Groups urge end to Guantanamo

Amnesty International has undertaken global vigils in countries including Israel, Italy, the US, Japan, Spain, and the UK, to mark the fifth anniversary of the camp's opening.

Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based centre for constitutional rights, said: "It has become iconic in the Muslim world and the wider world ... for everything that the US has done wrong in the war on terror."

Irene Khan, Amnesty International's secretary-general, said: "No individual can be placed outside the protection of the rule of law, and no government can hold itself above the rule of law.

"The US government must end this travesty of justice."

Five years

The first detainees flown to Guantanamo five years ago were captured in the US-led war on Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

Harry Harris, a navy commander of the detention centre, said: "What we are doing is an important and integral part of the global war on terror."

"We're keeping enemies of our nation, enemy combatants, or terrorists if you will, off the battlefield.

"We don't do anything today that's coercive in nature. I believe we are doing things correctly here."

The detention camp itself has undergone a transformation since the early days when prisoners were kept in metal open-air cages and used buckets for toilets.

Jumana Musa, Amnesty's advocacy director for international justice, told Al Jazeera: "People ask, have conditions improved since it was opened five years ago? Absolutely.

"But one of the things that is a lot less tangible and harder to understand is not the physical abuses, but the mental pressure, the mental stress and the psychological strain of indefinite arbitrary detention."

James Carafarno, Heritage Foundation expert on military affairs, however, denied this interpretation.

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