Seven legal briefs, filed by former diplomats, former military judges, and others, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to hear the cases of some of the 660 prisoners in Cuba as well as American Yaser Esam Hamdi, who is being held in a Navy brig in South Carolina.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union joined four other US rights groups in filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records relating to allegations of torture and abuse in Guantanamo and other US detention facilities.
The rush of renewed criticism comes as the Defense Department investigates possible espionage at Guantanamo. Two language translators have been charged in connection with alleged security breaches, and a Muslim chaplain was charged yesterday with disobeying orders for improperly handling classified information.
The common criticism of the prisoner program is that men and boys captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the counterterror war are being held with no legal process and no indication when they might have access to one.
"They have no idea about their fate, and they have no means of recourse at their disposal through any legal mechanism," said Florian Westphal of the ICRC, which ended a visit there on Thursday.
International rights groups say the indefinite detentions have probably promoted prisoners' hopelessness and thus contributed to 32 suicide attempts by 27 detainees.
"We have observed what we consider to be a worrying deterioration in the psychological health of a large number of the internees," Westphal said in Geneva.
The neutral, Swiss-run organization has been appealing in private to the Bush administration for due process since soon after the detention center was opened in early 2002, the spokesman noted. Westphal said the ICRC, the only independent body with access to the detainees, had yet to see "any significant movement" from US officials to its longstanding request that the detainees be given legal rights in accordance with international conventions governing prisoners or war.
