Guantanamo Bay

I have no idea why I thought Guantanamo Bay was an existing prison which the Bush administration decided to use, when in fact it was the Bush administration who created the Guantanamo Bay detention camp!  (And why doesn't that surprise me?)

The naval base has been in Guantanamo Bay since 1903, when the US had friendly relations with Cuba and established a "perpetual lease" for the land.  Of course, after the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro claimed the lease as invalid and demanded the US leave.  The US insists the lease is valid and continues to send rent checks for an inflation-adjusted $4,085 per month, which the Cuban government refuse to cash, and literally keeps stuffed in a drawer in the President's office.

The play and movie, "A Few Good Men" -- written in 1989 and loosely based on an event in 1986 -- is about Guantanamo Bay naval base, and has nothing to do with the detention camp (which didn't exist at the time).

The first twenty detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002.   As a detention camp, it is meant to hold people awaiting trial; it is not a prison--the people at Guantanamo Bay have not been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to anything.  It was not until 2006 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners were entitled to the minimal protections under the Geneva Convention, and 2008 that the detainees were entitled to the protections under the US Constitution.

On January 22, 2009, President Obama announced that the detention facility would be shut down within the year. However, Republicans in Congress passed an amendment blocking funding.  On January 7, 2011, Republicans added an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill forbiding the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to "the mainland or to other foreign countries," thus effectively stopping the closure of the detention facility.

Also in January 2009, Susan J. Crawford, who was appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to review practices used at Guantanamo Bay, told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post 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. 

In April 2011, Wikileaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.  The documents reveal that over 150 innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs, and drivers, were held for years without charge.  The youngest detainee was 14, and the oldest was 89.  Approximately 60 detainees were minors, although the number is hard to confirm as the US military considers minors to be people under 16 years of age, not under 18 as defined by most human rights groups.

One detainee was a journalist from the respected news agency Al-Jazeera, who was detained from 2002 to 2008 "to provide information on...the al-Jazeera News Network's training program, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations."  One detainee was waterboarded at least 183 times by the CIA, who "revealed" that Al-Qaeda had a nuclear bomb and, if Osama Bin Laden was captured or killed by U.S. allies, a "weapon of mass destruction" would be detonated in a "secret location" in Europe.

The Justice Department has said the leaked documents remain classified and therefore the lawyers representing the prisoners are not even allowed to read the documents which were published in the New York Times!

The United Nations has called for the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be closed, with one judge observing, "America's idea of what is torture ... does not appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations."

As we mark the tenth anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, 171 detainees remain, including 12 of the first 20 detainees who arrived in 2002.  It serves as a continual reminder of the low point in American foreign relations and human rights.  To quote President Obama in 2009:

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. [...] Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained. [...] Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.

BBC News has a slideshow of photos from Guantanamo Bay.