The final 30 detainees at Guantánamo Bay, together with the lads accused of plotting the Sept. 11 assaults, are being held by the United States beneath circumstances that represent “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law,” a United Nations human rights investigator stated on Monday.

Fionnuala Ni Aolain, a regulation professor in Minnesota serving as particular rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, included the discovering in a report drawn from a four-day visit to the jail in February, which included conferences with an undisclosed variety of detainees and interviews with attorneys and former prisoners. She issued the report one month earlier than her time period as rapporteur ends.

She particularly cited the cumulative results of insufficient well being care, solitary confinement, restraints and use of drive to take away prisoners from their cells as contributing to her conclusions. She stated the situations on the jail “may also meet the legal threshold for torture.”

Ms. Aolain was the primary United Nations investigator to be granted entry to the detention heart in its two-decade historical past. She stated in an interview that she met with a cross part of the 34 prisoners who had been there in February, together with former C.I.A. detainees who’re dealing with legal costs and others who’ve been authorized for switch to different nations. Today, 30 remain.

As a part of her mandate, Ms. Aolain additionally met with households of the victims of terrorism.

The report known as the assaults on Sept. 11, 2001, “a crime against humanity.” But Ms. Aolain pointedly known as the United States and its use of torture on the lads now dealing with legal costs at Guantánamo Bay “the single most significant barrier to fulfilling victims’ rights to justice and accountability.”

The torture, she stated, “was a betrayal of the rights of victims” of the 9/11 assaults.

In response, the Biden administration released a one-page defense of the detention operation, saying that present detainees on the Pentagon jail “live communally and prepare meals together; receive specialized medical and psychiatric care; are given full access to legal counsel; and communicate regularly with family members.”

The report highlighted the case of Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a former aide to Osama bin Laden who’s serving a life sentence “in isolation, raising serious concerns of solitary confinement in contravention of international law.” The jail intends to place him close to different detainees 4 hours a day, the report stated, however might not adhere to that plan.

Ms. Aolain supplied the most recent in mounting international criticism of well being care supplied to the detainees, significantly the inadequacy of services on the base to deal with “an aging, vulnerable population” and the absence of “comprehensive holistic torture rehabilitation.”

She urged the United States to ascertain an unbiased, civilian well being care program for prisoners who had been tortured by the United States.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 4 different prisoners accused of plotting the Sept. 11 assaults are making a similar demand in negotiations that had been initiated greater than a yr in the past by prosecutors, who proposed that the lads would plead responsible in trade for all times in jail, fairly than face a loss of life penalty trial.

Ms. Aolain stated detainees have everlasting disabilities, traumatic mind accidents and persistent ache — together with joint, gastrointestinal and urinary points — in addition to untreated post-traumatic stress dysfunction. She blamed torture and rendition applications for among the medical points. She attributed a few of them to long-term detention, starvation hanging and compelled feeding at Guantánamo Bay.

Ms. Aolain’s go to was the primary identified go to to the jail infrastructure by an unbiased observer for the reason that detention heart’s workers dismantled media relations in April 2019.

Until this yr, successive U.S. administrations had given solely the Red Cross and protection attorneys entry to the ability and to speak to the prisoners. The Biden administration supplied the rapporteur a go to as a part of an initiative to extra actively have interaction with U.N. human rights investigative our bodies.

The report criticized the United States for failing to supply trauma therapy and make sure the rights of the greater than 700 former Guantánamo prisoners. Most have been repatriated though some, largely Yemenis, had been despatched to different international locations for resettlement.

She described the launched prisoners as stigmatized by their detention, in some instances disadvantaged of primary human rights and requiring reparations. She additionally urged reparations for the present detainees and victims of terrorism, significantly the kids of Sept. 11 victims, saying they need to be permitted to pursue monetary, instructional and trauma help as treatments {that a} surviving mum or dad might have waived.

The White House didn’t challenge a response to Ms. Aolain’s remarks on Monday. But President Biden released a statement noting that it was the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture and declaring the United States’ “opposition to all forms of inhumane treatment and our commitment to eliminating torture and assisting torture survivors as they heal and in their quests for justice.”

Mr. Biden criticized torture in Russia, Syria and North Korea, including, “I call on all nations around the world to join me in supporting rehabilitation and justice for torture survivors and in taking action to eliminate torture and inhumane treatment for good.”

Ms. Aolain, nevertheless, pointedly argued that the United States had an obligation to deal with its legacy of torture. “There is no statute for limitations on torture,” she stated. “Those who perpetrated it, engaged in it, concealed it … remain liable for the entirety of their lives.”