and boys, many of whom had been sold as “terrorists” to US forces in exchange for renumeration. This is what happened to me.
As of today, 15 men remain in Guantanamo. Some have been cleared for release but continue to languish in limbo, a testament to the failure of US systems to uphold even the most basic human rights. For these men, every day is a continuation of psychological and physical torment — a state of being neither free nor formally accused.
We have heard many promises that Guantanamo will be closed for the past 16 years. US President Barack Obama famously signed an executive order on his second day in office in 2009 ordering the closure of the facility. Then-Vice President Joe Biden was standing right next to him, applauding. When Biden became president in 2021, he also made the same promise and he also broke it.
The prison still functions at an annual cost of around $540m.
The continued operation of Guantanamo is not just a failure of policy but a moral stain on the US. It stands as a glaring contradiction of the ideals of liberty, justice, and human rights that the US claims to champion. Its existence undermines US credibility on the global stage and emboldens authoritarian regimes to justify their own abuses.—Al Jazeera
