The Truth About Guantanamo Bay

A Harper’s Magazine article by Scott Horton, based on interviews with four guards at Guantanamo, detailed the inhumane conditions in “Camp No” there. According to the article, prisoners were moved one by one into the camp to be interrogated. At least nine prisoners died in the camps, and another 30 died during transfer. While the facility has long been under scrutiny, the detention center is still one of the largest US prisons.

A trial for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks is still several years away. The alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, remains in detention without trial. Despite the lack of progress, the infamous prison is still open to the public. As of 2016, the United States has released 13 ”low-value” inmates. One of these men, Tawfiq al-Bihani, a Yemeni who was picked up in Iran in 2001, is currently on the island.

Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials denied the claims and issued statements in defense of the detainees. Rumsfeld, in his memoir published last year, said that he and other administration officials were ”falsely accused of torturing detainees.” But the Guantanamo experience raised serious questions about the U.S. government’s wartime powers, the detention of suspected terrorists and enemy fighters, and the legal forum in which to pursue such cases.

As of September 2017, more than 700 men and boys were held at Guantanamo Bay. Many of them were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. Forty-one men remain indefinitely in the detention centre, with 41 men not charged with a crime. Of those 39, twenty-one have never been prosecuted, and the other 14 have been cleared for transfer or release. Most of the men are torture survivors, and most of them have undergone physical trauma.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States government began to consider detainees’ right to habeas corpus. Previously, the administration had held these prisoners without due process, but the courts ruled that the prisoners had a right to seek justice in civilian courts. But the recent developments have made the prison a target for activists. Now, the United States continues to keep detainees there, despite the many legal challenges.

In 2005, the Bush administration set up a formal, non-public process to review detainees at the prison. The detainee must meet the criteria of an unlawful enemy combatant, and only a small percentage of the 550 detainees were released due to this criteria. However, an additional military panel assessed detainees yearly, and recommended the release of more than 130 of them. So, while the detention center remains an active and controversial site, there are many positive changes underway.

The Guantanamo Bay base is home to the most grueling experience of the detainees’ life. There are daily demonstrations and ceremonies to commemorate the prisoners and the men who served their country. Prisoners have been kept in cages for over a decade. The United States is banned from sending any detainees back to the United States for medical treatment. This means that complex medical cases are sent to the mainland for treatment.

The US imposed the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba in response to the 9/11 attacks. The facility was designed to house ’enemy combatants’ where neither US nor international law applied. As a result, the facility became a symbol of US human rights abuses. The Pentagon is currently developing a military courtroom at the facility. Despite the ongoing controversy, the prison remains an important facility for US citizens.

Unlike other prisons, there are no facilities for children to perform trick-or-treating on the grounds of Guantanamo. Children are not allowed to trick-or-treat inside the camp. News photographers are forced to submit their photos to military censorship. Among the forbidden images are images of guard towers, security cameras, and critical infrastructure. Four wind turbines rise above the base, but are not allowed to be photographed. Visitors must obtain permission from the commanding officer and a stamp from a base security officer before they can travel to the base. The base is often only accessible to authorized flights operated by the Pentagon.