https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2019/04/guantanamo-nursing-home-terrorist-suspects/156575/
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS
SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT
APRIL 26, 2019
2019
POLICY
Guantanamo Is Becoming a Nursing Home for Its Aging Terror Suspects
The Pentagon is required to give Gitmo detainees the same medical care as U.S. troops. How's that going to work?
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — The oldest man still held in military detention here is 71 years old. Many others are in their 50s.
It’s not entirely clear how the U.S. government plans to care for them in their old age.
The 40 remaining prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base have the same physical ailments of any aging population. They need hip replacements, eye surgeries, treatment for sleep apnea, mental health disorders and, one day, probably cancer and dementia. As the military commissions designed by the Bush administration lurch unevenly towards convictions — a federal appeals court recently tossed aside three years of litigation in the USS Cole case — it appears increasingly likely that many of these men will grow old and die on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime.
The aging population at Gitmo poses unique challenges for Adm. John Ring, the latest in a string of officers who have led the prison on one-year deployments. Defense attorneys say many detainees suffer the ill effects of brutal interrogation tactics now considered to be torture. The United States has committed to providing the same health care to the remaining detainees that it provides to its own troops, as required by the Geneva Conventions. But the secure medical facilities built to treat the detainees — Ring calls them “guests” — can’t cope with every kind of surgery geriatric patients typically need, and weren’t built to last forever. Congress has prohibited the transfer of detainees to the continental United States, which means any treatment they receive will have to take place at a remote outpost on the tip of Cuba.