Guantanamo conditions 'deteriorate'

On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay's high security Echo Block. He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying he was going to change things, that he would close the prison," Gharani, who was released in June, says. "Even the guards were telling us that if he won, things would improve for us." They were to be disappointed. A year after Obama's election win, Al Jazeera has learned that despite the new president's pledge to close the prison and improve the conditions of detainees held by the US military, prisoners believe that their treatment has deteriorated on his watch. Authorities at the prison deny mistreating the inmates, but interviews with former detainees, letters from current prisoners and sworn testimony from independent medical experts who have visited the prison have painted a disturbing picture of psychological and physical abuse very much at odds with White House rhetoric on prisoner treatment. While no-one is alleging a return to the early days of the prison, when detainees were subjected to "enhanced interrogation" techniques that are today widely regarded as torture, prisoners say day-to-day life at Guantanamo has become harder under the Obama administration.