US-held captives in Guantanamo suffer 'accelerated ageing': ICRC

Foreign inmates who have been held captive for many years without trial in the US military prison and torture facility in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are showing signs of "accelerated ageing," the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has unveiled.

"We're calling on the US administration and Congress to work together to find adequate and sustainable solutions to address these issues," said ICRC's head of delegation for the United States and Canada, Patrick Hamilton.

"Action should be taken as a matter of priority," he further emphasized nearly a month after visiting the military prison back in March following a long, 20-year absence from the infamous American torture facility despite rigorous human violations there.

Most of these violations were attested by numerous US military officers appointed to represent the inmates in court with very limited access to legal resources and "classified" documents to adequately defend the inmates or make a legal case against US military and spy agencies involved in the illegal capture and imprisonment of most of the captives held in the Guantanamo base.   

Hamilton said he was "struck by how those who are still detained today are experiencing the symptoms of accelerated ageing, worsened by the cumulative effects of their experiences and years spent in detention."

The senior ICRC official called for detainees to receive adequate mental and physical health care and more frequent family contact, basic rights that US military has brutally refrained to provide for the Guantanamo prisoners.

A Pentagon spokesperson said the department "is currently reviewing the report," without elaborating.

The Guantanamo camp was established by hawkish President George W. Bush in 2002 to hold captive and interrogate under torture foreign terrorism suspects following the highly suspicious September 11, 2001 terror attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The appalling treatment of the foreign captives in Guantanamo came to symbolize the excesses of the purported US "war on terror" because of harsh interrogation and torture methods widely censured by critics.

Pakistani brothers freed from Guantanamo after 20 years of illegal detention

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This is while the US government, which regularly drafts and widely publicizes numerous reports judging and censuring other countries on their human rights observance, has allowed very limited access to the Guantanamo detention and torture facility for international inspections.

Moreover, most Western human rights organizations -- such as the UK-based Amnesty International and the US-based Human Rights Watch -- have kept mostly silent on the horrendous treatment of foreign captives in Guantanamo as well as foreign refugees by border guards in the US and other Western countries.

The US and the UK have been key players in the brutal military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and are on record for committing enormous atrocities while occupying the war-torn countries for many years.

There were still 40 inmates left in the Guantanamo prison when current US President Joe Biden took office in 2021. The Biden administration has claimed it wants to close the infamous facility but has never presented a plan for doing so. The previous Democratic Party administration of Barack Obama also made a similar pledge when he was sworn into office in 2008 but failed to do so.  

Hamilton urged Washington to resolve the fate of the remaining Guantanamo detainees, but -- like other international visitors -- failed to condemn the brutal treatment of illegal imprisonment of its foreign captives without any access to legal representation and a judicial process.

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