The Pentagon’s detention operation at Guantánamo once held hundreds of men captured by US forces and their allies in the war on terror. There are now only 15 inmates as the prison enters its 24th year.
President George W. Bush opened it and filled it. President Barack Obama tried to close it, but failed. President Donald J. Trump said he would fill it with “bad guys,” but he didn’t. And President Biden said he wants to finish the job Mr. Obama started, but he won’t be able to do it.
Unless Congress lifts the ban on transferring prisoners from Guantanamo to US soil, the expensive offshore operation could continue for years, until the last prisoner dies.
Who is in Guantánamo now?
The 15 remaining prisoners in the range of 45 to 63 years. They are from Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. One is a stateless Rohingya, the other is a Palestinian.
All but three were transferred to Guantánamo from the CIA’s secret overseas network of prisons, where the Bush administration until 2006 held people it considered “the worst of the worst.”
Five are defendants in the 9/11 case, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of planning the attacks. One is a Saudi accused of orchestrating the bombing of the USS Cole 2000 when 17 American sailors died. These are death cases that never came to trial.
He is the prisoner with the longest tenure But Hamza al-Bahlulwho was brought to the base from Afghanistan on the day the prison opened, four months after the attacks of September 11, 2001. He is the only inmate currently serving a life sentence.
In the first years of detention, some of the youngest prisoners were teenagers. Today he is the youngest Walid bin Attash45, a 9/11 defendant who has a deal to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison rather than face a trial with the death penalty.
He is the oldest Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi63, who is the most physically disabled prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. He was convicted of war crimes in wartime Afghanistan in 2003-04.
The prison was used exclusively for suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members or their associates. None were women or US citizens.
Why didn’t the president close it?
Congress will not allow it.
Every year, it passes legislation that prohibits the transfer of any Guantánamo prisoner to US soil for any reason.
But the Obama administration concluded that it could not release everyone, and that to close the prison, at least a few inmates would have to be held in Guantánamo-like detention in the United States.
Also, the CIA would likely oppose transfers to third countries of its former prisoners who know confidential information related to their detention, such as the identities of people they say tortured them.
For now, the US intelligence services monitor all their communications so that they do not give away state secrets.
Do we know how much it costs?
Not really. The latest comprehensive study of the cost of running a prison, conducted by The New York Times in 2019, puts the figure at more than 13 million dollars a year for each prisoner. Most of it went to support the work of the court and prison staff.
At the time, there were 40 prisoners and Pentagon personnel out of 1,800 US forces.
By that measure, keeping each inmate there would cost $36 million in 2025.
But operating costs have changed. The Pentagon reduced the number of personnel by more than half and hired more contractors, who could be more expensive than soldiers serving a nine-month tour of duty.
The war trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars in wages, infrastructure and transportation. As of 2019, the Office of Military Commissions has added two new courtrooms, new offices and temporary housing, more attorneys, more security personnel, and more contractors.
The costs of court business are increasingly considered a national security secret and are not subject to public scrutiny. But there are recordings. Prosecutors have paid a forensic psychiatrist $1.4 million in consulting fees in the 9/11 case.
Is CIA torture to blame?
That’s a factor. If some of these prisoners had been taken directly to the United States shortly after their capture, they would have been in federal custody and potentially already facing trial in US courts.
Instead, 12 of the final 15 were held in foreign prisons at CIA-run “black sites,” where they were held incommunicado and incommunicado. waterboarding, beatinglack of sleep and years of isolation.
Because of what was done to them and where, the Bush administration decided to try the people in the new national security court it established at Guantánamo Bay. The trials were bogged down in pretrial hearings, two over more than a decade, that focused on the taint of their torture; how much the prisoners’ lawyers, as well as the public, could know about it; and efforts to have cases dismissed as a result.
The health condition of the remaining detainees is deteriorating, both physically and mentally, and lawyers blame their long stay in solitary confinement and abuse. Some have brain damage and disorders from blows and sleep deprivation. Others have damaged gastrointestinal systems due to rectal abuse.
Congress funds new $435 million base medical clinic.
Can more prisoners be released?
Three of the 15 inmates are slated for release if the State Department finds countries to relocate to and monitors their activities. They are stateless Rohingya, a Somali and a Libyan.
Three other prisoners who were never charged, all former CIA prisoners, have not been released, but undergo periodic examinations. One of them is an An Afghan wanted by Taliban leaders repatriated.
Also, as part of the plea deal, the disabled Iraqi prisoner could serve his sentence, which expires in 2032, in the custody of a better-cared-for American ally. The State Department has a plan to send him to prison in Baghdad. But he is sue the government stop that transmission. His lawyers argue that Iraqi prisons are inhumane, which would violate US obligations not to forcibly send someone to a country where they could be abused. They also say Iraq does not have the capacity to provide him with adequate care, which is a condition of his plea deal.
Who released the most prisoners?
The George W. Bush administration sent around 780 men and boys to Guantánamo, and released about 540 of them in the first years of the company. The CIA delivered the last detainee there was in 2008. No other administration has sent prisoners to Guantánamo Bay.
The Obama administration released another 200. Many of them were resettled in third countries because their homelands were too unstable to help them reintegrate into society or to monitor their activities.
Although Mr. Trump campaigned to fill the post before his first election, his administration did not send anyone there. It released one – a Saudi who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia to serve his sentence there for war crimes.
The Biden administration released 25 prisoners, about half through repatriation, mostly in his final days in office.
