UNO: The 30 men detained at Guantanamo Bay are subject to "ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law," according to the first UN independent investigator to visit the facility.

At a press conference to introduce her 23-page report to the UN Human Rights Council, the investigator, Irish law professor Fionnuala N Aoláin, declared the 2001 attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania that left nearly 3,000 people dead to be "crimes against humanity." However, she claimed that the US had broken international human rights law by using torture and extradition against alleged attackers and their associates in the years immediately following the attacks.

As N Aoláin noted, the U.S. administration had never before permitted a UN investigator to visit the facility.

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She commended the Biden administration for setting a positive example by opening Guantanamo and for "being prepared to address the hardest human rights issues," and urged other nations that have refused to allow the UN access to detention facilities to do the same. Additionally, she claimed that she was granted access to everything she requested, including the ability to hold meetings with both "high value" and "non-high value" detainees at the facility in Cuba.

In a submission to the Human Rights Council regarding the report's conclusions, the United States stated that the special investigator's conclusions "are solely her own" and that "the United States disagrees in significant respects with many factual and legal assertions" in her report.

However, N Aoláin expressed "serious concerns" about the ongoing detention of 30 men, who she claimed are subject to extreme insecurity, suffering, and anxiety. She claimed that "significant improvements" have been made to the confinement of detainees. She gave several instances, such as almost constant monitoring, eviction from their cells, and unfair restraints.

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The suffering of those in detention is severe and ongoing after 20 years in custody, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. "Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practises of rendition, torture, and arbitrary detention.

Professor N Aoláin, who holds joint appointments at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the University of Minnesota, claimed that for many detainees, the distinction between the past and present "is exceptionally thin" and for some, "it's simply nonexistent" because "their past experiences of torture live with them in the present without any obvious end in sight, including because they have not received any adequate torture rehabilitation."

She made a lengthy list of suggestions, including the recommendation to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

N'Aoláin was the first UN special rapporteur to visit Guantánamo, and she was granted "unprecedented access" with "the confidence that the conditions of confinement at Guantánamo Bay are humane and reflect the United States' respect for and protection of human rights for all who are in our custody," according to the US response, which was submitted by Michele Taylor, the American ambassador to the Human Rights Council.

Detainees receive specialised medical and psychiatric care, full access to legal counsel, live communally and cook meals together, and regularly communicate with family members, according to a US statement.

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Despite this, we are closely examining the (special rapporteur's) recommendations and will take any necessary action if it is necessary, it said.

The United States claimed that the Biden administration has made "significant progress" towards closing Guantanamo by transferring 10 detainees from the prison. It added that it is currently searching for suitable locations for the other detainees who are eligible for transfer.

According to the statement, "for those few not yet eligible for transfer, we conduct periodic reviews to determine whether continued detention under the law of war is warranted," while military commission proceedings continued for detainees facing criminal charges.