The Yemeni Mansoor Adayfi spent 14 years in Guantánamo and ended up released without charges. Along with him, 15 other former inmates criticize that the Donald Trump Administration has expanded the use of the naval base to detain undocumented migrants: “No one deserves to be thrown into a system created to erase them,” they say in an open letter.

“Guantánamo is not just a prison: it is a place where the law is deformed, dignity is stripped of and suffering is hidden behind barbed wires. We live it. We know the metallic noise of the doors, the weight of the shackles and the silence of a world that looked away,” says that letter to which EFE had exclusive access.

The letter is promoted by Adayfi, coordinator of the Guantánamo Project within CAGE International.

Guantánamo, as he adds in an interview with EFE, “is a black hole. It can’t be called a prison or detention center because that means there are certain rights.”

Therefore, in his opinion, we should not focus on the treatment that newcomers may have, but on why they send them there in the first place and stop it: “Guantánamo is one of the greatest human rights violations of the 21st century,” he emphasizes from Serbia.

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Its London-based organization says it challenges the “state oppression” inspired by the “War on Terrorism” launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. (11S), where about 3,000 people died.

CAGE International defends the right to due process and in the past has criticized attempts to tarnish its reputation for the cases it leads.

Trump made the decision to expand the use of Guantánamo on January 29 with an executive order to enable 30,000 beds at that naval base in Cuba for undocumented migrants.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) has been operating there for years a detention center managed independently of the prison for suspected jihadism, but until now it had only received a limited number of people intercepted at sea, mostly from Haiti and Cuba.

“This order not only allows injustice, it guarantees it. Detaining migrants in Guantánamo denies them constitutional protections, trapping them in the same legal limbo that we endure. This deliberate ambiguity allows abuse, just as it happened with us. We know firsthand what happens with a system designed to break people,” say the former hostages.

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Among them are the Moroccan Ahmed Errachidi, the Algerians Lakhdar Boumediene and Sufyian Barhoumi, the Tunisian Hisham Sliti or the British Tarek Dergoul, Moazzam Begg, all repatriated without charges.

For the signatory group, sending migrants to Guantánamo is not a matter of security.

“It’s about power and control and using the darkness of Guantánamo to hide another injustice,” they add.

Earlier this month, a group of 15 human rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), actually asked the Government for access to migrants sent there, denouncing a lack of transparency about their legal situation.

The first prisoners arrived in Guantánamo in 2002, as part of that ‘War on Terrorism’ launched by former Republican President George W. Bush (2001 – 2009) after 11S. Of the nearly 780 that there were, there are 15, of which only two are convicted.

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For the ex-prisoners who support the letter, not closing that prison or taking into account its legacy has allowed both injustices to continue and “its expansion.”

Trump promised to send there “the worst illegal criminal immigrants who are a threat to the American people.”
“We refuse to allow others to be swallowed by the same nightmare that we endure. No one deserves to be thrown into a system created to erase them. We will not stop talking or fighting. We will not allow the horrors of Guantánamo to be repeated,” say the former inmates.

His message is clear. Not only do they want the prison to be closed and the executive order revoked, they also warn the Trump Administration that justice will be done. “Someday he will be accountable.”