Former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi addresses OSCE meeting on torture prevention in Vienna

Congratulations to former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi, who spoke at a “Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna on June 30.

The OSCE’s members come from 57 states across Europe, North America, and Asia (including the US), and the event — “The US Torture Programs: CIA Black Sites, Abu Ghraib, and Guantánamo — Authorized. Legalized. Developed. Documented. Unprosecuted” — was described by Mansoor as “the first time in OSCE history” that “a dedicated event on the US torture programs” had taken place.

Held at Guantánamo without charge or trial from 2002 to 2016, when he was resettled in Serbia, Mansoor was joined by former Guantánamo interrogator Mark Fallon, and, via Zoom, Prof. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur who visited Guantánamo in 2023.

Mansoor wrote, “This event mattered because it happened at all. For twenty-five years, the architects of this program have walked free. For twenty-five years, the victims have been waiting. Today, in a room of OSCE participating states — some of whom were complicit — we put the evidence on the table and refused to let it be called history.”

He added, “I was the only person at the conference who spoke about Palestinian prisoners being tortured by Israel. It is the same architecture of impunity — built to protect torturers, shield abuser states, and silence victims. We cannot talk about torture prevention while ignoring Palestinian prisoners and their suffering. Prevention means nothing without accountability. And accountability requires us to name the states, name the individuals, and put the victims at the center — not the politics.”

Mansoor Adayfi’s speech at the OSCE's Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on torture prevention

I was only eighteen years old when I was kidnapped, sold to the United States, and taken to CIA black sites. I was tortured for months. Then I was taken to Guantánamo, where I spent around fifteen years without charge or trial.

For the first time, a survivor of the CIA black sites and Guantánamo is at an OSCE meeting on torture prevention. For twenty years, you discussed torture in this room, while those tortured were not present.

What was done to me was not an aberration. It was policy.

The United States built the most expensive torture program in human history, spanning three continents, costing more than $300 million by its own Senate's accounting. They paid two psychologists $81 million to design the methods. They called it "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques."

Authorized. Developed. Legalized. Documented. Unprosecuted.

That is not a failure of accountability, but rather impunity operating as designed.

Abu Zubaydah is among the most tortured men in CIA history. He has been held at Guantánamo for more than twenty years without charge. Last December, a review board ruled his detention "remains necessary" — without providing a single reason. The men who tortured him are free, while he remains in a cell.

Gul Rahman was killed in the CIA black site known as the Salt Pit on November 20, 2002. His family was never informed of his death. They learned what happened in 2010, when an Associated Press investigation revealed his death. His four daughters still cannot bury their father because the United States has refused to disclose the location of his body, citing national security. No one was charged.

Now I speak directly to the states in this room.

Poland, Romania, and Lithuania hosted CIA black sites. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that all three violated the prohibition on torture. They paid damages. They opened no criminal investigations.

The United Kingdom passed intelligence to the CIA for Abu Zubaydah's interrogation while knowing he was being tortured. This year, Britain paid him substantial compensation — without admitting wrongdoing.

And as we sit here today, Israel — an OSCE Mediterranean Partner for Cooperation — is committing torture and sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners, women and children - and even against OSCE state citizens- on an industrial scale. This body must act.

Our demands are clear: the United States must be held accountable. Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom must open criminal investigations. The OSCE must mandate a review of how participating and partner states cooperate with systematic torture — past and present. It must raise the situation of Palestinian prisoners with Israel directly.