Medan, Indonesia – A reported outbreak of COVID-19 at the United States’s Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba is causing concern for the legal counsel and family members of detainees amid a lack of transparency about the status of those affected.
“As I understand it, many detainees in both camps have contracted COVID within the last couple of weeks, although the US government will not confirm numbers,” Alka Pradhan, an international human rights lawyer who represents one of the detainees at Guantanamo, told Al Jazeera.
She added it was not clear how the virus was introduced to the camps and that some of the camp’s guards were also ill.
“It’s a massive outbreak,” another source familiar with the situation and speaking on condition of anonymity told Al Jazeera. “This is the most severe outbreak in the detainee population in the camp itself ever and it is the first time that something like this has happened on this scale.”
“As Guantanamo is so politically sensitive, the US government should be making handling it a priority.”
The highly secretive US-run prison in Cuba, which opened as part of the so-called “war on terror” in the wake of the September 11, 2011 attacks, currently has some 34 detainees split across two camps.
The outbreak is thought to have been gathering momentum since last month.
“It took days for the government to notify any of the lawyers that their clients had tested positive and when we asked about what treatment options were available, we were told to file a discovery request,” Pradhan said.
A discovery request is the formal process of exchanging information between legal parties about the witnesses and evidence to be presented at trial.
“Secrecy is the priority, not care.”
Ageing population
While Guantanamo Bay once held some 780 prisoners, it now operates only Camp 5 and Camp 6 – the first for so-called “high value” detainees and the second for those designated “low value”.
“High-value” inmates are those who were transferred to Guantanamo in 2006 and 2007 after being held at overseas CIA facilities known as “black sites”, where they were subjected to torture including beatings, waterboarding and sexual assault.
Many of the men are suffering from health conditions as a result of their treatment and prolonged detention.
