Daryl Matthews is a medical doctor and a Professor of forensic Psychiatry at the University of Hawaii. [1] Matthews has served as a Psychiatric consultant to the US Army. Matthews has been called in to give advice about the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, where suspects in the global war on terror are held in extrajudicial detention.
The Guardian reports that, although he is personally opposed to the death penalty, Matthews has served as an expert witness in cases where the death penalty is a possible penalty, and his views may play a role in whether that sentences is imposed. [2]
CBS News cited an interview Matthews had done with the Associated Press where he commented about a June 2003 visit: [3]
According to CBS Matthews it was "appalling" that camp doctors were sharing information from the detainee's medical records in order to aid interrogators to use the detainee's weaknesses against them. He also said that information from the detainee's medical files could give interrogators "tremendous power". [4]
Al Jazeera attributed the following view to Matthews: [5] "Daryl Matthews, a professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Hawaii who examined the prisoners, stated that given the cultural differences between interrogators and prisoners, such a classification was difficult if not impossible."
In 2003 the British paper, The Guardian quoted Matthews about the composition of the detainee population at Guantanamo: [6]
Matthews pointed out that there are more secure prisons in the USA. [2] Matthews pointed out the elements that Guantanamo detainees experienced in common with criminals in US prisons. However, Matthews also pointed out unique stressors Guantanamo detainees experienced that common criminals do not:
According to The New Standard Matthews conducted clinical interviews with Salim Hamdan, one of the ten detainees who had faced charges before Guantanamo military commissions. [7] The New Standard reports that Matthews's court declaration about Hamdan described him as "particularly susceptible to mental coercion and false confession", because of the conditions of his detention. He also concluded that the "conditions of his confinement place Hamdan at significant risk of future psychiatric deterioration."
Abu Zubaydah is a Palestinian citizen born in Saudi Arabia currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).
Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to discipline or separate incarcerated individuals who are considered to be security risks to other incarcerated individuals or prison staff, as well as those who violate facility rules or are deemed disruptive. However, it can also be used as protective custody for incarcerated individuals whose safety is threatened by other prisoners. This is employed to separate them from the general prison population and prevent injury or death.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses included physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well as the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004, causing shock and outrage and receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that most detainees were civilians with no links to armed groups.
Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi is a Saudi Arabian citizen. He is alleged to have acted as a key financial facilitator for the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Medical torture describes the involvement of, or sometimes instigation by, medical personnel in acts of torture, either to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which will enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right. Medical torture overlaps with medical interrogation if it involves the use of professional medical expertise to facilitate interrogation or corporal punishment, in the conduct of torturous human experimentation or in providing professional medical sanction and approval for the torture of prisoners. Medical torture also covers torturous scientific experimentation upon unwilling human subjects.
The Salt Pit and Cobalt were the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It was located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the Afghanistan War. The CIA adapted it for extrajudicial detention.
Camp Iguana is a small compound in the detention camp complex on the US Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Camp Iguana originally held three child detainees, who camp spokesmen then claimed were the only detainees under age 16. It was closed in the winter of 2004 when the three were sent back to their native countries.
Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to November 2008. He admits to being Osama bin Laden's personal driver and said he needed the money.
Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer is a Saudi citizen who was held by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for more than thirteen years without charge.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, alias Zubair Zaid, is a Malaysian who is alleged to be a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah and al Qaeda. He is currently in American custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He is one of the 14 detainees who had previously been held for years at CIA black sites. In the ODNI biographies of those 14, Amin is described as a direct subordinate of Hambali. Farik Amin is also a cousin of well-known Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir.
Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, also known as Allal Ab Aljallil Abd al Rahman, was a Yemeni citizen imprisoned at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from January 2002 until his death in custody there, ruled a suicide.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB), also called GTMO on the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was established in January 2002 by U.S. President George W. Bush to hold terrorism suspects and "illegal enemy combatants" during the Global War on Terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.
Camp 1391, also referred to as Unit 1391 or Facility 1391, is an Israel Defense Forces prison camp in northern Israel for "high-risk" prisoners. It is run by Unit 504. The existence of the prison was unknown to the public before 2003, and most information about it remains classified, although the Supreme Court of Israel ordered the release of some information about the jail.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
The Parwan Detention Facility is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration. The Parwan Detention Facility, which housed foreign and local combatants, was maintained by the Afghan National Army.
Separate facilities exist to provide for Guantanamo detainees' medical care.
According to UN experts, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba is a site of "unparalleled notoriety" and has been condemned as a site of "unrelenting human rights violations." The facility has been holding prisoners for over 20 years. A document released by the Amnesty International reported ongoing and historic human rights violations at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.
During the Israel–Hamas war, Israel has systematically tortured Palestinians detained in its prison system. This torture has been reported by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as Israeli nonprofit human rights organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights Israel and B'Tselem.