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......more below
