UN torture investigator barred from US prisons
‘On Tuesday, Juan Méndez, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, accused the United States government of refusing him access to Guantánamo Bay and other federal prisons, where he wishes to investigate the use of solitary confinement. Méndez said he has been in talks with US officials for two years without receiving a positive answer.
In his latest report delivered in Geneva, Méndez said he wants to visit federal prisons in New York and Colorado and state prisons in New York, California, Louisiana and other states. He claims that while the US State Department has purportedly been working to help him gain access to state prisons, in one of his last conversations, “they said that federal prisons were unavailable.”
Méndez said he sought to investigate US federal prisons because “it is not rare” for prisoners to spend between 25 and 30 years in solitary confinement—locked in a cell with no human contact for 23 hours a day.’
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