It still boils down to wether or not they are actually ‘enemy’ or ‘combatants’ or even ‘illegal’ and none of them yet have access to the means to show otherwise.
Not only is the fight over for them, for many it never even started.
They are completely out of the scope of war regulations.
As for protecting them whilst detained, there is no independant oversight of this process of detention, which there would be if they truly were POWs or criminals.
There is actaully no person assigned to look after their human rights, and this is deliberate, the term ‘illegal combatant’ was designed specifically so that independant observers do not have free access.
It allows the US agencies involved the ability to act completely unfettered by recognised standards, we are not even sure of the names and identities of those detained, some of them may well have been simple ‘dissappeared’ from Afghanistan into Gitmo, or any other detention, we simply do not know and the US government is now not a believable source regarding them.
All this could have been dismissed at a stroke by putting Gitmo under the auspices of the UN, the action in Afghanistan was sanctioned by the UN and the whole thing cold have been so much better dealt with.
They could have had UN inspectors in, did they ? nope.
Everything about Gitmo is about isolation and denial, in such conditions abuses are much more likely to take place, and given the events in Abu Ghraif, it would be a matter of some surprise if abuses were not taking place.
This is why these individuals need to have their status clarified, because if the US can do whatever it wants to these folk, it can certainly find its way to doing something similar to dissenters in the US and in that the US citizens rights are also being diminished.
Accusations of what is going on behind the razor wire are all the more credible because of this