Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo or GTMO (pronounced 'gitmo'), which fronts on Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Since the inmates have been detained indefinitely without trial and several inmates were severely tortured, this camp is considered as a major breach of human rights by great parts of the world.

The camp was established by the President George W. Bush's administration in 2002 during his War on Terror. His successor, President Barack Obama, promised that he would close it, but met strong bipartisan opposition, with Congress passing laws to prohibit detainees from Guantanamo being imprisoned in the United States. During his term, his administration succeeded in reducing the number of inmates from about 245 to 41; most former detainees were freed and transferred to other countries.

At the time of its establishment in January 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the prison camp was established to detain extraordinarily dangerous people, to interrogate detainees in an optimal setting, and to prosecute detainees for war crimes. In practice, the site has long been used for indefinite detention without trial.

The Department of Defense at first kept secret the identity of the individuals held in Guantanamo, but, after losing attempts to defy a Freedom of Information Act request from the Associated Press, the USA officially acknowledged holding 779 prisoners in the camp. The facility is operated by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) of the United States government in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Detention areas consisted of Camp Delta including Camp Echo, Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray, which is now closed.

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