As the U.S. marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks, Amnesty International USA’s Chief Human Rights Strategy Officer Scott Roehm said:
“Al-Qaeda’s September 11th attacks were a crime against humanity that killed nearly 3000 people. The U.S. government could have responded by upholding human rights and the rule of law while pursuing justice and accountability for victims’ families. Instead, it embarked on a campaign of widespread abuses against Muslim, Brown and Black communities, including arbitrary detentions and mass surveillance in the U.S.; unlawful lethal air strikes abroad; enforced disappearances and torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and at CIA black sites; and the opening of the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center.
“The choice to engage in torture, then build prosecutions against those alleged to be most responsible for 9/11 on the back of torture-derived evidence, is largely why, 25 years later, there has been neither justice nor finality for victims’ families. The secretive Guantanamo military commissions, created from whole cloth to handle nearly 800 such cases, have succeeded only in violating international and U.S. law.
“It has reached the point where children and grandchildren of 9/11 victims have had to make heartbreaking pleas to the U.S. government to achieve justice in a way that respects human rights and the rule of law. To no avail. Today, the military commissions continue to drag on, and Guantanamo remains open. What’s more, the Trump administration has seized on the failure to close Guantanamo, using the site as a cog in its unlawful mass deportation machine by detaining and violating the rights of hundreds of immigrants.
“The U.S. government must end the last 25 years of abuses, starting by shuttering the military commissions in a way that best respects the rights of both victims’ families and the accused, releasing the men who have not been charged with a crime and closing Guantanamo for good. U.S. officials who orchestrated post-9/11 abuses must also be held accountable, and their victims must receive meaningful remedy and reparation.”
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