Expert of UN said today that the US government’s treatment of Guantanamo detainees was cruel, inhuman and degrading under international law and called on the Washington to apologize and give reparations.

“I noticed that after two decades of detention, the suffering of the prisoners is deep and continues,” said Fionuala Ní Aolén told reporters he had just completed the first official visit by a UN expert to the detention center at the US Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba.

“Every detainee I have met lives with the irreparable harms resulting from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention,” he said, citing what he called the unjustified use of restraints and near-constant surveillance.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The prison was created in 2002 by the then US president George Bush on the detention of foreign terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Its population at its peak was about 800 inmates before it began to decline.

The president Joe Biden has stated that he wants to close his prison Guantanamobut has yet to present a plan for it, and nearly 30 prisoners remain in it.

The independent expert’s comments add to recent criticism of the Red Cross and another UN agency. “The US government must urgently provide a judicial resolution, an apology and guarantees of non-repetition” of this, he added.