Guantánamo Bay detention camp marks 20 years: History and controversy surrounding US prison

Twenty years ago to this date, the United States opened Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a detention centre run by its Navy to house the first inmates from America’s ‘war on terror’.

Gitmo, as many call it today, is located on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in southeastern Cuba.

We take a look at the history and the controversy surrounding this detention centre.

History of Gitmo

In the months after the United States launched the war on terror, its response to the 11 September 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, the administration of George W Bush rounded up almost 800 terror suspects.

As the National reports, the US needed a place to keep them away from prying eyes and outside of the US, so they would not be entitled to the rights afforded by the US justice system. While several locations were considered, the US settled on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The 117-square-kilometre base had ample space and was not technically part of the US, but rather an “island outside the law”.

Torture used in Gitmo

Since being established in 2001, the Guantánamo Bay detention camp has been condemned for mistreatment, abuse and torture at the hands of CIA interrogators and guards.

The camp has been repeatedly condemned by international human rights and humanitarian organisations — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Committee of the Red Cross — s well as by the European Union and the Organisation of American States (OAS), for alleged human rights violations, including the use of various forms of torture during interrogations.

In October 2021, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner described for the first time the kind of torture he faced while he was kept there.

Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who became an Al-Qaeda courier, spoke of being suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with ice water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held underwater to the point of near-drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up.

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He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved in overseas prisons whose locations were not disclosed.

“I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I didn’t know anything,” he was quoted as saying.

And his was not a solitary tale.

Time and time again, activists slammed the activities that were being carried out behind bars.

“The Guantanamo Bay military prison is a catastrophic legal, moral and ethical failure," said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, about the prison’s birthday.

“It is a global symbol of American injustice, torture, and abuse of power.

“It’s a national disgrace that our government has for 20 years indefinitely detained Muslim men at Guantanamo, and persists with unconstitutional and secretive military trials.

“Around the world, Guantánamo remains one of the most enduring symbols of the injustice, abuse, and disregard for the rule of law that the US unleashed in response to the 9/11 attacks,” said Letta Tayler, an associate Crisis and Conflict director at Human Rights Watch.

A dozen independent UN rights experts, according to an AFP report, have voiced their outrage that the military prison in Cuba is still operating.

They describe it as a site of “unparallelled notoriety” and a “stain” on Washington’s stated commitment to the rule of law.

“Twenty years of practising arbitrary detention without trial accompanied by torture or ill-treatment is simply unacceptable for any government, particularly a government which has a stated claim to protecting human rights,” they said in a statement.

Does the prison still hold inmates?

Once holding nearly 800 people, Guantanamo Bay prison still holds 39 men, some of them from the very first months after it opened.

President George W Bush released more than 500 and Obama freed 197 before time ran out on his effort to whittle down the population.

Of them, 13 have been cleared for transfer — though finding a place to send them to, or making arrangements for their repatriation to their home countries, has proven a very slow process.

Fourteen others are seeking to be released; 10 are in the process of standing trial or are waiting to stand trial; and two others have been convicted.

A number of those remaining were subjected to torture by CIA interrogators in the first years of the post-9/11 detention program.

The accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is at present held over there.

Cost to run Gitmo

As per reported information, it costs the US government $540 million a year to operate the detention centre.

Biden to shut Gitmo?

Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby said on Monday that President Joe Biden wanted to close the Guantanamo prison, though it remains a deeply contentious political issue.

“I will tell you the administration remains dedicated to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Kirby told reporters.

“We are in a review right now about the way forward,” he said, a process that involves the White House, the US military, the Justice Department, the State Department and other agencies.

With inputs from agencies

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