ALTHOUGH reduced to a few dozen prisoners — six of them Pakistani nationals — Guantanamo Bay has held terror suspects indefinitely, for the most part without fair trials.

Years of arbitrary detention and the use of sustained abuse and excessive interrogation techniques, that reportedly have not stopped, makes the case for the prison’s closure even more compelling.

This week a group of independent experts reporting to the UN Human Rights Council have asked for the release of Pakistani national Ammar al-Baluchi while condemning both detainee conditions and the use of degrading interrogation techniques.

Held at Guantanamo since 2006, his imprisonment breaches at least 13 international human rights covenants, they said.

Denied due process and a fair trial under the US judicial system, even the UN special rapporteur on torture found the prisoner was still being tortured.

If there are reasons to suspect Ammar al-Baluchi for acts of terrorism (he was briefly married to Aafia Siddiqui, and is a nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), there must be a fair investigation and trial.

It must be noted that the UN has pointed to his detention as “an act of discrimination based on his status as a foreign national and his religion”.

Moreover, the Pakistani government should push for fair trials for other detained citizens — including Ahmed Rabbani, a taxi driver rendered in 2002.

The failure of the Foreign Office to pursue cases of detained citizens cleared for legal release from Guantanamo but still languishing incommunicado is reprehensible.

It is hard to recall when our government has registered its protest over the torture of detainees in such jails.

Justice Project Pakistan, for instance, had alerted the Lahore High Court to the inhumane treatment of Pakistani prisoners at Bagram in Afghanistan — until then, the government had been apparently clueless about the fate of many men rendered to the Americans by the Musharraf regime.

Indefinite detention without charge is intolerable.

The US must recognise civilian courts have brought more terrorist suspects to trial than military tribunals in Guantanamo.

For this, Congress must release funds to try alleged terrorists on US soil.

Torture must not continue on any American president’s watch.

A Pakistani detainee on hunger strike encapsulates this fight against injustice: “I don’t want to die, but after four years of peaceful protest I am hardly going to stop ... I will definitely stop when President Trump frees the prisoners who have been cleared, and allows everyone else a fair trial.”

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2018