TEN years ago, in the aftermath of 911, US president George W. Bush ordered the establishment of a prison designed to hold 'enemy combatants' captured in the 'war on terror'.

That prison Guantánamo with its hoods and orange boiler suits, cages and razor wire stockades, soon came to symbolise arbitrary detention, rendition, torture and other abuse, and the overall failure of US authorities to respect the detainees' human rights.

Bush's successor, President Barack Obama, pledged to close Guantánamo by January 2010. Nearly three years after his promise, Guantánamo is still open, and more than 150 men are still there.

Guantánamo was always designed to be difficult. Its location, on the grounds of a US navy base in Cuba, was selected in part to avoid US laws on habeas corpus. Its isolation meant operations could avoid scrutiny. There was restricted access for lawyers, no family visits and virtually no contact with the outside world.

Things didn't happen at Guantánamo by accident.

Senior army officials dubbed it 'America's Battle Lab' endorsing an environment'conducive to extracting information by exploiting the detainees' vulnerabilities'.

Inhuman and degrading treatment and conditions were common, and the facility was connected to wider systems of secret detention and torture.

The US used secrecy to hide the human rights violations and did little or nothing to hold those responsible to account.

For years, the men held at Guantánamo were denied the right to court hearings on the lawfulness of their detention.

The few that did face trial faced ad hoc military commissions, not ordinary courts of law, which applied rules that fell far short of international fair trial standards. The military tribunals retain a primary role today, with their use seemingly becoming even more entrenched.

President Obama has backed away from his promise to close Guantánamo, citing an obstructionist Congress, domestic pressures and a climate of fear in the US as reasons he can't act.

But this can't be a valid excuse. The US doesn't accept that reasoning from other countries. And the rest of the world shouldn't accept it from the US.

The US speaks the language of human rights fluent-ly on the global stage, but it stutters when discussing its own behaviour. Both Bush and Obama promised to put human rights at the centre of their counter-terrorism strategles. Instead, the message sent by the US government by the continuing existence of Guantánamo and the policies it represents is that the whole world is the battleground in a global 'war' in which human rights don't apply and in which the US has the exclusive right to make up its own rules.

Under this approach, humane treatment of prisoners looks more like a policy choice, not the legal requirement it is, the right to a fair trial is made to depend on the accused's nationality or domestic political considerations and human rights can be discarded if they conflict with 'domestic values'. It means that justice is tilted in the government's favour, that trials, including those carrying the death penalty, can be held in front of military tribunals, and that prisoners can be held indefinitely even if a court orders otherwise.

Under this approach, prisoners are left without remedy. Victims of the Sept 11 attacks are themselves deprived of the right to see those responsible brought totrial before proper courts.

And double standards are the order of the day.

These are the messages that Guantánamo sends to the world. If the US government really wants to demonstrate its commitment to human rights it must close Guantánamo and end the policies of disrespect for human rights that it has come to symbolise. It must disavow its doctrine of global war and embrace international human rights standards. And it must hold accountable those responsible for secret detentions, torture and rendition.

President Obama has said that Guantánamo was a 'misguided experiment', but he has kept the laboratory operating.

Ten years on from its creation, Guantánamo is still open, still violating human rights. It remains the wrong answer to the crimes of 9/11 and all other related outrageous crimes. It symbolises a decade-long assault by the US on the most fundamental human rights principles. The long shadow Guantánamo casts will continue until it and all that it represents are finally made a matter of history.

The writer is senior director, Amnesty International.