FOR Johan Steyn, one of the three most important judges in Britain, torture in the U.S. prison in Guantánamo constitutes a monstrous failure of the judicial system. But it has not occurred to either the European Union or its governments to sanction or demand measures to be taken against Washington at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Almost every one of those countries have received protests from the lawyers and relatives of 660 prisoners, tortured and maintained in atrocious conditions for more than two years, but they limit themselves to formulating respectful statements or gestures to representatives of the country that governs the world as if it was its own backyard.

Another aspect is the type of action taken when it comes to small countries such as Cuba. Anyone can confirm that by reading the Spanish and particularly French newspapers or those of other countries, in spite of the fact that in the Cuban case, these are internal matters, not like those of the Spanish or French citizens interned on the base maintained by the United States in Guantánamo against the will of the Havana government. As the Spanish foreign minister admitted some months ago: "it’s a very delicate issue to criticize a country such as the United States."

The German DPA agency admits that "no charges have been brought against the prisoners in Guantánamo, who have been left with no legal assistance and no prospects of their suffering coming to an end."

"Meanwhile, visitors and family members report that the prisoners’ morale is below minimal," the DPA adds.

"I still don’t know what crime I’ve committed," British citizen Moazzam Begg wrote to his parents, according to Time magazine. "Little by little, I’m losing the battle against depression and desperation."

In Guantánamo, 32 detainees have already tried to commit suicide. Legal experts consider that the confessions that they have been able to get out of the prisoners – jailed for months in tiny cells of two by two-and-a-half meters – are worthless.

They indicate that out of desperation, these men have tried everything to get out of there, even when this means admitting that they have committed acts of terrorism. One of those able to get off the U.S. military base is Said Abaseen, a taxi driver from Kabul. In July, after having spent nine months locked up, he was sent home. To date, he insists that he does not known what the accusation against him was.

In the chaos that followed the war in Afghanistan, the warlords kidnapped numerous men who had been fingered as members of the Taliban or of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. With that, they pocketed the compensation offered by Washington for the arrests of those persons, according to Time.

Intelligence experts have admitted that no more than a handful of the men could be of any value to them, or have any relationship to Al Qaeda. Most of them are probably there because others turned them in for large sums of money. The United States supplied fistfuls of dollars to people in the street who would turn others in, promising them enough money for the rest of their lives.

Last November 10 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hold a hearing on whether the detention of the prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay prison could be considered legal. The country’s courts consider the prisoners as enemy combatants, although evidence is lacking in the majority of the cases.

The Supreme Court has limited the appeal to that specific issue. This means that the District of Columbia Court and the Appeals Court have summarily rejected the petitions for the application of habeas corpus for 12 Kuwaitis, two Britons and two Australians captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The U.S. government position accepted by these judicial petitions is that the prisoners are not located on sovereign U.S. territory, and so have nothing to do with the federal courts. Some observers have reacted to such an argument with smiles and others with indignation. After all, the terms of the lease between the Cuban and U.S. governments during the U.S. military occupation at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th state that the United States exercises complete jurisdiction over the said areas with the right to acquire ... for the public interest of the United States any land or property through purchase or the exercise of right to possession."

According to that powerful country’s legislation, the "lease" grants in deed and in fact, criminal and civil jurisdiction over all people located there to the United States. On its official web site, the U.S. Navy describes Guantánamo as a "naval reserve, which for all objective practices, is U.S. territory. The United States has exercised the essential elements of sovereignty over this territory for more than 100 years."