After more than 18 years of the US war on terror there are still 40 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, guarded by 1,800 US soldiers and an additional 800 civilian workers in place. Five of these prisoners have long since been cleared for release by US agencies including the FBI, the military and the State Department.
Those are among 28 men who have never been charged with any crime. Twenty seven of the 40 were among the 119 men who suffered years of documented torture in CIA clandestine prisons in countries from Thailand to Lithuania, Poland and Romania, or in the prisons of US allies including Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.
These prisoners will remain in limbo for as far as they can see. That quality of detention – indefiniteness – has its own cruel effects, physically and psychologically. “I have become a body without a soul, I don’t belong to the world of living creatures,” wrote one of them, Zaher Hamdoun.
