One of Guantanamo Bay’s two courthouses is seen through a broken window at Camp Justice at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. (AP Photo)

The United Nations’ top investigator on the use of torture has accused Washington of dragging its feet over his requested visits to prisons and refusing to give him access to inmates at Guantánamo.

Juan Méndez said he had been waiting for more than two years for the United States to provide him access to a range of state and federal prisons, where he wants to probe the use of solitary confinement.

Méndez told reporters in Geneva he wanted to visit federal prisons in New York and Colorado and state prisons in New York, California and Louisiana, among others.

He said the US state department had been working to help him gain access to the state prisons, but after two years of discussions he had yet to receive a positive answer.

“And in one of my last conversations they said that federal prisons were unavailable,” he said.

Read more at: The Guardian

Above is from post at Mint Press:

http://www.mintpressnews.com/un-torture-expert-refused-access-to-guantanamo-bay-and-us-federal-prisons/203296/

Recent Headlines from other websites. From DemocracyNow:

Supreme Court Rejects Case of Guantánamo Prisoner Held in “Kafkaesque
Nightmare”
       The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a Syrian man who sued
       the U.S. government over his seven-year wrongful imprisonment at
       Guantánamo. Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al Janko was detained by the
       United States in 2002 after [he was] being tortured by al-Qaeda and
       imprisoned by the Taliban on suspicion of being a Western spy. In
       the lawsuit, al Janko described his time at Guantanamo as a
       “Kafkaesque nightmare,” saying he was tortured, beaten, subjected
       to sleep deprivation and urinated on by U.S. soldiers. He said he
       attempted suicide 17 times. In 2009, a judge ordered his release,
       saying the claim he was part of al-Qaeda “defies common sense.” But
       on Monday, the Supreme Court left in place a lower court ruling
       Janko cannot sue because he is an enemy combatant.

Meanwhile, in a    second decision, the court declined to take a case concerning
       videos and photographs which, according to the Center for
       Constitutional Rights, would prove the torture of another
       Guantánamo prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani. The move leaves in place
       a lower court ruling the images could threaten national security by
       stoking anti-U.S. sentiment.
     From DemocracyNow.org

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/10/headlines

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