You might have noticed a few people dressed in bright orange jumpsuits on a recent Saturday in downtown Greenfield. Those orange suits are the uniforms worn by the prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

As of April 2023, the U.S. has detained 779 people at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Seven hundred and forty of them have been transferred elsewhere. Thirty remain there. Nine died while in custody there.

The prison was established by U.S. President George W. Bush in January 2002 after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Military commissions were created to offer trials for some of the detainees. They have proven ineffective and unfair, denying defendants an impartial arbiter and access to critical evidence. Many of the detainees were tortured. None has had a fair trial.

A recent headline from Amnesty International stated, “Amnesty International condemns 21 years of U.S. ongoing human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay prison.”

Read Monsoor Adayfi’s book “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo.” Call our senators: Elizabeth Warren at 202-224-4543 and Ed Markey at 617-565-8519. Please compensate those who were detained and those who still are being detained at Guantanamo.

Ellen Kaufmann

Buckland