UN / GUANTANAMO BAY

Following her visit to the detention facility at the United States Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, said, “torture was a betrayal of the rights of the victims of the 911 attacks.” UNIFEED

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:02:22
• Production Date: 26 June 2023
• Asset Language: English
• Personal Subject: FIONNUALA NÍ AOLÁIN
• Corporate Name: UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS - UNHCHR
• Subject Topical: HUMAN RIGHTS; PRISONS; TERRORISM; TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL TREATMENT
• Geographic Subject: CUBA; UNITED STATES
• MAMS Id: 3064415
• Parent Id: 3064415
• Alternate Title: unifeed230626c

Description

STORY: UN / GUANTANAMO BAY
TRT: 02:22
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 26 JUNE 2023, NEW YORK CITY / FILE

Shotlist

FILE - NEW YORK CITY

1. Wide shot, exterior UN headquarters

26 JUNE 2023, NEW YORK CITY

2. Wide shot, press room dais
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“This report upholds the rights of victims of terrorism to justice, to accountability, and to transparency. But I find that the single most significant barrier to fulfilling the rights of victims and survivors was the use of torture. Torture was a betrayal of the rights of the victims of the 911 attacks. The US government must urgently provide judicial resolution, apology, and guarantees of non-repetition.”
5. Med shot, journalists
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“I want to acknowledge that there has been significant improvements made to the conditions of confinement at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. That said, I still have serious concerns about the continued detention of now 30 men, still there, and the persistent arbitrariness that pervades their day to day existence.”
7. Med shot, journalist
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“I observed that after two decades of custody, the suffering of those detained is profound, and it's ongoing. Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention.”
9. Wide shot, press room dais
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“The totality of all of these practices and omissions detailed at length in the report have among others, they have a cumulative compounding effect on the dignity and fundamental rights and freedoms of each detainee amounts in my assessment to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law.”
11. Wide shot, press room dais
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“I am profoundly concerned that the vast majority of former detainees continue to experience sustained human rights violations beginning from the very process of transfer to their country of return or their country of resettlement. Mostly, they have been left to fend for themselves.”
13. Wide shot, end of presser

Storyline

Following her visit to the detention facility at the United States Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, today (26 Jun) said, “torture was a betrayal of the rights of the victims of the 911 attacks.”

Ní Aoláin said the report issued following her visit “upholds the rights of victims of terrorism to justice, to accountability, and to transparency,” but she stressed that “the single most significant barrier to fulfilling the rights of victims and survivors was the use of torture.”

She acknowledged that “there has been significant improvements made to the conditions of confinement at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility” but expressed “serious concerns about the continued detention of now 30 men, still there, and the persistent arbitrariness that pervades their day to day existence.”

“After two decades of custody,” the Special Rapporteur said, “the suffering of those detained is profound, and it's ongoing,” and added that “every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention.”

These “practices and omissions,” she said, “have a cumulative compounding effect on the dignity and fundamental rights and freedoms of each detainee amounts in my assessment to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law.”

Turning to those prisoners that have been released from Guantanamo, Ní Aoláin said, “I am profoundly concerned that the vast majority of former detainees continue to experience sustained human rights violations beginning from the very process of transfer to their country of return or their country of resettlement.”

Mostly, she said, “they have been left to fend for themselves.”

Her technical visit to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was the first by a UN Special Rapporteur.

Previously, the independent expert visited Washington D.C. and over the course of the subsequent three-month period, she carried out a series of interviews with individuals in the United States and abroad, on a voluntary basis, including victims and families of victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and former detainees in countries of resettlement/repatriation.