Guantanamo Bay Cuba

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a controversial United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba that was established in January 2002. Bush Administration Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld offered three explanations for the decision to establish the prison camp during a January 22, 2002 press conference: to detain extraordinarily dangerous prisoners, to interrogate prisoners in an optimal setting, and to prosecute prisoners for war crimes.[1] War captives in the Global War on Terror, most of them from the Afghanistan and much smaller numbers later from Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia were transported to the prison.

The facility is operated by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) of the United States government in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which fronts on Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.[2] Detainment areas consisted of three camps: Camp Delta (including Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray, but Camp X-Ray is now closed. The facility is often referred to as Guantánamo, G-Bay or Gitmo, after GTMO, the military abbreviation for the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.[3][4]

After Bush political appointees at the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice advised the Bush administration that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction, military guards took the first twenty captives to Guantanamo on 11 January 2002. The Bush administration asserted that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Ensuing U.S. Supreme Courtdecisions since 2004 have determined otherwise and that the courts have jurisdiction: it ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on 29 June 2006, that detainees were entitled to the minimal protections listed under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.[5] Following this, on 7 July 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners would, in the future, be entitled to protection under Common Article 3.[6][7][8]

Current and former prisoners have reported abuse and torture, which the Bush administration denied. In a 2005 Amnesty International report, the facility was called the "Gulag of our times."[9] In 2006 the United Nations called unsuccessfully for the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be closed; one judge observed 'America's idea of what is torture...does not appear to coincide with that of most civilized nations'.[10] Susan J. Crawford, appointed by Bush to review DoD practices used at Guantanamo Bay and oversee the military trials, told Bob Woodward of the Washington Postin an interview in January 2009 that Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured while being held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, making her the first Bush administration official to concede that torture occurred there.[11]

On 22 January 2009, President Barack Obama signed an order to suspend proceedings at Guantanamo military commission for 120 days and shut down the detention facility that year.[12][13] On 29 January 2009, a military judge at Guantanamo rejected the White House request in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, creating an unexpected challenge for the administration as it reviewed how the United States brings Guantanamo detainees to trial.[14] On 20 May 2009, the United States Senate passed an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2346) by a 90–6 vote to block funds needed for the transfer or release of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[15] President Obama issued a Presidential memorandum dated 15 December 2009, ordering Thomson Correctional Center, Thomson, Illinois to be prepared to accept transferred Guantanamo prisoners.[16]

The Final Report of the Guantanamo Review Task Force, dated 22 January 2010, published the results for the 240 detainees subject to the Review: 36 were the subject of active cases or investigations; 30 detainees from Yemen were designated for 'conditional detention' due to the poor security environment in Yemen; 126 detainees were approved for transfer; 48 detainees were determined 'too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution'.[17]

On 7 January 2011, President Obama signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which, in part, placed restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to the mainland or to foreign countries, thus impeding the closure of the facility.[18] U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates said during testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on 17 February 2011: "The prospects for closing Guantanamo as best I can tell are very, very low given very broad opposition to doing that here in the Congress."[19] Congress particularly opposed moving prisoners to facilities in the United States for detention or trial.[19] In April 2011, Wikileaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[20] As of August 2013, 164 detainees remain at Guantanamo.[21]