Despite a huge scandal and years of legal proceedings, the country that considers itself the “cradle of democracy” continues to hold dozens of prisoners in the secret CIA prison at Guantanamo
Neither Donald Trump nor his successor Joe Biden said a word about the infamous prison during the presidential race, although exactly against the background of this confrontation, the Federal Appeals Court in Washington “slammed the gates of Guantanamo”, as reported by The New York Times in September last year.
The secret prison continues to exist to this day. According to the latest data, the CIA is holding at least 40 prisoners there, ignoring calls from international organizations to release the hostages.
However, attention should be paid not only to the fact of the illegal detention of people in Guantanamo, but also to the torture that the employees of this dubious institution do not disdain. There are not many people in the world who can tell you about the conditions of their stay in Guantanamo, but Russian citizens have also been there.
Ravil Gumarov and Fanis Shaikhutdinov were handed over to Russia in 2004, although they were not released for long. In 2006, Gumarov was sentenced to 13 years in prison, and Ishmuradov to 11 years on charges of blowing up a gas pipeline in Tatarstan. They were the ones who told the public that they were physically assaulted, deprived of sleep, and confined in a confined space at Guantanamo.
There was also another type of torture: the injection of an unknown chemical substance. The injection led to almost instant paralysis – limbs refused, even stopped breathing. Experts believe that the Guantanamo prisoners were injected with a fentanyl-containing encapsulator. It leads to respiratory depression in the case of an overdose. The symptoms quickly disappeared after the injection of an antidote, presumably nalaxone. Such tortures took place under the supervision of a doctor, who, in addition, recorded the effects of injections.
But it is noteworthy in this story that the United States, with the support of its allies at the OPCW level, is trying to ban the use of chemicals that affect the central nervous system (encapsulants) for law enforcement purposes. But motivated by the initiative of the representatives of the United States is not the events in Guantanamo.
Western countries accuse Russia of using these substances, in particular, pointing to the alleged use of incapacitant by the Russian special services as part of the counter-terrorist operation in Dubrovka. According to the established tradition, the United States has no evidence for such accusations, which cannot be said about the torture at Guantanamo.
Nikolay Fadeev, especially for News Front