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Guantanamo Bay Detainment Camp

On November 13, 2001, President Bush issued an order authorizing the capture and
detention of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists by military forces,15 and in 2002, the U.S.
military opened a prison and interrogation center at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in
Cuba. Today the prison holds people suspected by the executive branch and the armed
forces of being operatives of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and most of them were captured by
the United States or its allies on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq. Both the status of
these detainees and their treatment in detention are highly controversial in the United
States and abroad.
A total of 775 detainees (or "enemy combatants") have been held at Guantanamo Bay,
although approximately one-third have now been released. They include citizens of
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, the United Kingdom, and 30 other countries. In the 2001
order, President Bush specified the conditions under which the detainees would be held,
calling for humane treatment, the free exercise of religion, and medical treatment, but
excluding the right to challenge their detention or appeal the decisions of military tribunals
in U.S. courts.
The stated reason for holding the prisoners is to interrogate them about ongoing terrorist
activities. In the beginning, the Defense Department maintained that enemy combatants
were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions,16 and that the
government was authorized to interrogate them using techniques that would otherwise be
banned. Officials have issued several sets of orders approving interrogation techniques for
use at Guantanamo Bay. In December 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
authorized a set of interrogation guidelines for Guantanamo that had been suggested in
an action memo from William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel. Among the
approved techniques were: the use of physical "stress positions"; 20-hour interrogations;
removal of clothing; using a detainee's phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress;
deception to make the detainee believe the interrogator was from a country with a
reputation for torture; the use of falsified documents and reports; isolation for up to 30
days; and sensory deprivation.17
Under pressure from civilian and military attorneys, led by Navy General Counsel Alberto
Mora, the Defense Department in January 2003 agreed to rescind orders for these
techniques. In April 2003 new interrogation guidelines were released, eliminating some of
the harsher measures approved in 2002. However, former prisoners and visitors to
Guantanamo Bay have alleged that inmates have been drugged, beaten, electrocuted, and
denied food and water. One FBI agent who witnessed interrogations told the New York
Times, "On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained
hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they
had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or
more."18 The government has denied these claims.
In October 2005, President Bush signed the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which
limited the interrogation techniques allowed at Guantanamo Bay and other American
military detention facilities to those identified in the Army Field Manual.
Some legal experts are also concerned about the status of the Guantanamo detainees
under international and U.S. law. The U.S. government at the time of their capture
maintained that detainees did not have the same due process rights accorded to prisoners

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