100 Places You Will Never Visit

LOCATION Guantánamo Province, southern Cuba

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Guantánamo, Cuba

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: home of a notorious US prison camp established after the attacks of 2001.

Established in 2002, following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Guantánamo (sometimes known colloquially as Gitmo) was set up to detain terror suspects captured during fighting in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. The US has come under international pressure to close it down, with human rights group Amnesty International describing it as “the gulag of our times.”

There has been a US naval base on the banks of Guantánamo Bay ever since 1898, when the country took control of Cuba following the Spanish-American War. In 1902 Cuba won independence, and the following year its government agreed to lease Guantánamo Bay to the Americans in perpetuity (though the communist regime in place since the Cuban revolution of 1959 does not recognize the agreement as legal).

The naval base covers 120 square kilometers (46 sq miles) and is the only US base situated in a country with which it does not share diplomatic ties. After the 2001 attacks in New York, Washington and Philadelphia, George Bush famously declared a “War on Terror” and set up a detention camp at Guantánamo for individuals considered a potential threat to American security. Natural defenses including sea and surrounding swampland, combined with nearby minefields and a permanent military guard, makes Guantánamo one of the most secure detention facilities on the planet.

Many of the inmates held here were captured during US military action in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, but a large number came from elsewhere, and were handed over by third parties in exchange for rewards. Guantánamo’s main detention camp, Camp Delta—with room for over 600 prisoners and perched on a cliff overlooking the sea—opened in April 2002, taking over duties from Camp X-ray, which closed in the same month.

WHO GOES THERE? Detainees at Guantánamo are kept under constant surveillance by US military personnel. To date, there have been no recorded instances of escapes from the Cuban enclave. The chances of success for such an enterprise are minimal, given the camp’s physical position and its state-of-the-art security systems.

Images of manacled prisoners in orange jumpsuits, kneeling on the ground in outdoor cages as guards watched over them, rapidly became one of the most enduring images of the early 21st century—particularly among those concerned that Washington was dispensing with acceptable judicial practice in respect of terror suspects.

The Bush administration categorized the Guantánamo detainees as “unlawful enemy combatants”—a status that denied them the rights of prisoners of war set out under the Geneva Convention but did not require that they be put through the US criminal justice system. Instead, a system of military commissions was put into operation. According to Amnesty International, as of 2009 almost 800 prisoners had been held at the camp, but only 26 had been charged for trial by military commission and just three had been convicted.

Within a very short time of opening, Guantánamo was attracting international attention as inmates were held indefinitely without trial. There were also regular reports of alleged mistreatment, ranging from excessive use of solitary confinement to beatings, sleep deprivation, prolonged exposure to extreme noise and light, and mishandling of the Koran by guards. Some former inmates even alleged sexual degradation. The United Nations called for the closure of the camp, but Washington insisted it was necessary for the defense of the nation and denied allegations of inhumane treatment.

The camp’s defenders claim that it has produced intelligence key to preventing further terrorist attacks in the US and elsewhere. However, questions over techniques used to interrogate prisoners prompted a debate as to the definition of torture. For instance, there have been widespread claims that “waterboarding” was used on certain inmates, in which an immobilized prisoner has water poured over them, causing them to feel like they are drowning.

Some have argued that waterboarding constitutes a form of coercion that falls outside the definition of torture, though many others—including President Obama—concluded that it does indeed qualify, rendering any intelligence it produces as without legal merit. (It should be noted that Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Secretary of Defense, has dismissed the allegations that waterboarding took place at the camp as a “myth”).

Guantánamo has been the subject of fierce courtroom debate for years, principally concerning the legal status of inmates. During his bid for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama referred to the camp as a “sad chapter in American history.” He would later say that his administration would have failed if within two years of coming to power it had not “closed down Guantánamo in a responsible way, put a clear end to torture and restored a balance between the demands of our security and our constitution.” However, plans to transfer prisoners to high-security facilities on the US mainland met significant domestic opposition, and as of 2012 the camp was still operating.

1 AMERICAN ENCLAVE Surrounded by steep hills on all sides, Guantánamo is the largest bay on Cuba’s southern coast. Christopher Columbus landed here in 1494 during his exploration of the “New World,” and it has been a de facto American possession, by virtue of a perpetual lease, since 1903.

2 HARD TIME Camp Delta, the permanent detention camp that replaced the temporary Camp X-ray in 2002, is divided into a number of sub-camps, with some running a moderately more relaxed regime than others. Nonetheless, conditions here remain a concern for human rights groups.