A report by U.N. human rights experts confirms what Human Rights Watch and other nongovernmental organizations have long documented-that the United States is violating international human rights law and the Geneva Conventions by indefinitely detaining, without charges, the more than 500 men held at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. The experts also determined that the physical abuse of the detainees, including unnecessarily brutal forced feeding, violates the international prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Human Rights Watch has been monitoring and speaking out against the confinement of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay since the first detainees were sent to the facility. We have criticized the absence of any legal basis for the confinement of detainees, their mistreatment, and the lack of fair trial guarantees in the military commissions the United States has created to try some of those detained. Our investigations were used as source material for the U.N. report. Human Rights Watch is hopeful that the findings of the report will revive concern in the United States and abroad about the U.S. government's failure to set out a legal basis for the detentions and help to prosecute those responsible for the mistreatment of detainees.
