Amnesty International is also renewing its request for access to the detainees held in Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay, who are due to be transferred later this month to a new facility under construction at the naval base. The organization has had no reply to its initial request made on 22 January.

As the memorandum details, the USA has denied or threatens to deny the internationally recognized rights of people taken into its custody in Afghanistan and elsewhere, some 300 of whom have been transferred to Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay.

Among other things, Amnesty International is concerned that the US Government has:

transferred and held people in conditions that may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and that violate other minimum standards relating to detention;

refused to grant people in its custody access to legal counsel, despite ongoing interrogations which may lead to prosecutions;

refused to grant people in its custody access to the courts to challenge the lawfulness of their detention;

refused to disclose full information about the circumstances of many of the arrests, including whether they occurred in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or elsewhere;

undermined human rights protections in cases of people taken into custody outside Afghanistan and transferred to Guantánamo Bay. For example, six Algerian nationals were seized in Bosnia-Herzegovina and transferred to Camp X-Ray, in apparent violation of Bosnian and international law;

undermined the presumption of innocence through a pattern of public commentary on the presumed guilt of the Guantánamo detainees;