Guantanamo Bay detention camp | History, Location, & Facts (2024)

Guantánamo Bay detention camp, U.S. detention facility on the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, located on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in southeastern Cuba. Constructed in stages starting in 2002, the Guantánamo Bay detention camp (often called Gitmo, which is also a name for the naval base) was used to house Muslim militants and suspected terrorists captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere (see also Iraq War). The facility became the focus of worldwide controversy over alleged violations of the legal rights of detainees under the Geneva Conventions and accusations of torture or abusive treatment of detainees by U.S. authorities.

In early 2002 the camp began receiving suspected members of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks, and fighters for the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist faction that had ruled Afghanistan (1996–2001) and harboured al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his followers. Eventually hundreds of prisoners from several countries were held at the camp without charge and without the legal means to challenge their detentions. The administration of Republican Pres. George W. Bush maintained that it was neither obliged to grant basic constitutional protections to the prisoners, since the base was outside U.S. territory, nor required to observe the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians during wartime, as the conventions did not apply to “unlawful enemy combatants.” In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the system of military commissions that was to be used to try selected prisoners held at Guantánamo was in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The legality of the commissions was restored in 2006 by the Military Commission Act, which also denied the federal courts jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions on behalf of foreign detainees. In 2008, however, the court overturned the latter provision of the law by ruling (in Boumediene v. Bush) that foreign detainees did have the right to challenge their detentions in the federal courts. Despite the court’s decision, several prisoners who had been cleared for release in other countries or for transfer to their home countries continued to be detained, either because no country would accept them or because their home countries were deemed too volatile to guarantee their secure imprisonment.

The camp was repeatedly condemned by international human rights and humanitarian organizations—including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Committee of the Red Cross—as well as by the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS), for alleged human rights violations, including the use of various forms of torture during interrogations. In response to such criticism, the Bush administration generally insisted that detainees were well cared for and that none of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed on some prisoners were torturous. (In 2009, however, the U.S. official in charge of military commissions at Guantánamo declared that the detainee suspected as a would-be hijacker in the September 11 attacks could not be prosecuted because he had been tortured.) Additionally, according to U.S. officials, the use of such techniques had in many cases—e.g., in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 plot—yielded valuable intelligence on the leadership, methods, and plans of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

On January 22, 2009, Democratic Pres. Barack Obama fulfilled a campaign pledge by ordering the closure of the facility at Guantánamo within one year and a review of ways to transfer detainees to the United States for imprisonment or trial. He also required interrogators to use only the techniques contained in the U.S. Army’s field manual on interrogation, none of which was considered torturous. The closure of the Guantánamo camp was subsequently delayed by opposition from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, who argued that housing the detainees in prisons on U.S. soil would imperil national security. In 2013 more than half of the camp’s 166 detainees, some of whom had been cleared for release or transfer, engaged in a hunger strike to draw attention to their situation.