A detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily outside period in Guantanamo Bay detention facility on December 5, 2006. Photo: VCG

A UN rights expert said Tuesday she had received a "preliminary invitation" from Washington to visit Guantanamo Bay, for what would be a first such visit after two decades of requests.

Independent UN rights experts have sought access to the military prison in Cuba since it first opened in 2002 to house detainees in the US "war on terror." But no such visit has ever taken place.

Fionnuala Ni Aolain, top UN expert on protecting rights while countering terrorism, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday that an invitation had come from Washington. 

"The United States government has extended a preliminary invitation to my mandate to engage in a technical visit to the US Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," she said.

Ni Aolain highlighted that the situation of the prisoners still behind bars "engages ongoing violations of international law." 

Once holding nearly 800 people seized around the world and transported to the Cuba facility, today the Guantanamo jail holds 38 men, some of them from the very first months after it opened.

"Many of these men are entering their 20th year in the custody of the United States," Ni Aolain said.

She pointed out that the UN special rapporteur on torture, with the assistance of her own mandate, had "determined that the ongoing conditions at Guantanamo Bay constitute circumstances that meet the threshold of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment under international law."

"These men live with the profound psychological and physical trauma of torture," she said, adding that "no adequate torture rehabilitation program has been made available" to men who were "aging rapidly and have increasingly complex medical conditions."

"The continuation of their detention in the site where they experienced such profound violations constitutes an unrelenting violation of their fundamental... human rights."

The men who had been transferred away from Guantanamo meanwhile had "continued to live in legal limbo, lacking remedy, legal status or rehabilitation in countries of resettlement or countries of origin. Their ongoing harms cannot and should not be ignored," she said, stressing that those responsible for the abuse "must be held accountable," she said.

While lamenting the situation, Ni Aolain hailed the invitation as "a positive step."

She said a preliminary invitation simply meant the parameters for the visit were still being discussed.

"The reason for that discussion is to ensure that the requirements of independence and impartiality of the mandate can be guaranteed, and that we have all of the conditions in place that allow a visit to occur in an unimpeded way." 

AFP