LGC Newsletter – February 2021

 Guantánamo Bay

Former Sudanese prisoner, Ibrahim Othman Ibrahim Idris, who arrived at Guantánamo on the day it was opened on 11 January 2002, has died aged 60 in Sudan. Suspected of having worked as a bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden, he was never charged at Guantánamo and was released in 2013. A lawyer has attributed his death “to medical complications he had from Guantánamo”. The exact cause of death is unknown but he is known to have been in ill-health and another former Sudanese prisoner has said that he was tortured at Guantánamo. His health deteriorated at Guantánamo and he suffered mental health problems while there and after his release.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/ibrahim-idris-dead.html

 

 

US president Joe Biden has launched a formal review into the current situation at Guantánamo and has said that he intends to close the facility, where 40 prisoners remain, before the end of his term. An executive action to this end may be signed in the coming weeks or months, although it is not a priority of the current administration and there are no details of what the current US government plans to do.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-guantanamo-exclusive-idUSKBN2AC1Q4

In this response to this, a group of UN human rights experts have called on the US government to “address ongoing violations being committed against the 40 or so inmates still incarcerated there” and to investigate allegations of torture and other human rights abuses.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1085492