Guantanamo Bay detention camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a military prison established by the United States within the US Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beginning its operations in 2002. It was created to detain individuals designated as enemy combatants and suspected terrorists captured during the War on Terror, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The facility has been a focal point of international controversy due to its indefinite detention of prisoners without trial and reports of human rights abuses, including torture. Despite efforts by President Barack Obama in 2009 to close the camp, it remained open, housing forty-one detainees as of January 2017. The camp has undergone various transformations, with initial detainees housed in open-air cages before transitioning to more secure accommodations. The legal status of detainees has been contentious, with numerous cases reaching the US Supreme Court regarding their rights to contest their detention. Over the years, Guantanamo has sparked widespread debate over ethical treatment, national security, and the balance of justice, reflecting diverse perspectives on the implications of its continued existence.
Guantanamo Bay detention camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is an American military prison located within the US Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The United States began using the camp in 2002 to hold hundreds of people designated enemy combatants and suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. The facility generated worldwide controversy for holding many of its prisoners indefinitely without trial and torturing them. Though in 2009 President Barack Obama ordered that the Guantanamo prison be closed, it still held forty-one detainees in January 2017.
Origin of the Camp
On September 11, 2001, the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and part of the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Within weeks, the United States announced a global War on Terror and invaded Afghanistan to destroy the al-Qaeda network based there. As the US military began capturing key al-Qaeda officers and suspected planners of the 9/11 attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other nearby countries, officials determined that a secure facility outside US borders was needed to hold individuals they labeled enemy combatants.
By early 2002, the United States had settled on the naval station at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, which its military had been maintaining since 1903. Because the detention camp was to serve as a holding center for untried detainees and not a permanent prison for convicts, the United States claimed that it would adhere to the prescriptions of the Geneva Conventions, meant to prevent mistreatment of prisoners of war. With the intentions of the detention center established, Guantanamo Bay began receiving prisoners.
The Active Detention Camp
The first Guantanamo Bay detainees, a group of twenty captured in Afghanistan, arrived at the detention camp in January 2002 and were housed in Camp X-Ray. This outdoor facility featured open-air cage cells with metal roofs to protect inmates from harsh weather. The purpose of this cell design was to allow American guards full and constant visibility of all prisoners. Camp X-Ray closed in April 2002 and replaced by a new prison, Camp Delta. This camp held a maximum of two thousand prisoners in fully enclosed cells with such basic features as running water and toilets.
During 2003 and 2004, the United States continued its war in Afghanistan and began the war in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. By this time, the American military had captured hundreds of suspected terrorists and other enemy combatants and incarcerated them at Guantanamo. Much of the activity inside the camps, such as the nature of the prisoners' lives, remained secret.
Most of the news generated by Guantanamo in these years concerned the legal status of the prisoners, as many had been arrested and detained without being formally charged with crimes. American courts began addressing the manner in which the prisoners should be charged and tried. Ultimately, in mid-2004 the US Supreme Court decreed that all Guantanamo Bay prisoners could oppose their incarcerations in court. However, the review tribunals assigned to investigate detainees' claims moved slowly and had only heard a portion of cases by the end of the year.
In late 2004, the administration of President George W. Bush restated that the United States considered the Guantanamo detainees enemy combatants rather than traditional prisoners of war, because many had been arrested on suspicion of association with various terrorist groups. Therefore, the administration argued, the United States reserved the right to hold the detainees without trial and was not violating the Geneva Conventions. The review tribunals ceased immediately.
In mid-2005 Newsweek magazine published one of the first reports of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo when it claimed that American interrogators had been abusing the Korans, or Islamic holy books, of the camp's Muslim detainees. The interrogators' intentions allegedly were to force the prisoners to confess information by desecrating their sacred religious texts. The US Defense Department soon confirmed these rumors by stating that interrogators had variously kicked, stepped on, and thrown water on Korans for this purpose.
Further reports increased public interest in the camps. About this time, three former British prisoners of Guantanamo, who had been arrested on terrorist suspicions but were released in 2004, claimed that while imprisoned, they had been deprived of sleep, beaten, injected with drugs, and sexually abused. These allegations generated a global controversy surrounding the methods used by the United States in obtaining information from Guantanamo detainees. Critics explicitly call these actions torture.
In May 2006, the United Nations accused the United States of committing acts of torture by sexually abusing and waterboarding prisoners. This is the act of simulating drowning by pouring water over a rag on an individual's face. In late 2006, the Bush administration passed the Military Commissions Act to legalize the use of waterboarding to acquire enemy intelligence from Guantanamo detainees. These actions engendered fierce denunciations around the world from such organizations as Amnesty International, which accused the United States of abusing human rights. Such prisoner interrogations were ongoing when Bush left office in January 2009. At that time, 245 prisoners remained in the facility, and a total of nearly 800 had been imprisoned there since 2002.
Guantanamo under Obama
Immediately after taking office in January 2009, President Barack Obama ordered that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed within a year. He referred to its use by the United States as a shameful mark on the country's history.
But Obama's efforts to close Guantanamo proceeded slowly, as the process of releasing detainees or transferring them to other prisons proved complex. Congress placed restrictions on detainee transfers to the United States. The camp remained open in January 2015, though the detainee population had fallen to about 127. Some prisoners faced formal criminal charges while others had never been charged. At least one prisoner had been held there since 2002.
In his 2015 State of the Union address, Obama again pledged to close the camp. He said the prisons were used by terrorists to recruit new members.
In August 2016, the Obama administration announced that it had approved the transfer of fifteen more detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United Arab Emirates as part of the effort to close the facility through the transfer of prisoners to other countries. In addition to lambasting the decision to allow such a large transfer of Guantanamo prisoners considered to be threats to American society, critics continued to argue that the cost of renovating a US prison to hold transferred prisoners would be too high. In the months prior, more than fifty detainees had been reportedly transferred to more than ten different countries, bringing the Guantanamo population down to around sixty by late 2016.
In his final days in office in early 2017, Obama continued his effort to at least reduce the number of detainees at the prison. After the announcement that ten prisoners had been released to the country of Oman in mid-January, bringing the prison population down to forty-five, Obama revealed in a letter to Congress that four additional detainees had been transferred to other undisclosed countries. Therefore, by the time Donald Trump, who had always expressed disapproval with Obama's policy of transferring prisoners from the facility, was inaugurated as president on January 20, forty-one prisoners reportedly remained at Guantanamo.
Guantanamo Today
Despite Obama's attempt to close the detention center, in January 2018, Trump signed an executive order to keep Guantanamo open indefinitely. By the end of his term, only one person had been released. When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he continued Obama's campaign to close Guantanamo. During his term, twenty-five people were released from the detention center; however, the Biden administration also expanded several facilities at the site. In January 2025, fifteen detainees remained at the detention center. The same month, when Trump returned to the presidential office, he announced the intention to expand the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center in order to house up to 30,000 migrants.
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