Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: U.S. Facility Opened for Terror-related Detainees in 2002

Officially opened in January 2002)

First 20 detainees arrived

Updated Gitmo detainee database – reported on here from The New York TIMES (June 15, 2021) with this headline – FYI:

“An Updated Tool for Tracking the Detainees of Guantánamo Bay”

A Times team has revamped an online database that makes it easier to learn about the roughly 780 prisoners who were taken there, including the 40 who remain locked up there.

In the first years of the war in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay was off limits to lawyers seeking to represent the detainees there, and the Bush administration refused to disclose the prisoners’ names. 

Commanders would brief reporters regularly, and guards would come forward to speak with pride about their service there but were not allowed to name the men in the orange uniforms.

In time, the Bush administration bowed to pressure from the courts and released the names of many of the men and boys who were brought to the U.S. military detention center as “enemy combatants.” 

But by the time the Pentagon let the lawyers visit, hundreds of the detainees were already gone, many of them sent back to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the minds of many people, the roughly 780 men and boys who were held at remote Guantánamo are still nameless, identically clad men locked behind razor wire. 

Forty remain there today, while the rest have been repatriated or dispersed around the world.

The Guantánamo Docket is the upgrade and continuing investment into understanding the offshore detention operation that the George W. Bush administration established in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Gitmo as it is commonly called entered its 21st year in January 2021. 

Although hundreds of detainees have come and gone, released, and relocated, the trial of the five men accused of plotting the actual 9/11 attack has yet to begin. 

My 2 Cents: Nothing to add, except try those charged with the 9/11 attack and release the rest and allow them to rejoin any family and life that they have left in their native land.

This past 21 years is long enough punishment for them. 

Then close the detainee center.

Thanks for stopping by for this update.