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This report is a response to President Obama's January 22, 2009 executive order directing the Secretary of Defense to perform a review of detention conditions at Guantánamo to ensure that detainees at Guantánamo were held "in conformity with all applicable laws governing the conditions of such confinement, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.” The review team was given 30 thirty days to complete the inspections and report back.
The exective summary states,
"...The Review Team conducted 13 days of investigation on site that included more than 100 interviews with JTF-Guantánamo leadership, support staff, interrogators, and guards, multiple announced and unannounced inspections of all camps during daylight and night operations, reviewed numerous reports, video, discipline records, and observed many aspects of daily operations. Collectively, we talked to a number of detainees and observed detainee activities, including enteral feedings and interrogations. The review Team also solicited a sampling of opinion, studies, and published works, which reflected the perspective of detainees and other concerned interest groups, many with recommendations to improve detention conditions. This included our request for additional views from four organizations who wrote to the President concerning Guantánamo on January 30, 2009: Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International. These organizations responded to that request on February 6, 2009, and their submissions were carefully considered.
After considerable deliberation and a comprehensive review, it is our judgment that the conditions of confinement in Guantánamo are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
In our view, there are two components in the scope of the compliance review taken from Common Article 3: the first is the explicit prohibition against specified acts (at any time and at any place). Any substantiated evidence of prohibited acts discovered in the course of the review would have warranted a finding of “non-compliance” with Common Article 3. We found no such evidence.
Additionally, determining conformity with Common Article 3 requires examination of the directive aspect of the Article, this being that “Persons…shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.” This element of the effort demanded that the Review Team examine conditions of detention based upon our experience and professional backgrounds, informed and challenged by outside commentary. As a result of that effort, we find that the conditions of confinement in Guantánamo also meet the directive requirements of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
While we conclude that conditions at Guantánamo are in conformity with Common Article 3, from our review, it was apparent that the chain of command responsible for the detention mission at Guantánamo consistently seeks to go beyond a minimalist approach to compliance with Common Article 3, and endeavors to enhance conditions in a manner as humane as possible consistent with security concerns. In this regard, in this report our team has identified a number of items which we recommend the Department of Defense continue to pursue consistent with that humane approach described above, or in several cases, items that we recommend for JTF-Guantánamo that are not now in place. In this report, we do not intend to suggest that these recommendations are items that the Department must pursue to satisfy Common Article 3. Rather, they are items that we view as consistent with the approach of the Chain of Command to continually enhance conditions of detainment.
Broadly stated, among the things we recommend:
First, in our view, socialization, or interaction among the detainees, is important because of the length of time individuals at Guantánamo have been detained. Current socialization practices are in conformity with Common Article 3. However, the team believes that in certain camps, further socialization is essential to maintain humane treatment over time. In our opinion, the key to socialization is providing more human-to-human contact, recreation opportunities with several detainees together, intellectual stimulation, and group prayer.
Second, the Review Team recognized that detainee access to high quality healthcare services is a fundamental aspect of humane treatment that is greatly enhanced by appropriate human-to-human contact and socialization between detainees and healthcare providers. JTF-Guantánamo appreciates that delivery of quality healthcare requires trusting relationships between providers and their patients. Although this type of trusting relationship is difficult to achieve in a custodial environment, the Review Team makes recommendations that can serve to enhance further the high quality of care delivered to detainees.
Third, as long as JTF-Guantánamo is operational, it will continue to require extensive resources. The most significant activity in this regard involves the continued support for camp improvement projects currently underway that affect the ability to provide socialization opportunities. Enhancement of humane treatment, as the operation continues, and as the detainee population spends more time under U.S. control, will also require strengthening of internal controls and continued dedication of both funds and personnel. As a related matter, the Review Team recommends additional actions to maintain the firewall protections that separate current intelligence gathering and healthcare.
Fourth, we endorse the use of video recording in all camps and for all interrogations. The use of video recordings to confirm humane treatment could be an important enabler for detainee operations. Just as internal controls provide standardization, the use of video recordings provides the capability to monitor performance and maintain accountability.
Finally, the Review Team has also made several recommendations to sustain a humane treatment standard in the face of individual detainees’ uncertainty and anxiety about their futures. We conclude that certainty regarding the detainees’ future has a direct correlation to detainee behavior and therefore, conditions inside the camp population. There are still some detainees in Guantánamo despite court orders that the U.S. government has failed to meet its burden that they are enemy combatants. Understandably, these detainees continue to express their extreme frustration with their continued detention. This is a great concern to the Review Team because it complicates conditions of detention. Therefore, the Review Team strongly endorses the continued interagency process to resolve these detainees’ future."
