Guantánamo Bay (Spanish Bahía de Guantánamo), sheltered inlet of the Caribbean Sea, southeastern Cuba, in Guantánamo Province, near the city of Guantánamo. The principal port on the bay is Caimanera. The bay is 19 km (12 mi) long and 10 km (6 mi) wide. Access to the harbor, which can accommodate large vessels, is through a narrow channel at the southernmost section of the bay. The land on either side of this entrance channel, plus 3,600 hectares (9,000 acres) of adjoining waters, is the site of the Guantánamo Bay U.S. Naval Base.

Guantánamo Bay, with its airfields and extensive supply, repair, and training facilities, is the chief U.S. naval base in the West Indies. The sheltered harbor, its position near the Windward Passage—an important maritime route between the United States and Central and South America—and its proximity to the Panama Canal make it strategically important. During the Spanish-American War the United States captured and fortified much of the outer harbor of Guantánamo Bay and used it as an anchorage for American warships. Through an agreement signed with Cuba in 1903, the United States obtained the right to maintain a naval base at Guantánamo Bay. In 1934 the agreement was superseded by a treaty that reaffirmed the U.S. right to lease the site of the base from Cuba. The United States continued to hold the base after 1960 despite strained relations with the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

The Guantánamo Naval Base became the site of a controversial detention center following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. The invasion overthrew the Taliban government in retaliation for providing sanctuary for the al-Qaeda terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. During the invasion, the United States offered a bounty for the capture of persons associated with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. In November 2001 President George W. Bush signed a military order establishing special military tribunals or commissions to try any detainees found to be members of al-Qaeda or to have engaged in any terrorist activities against the United States.

The first prisoners at Guantánamo were housed at an interim facility known as Camp X-Ray in January 2002. The same month the Bush administration determined that the detainees at Guantánamo would be classified as “enemy combatants” and would not be accorded the status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Bush administration officials, however, said the prisoners would be treated “humanely” and according to the principles of the Geneva Conventions. In November 2004, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was leaked to the New York Times, claimed the U.S. military was using psychological and physical coercion against the detainees that was “tantamount to torture.” See also Torture.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also established a detention facility at Guantánamo that was separate from Camp X-Ray. The CIA facility, however, was reportedly closed down after U.S. court rulings began questioning whether the United States had the right to hold enemy combatants indefinitely without bringing criminal charges against them or enabling them to have legal counsel. In 2004 the Supreme Court of the United States considered the constitutionality of indefinite detentions of enemy combatants. In two key cases—Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rasul v. Bush—the Court upheld the president’s authority to classify both citizens and noncitizens as enemy combatants, but it ruled that the government must allow such detainees the right to have lawyers and to challenge their detention in court. In December 2005 the U.S. Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which provided that “no court, justice, or judge” would have jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantánamo detainees. A number of such petitions had already been filed in U.S. courts, however, and the new law lacked a stipulation that it applied retroactively.

In early 2006 the U.S. military continued to hold about 500 prisoners at Guantánamo. About 180 prisoners had been released, including about 76 who were transferred to the custody of other countries. In February 2006 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights issued a report saying that the detention facility should be closed down and that the remaining detainees should be quickly tried or released. The report, which was written by five human rights investigators known as rapporteurs, said the use of excessive force against the detainees amounted to torture. The report also asserted that the U.S. government was acting as judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel in violation of “guarantees of the right to a fair trial.” The Bush administration rejected the report’s findings, saying it relied on outside accounts and was not based on an on-site inspection of the detention facility. However, the report’s authors said they refused conditions under which they would not be permitted to interview detainees.

By early 2006 little was known about the detainees held at Guantánamo. Bush administration officials called the prisoners “dangerous terrorists” and the “worst of the worst.” A former CIA agent, who headed the agency’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1999 to 2004, countered this claim, saying that fewer than 10 percent were regarded as “high-value terrorist operatives.” A newspaper investigation of court documents filed by the Defense Department on 132 Guantánamo detainees revealed that 75 were not accused of taking part in hostilities against the United States or coalition allies and were apprehended in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities. Fifty-seven, or 43 percent, of the 132 detainees were accused of being on a battlefield in Afghanistan. The documents showed that 10 detainees were no longer considered to be enemy combatants, but 8 of those 10 were still being held.

A separate study by a Seton Hall University law professor and another attorney, who represented two detainees, drew on government documents prepared after military hearings began in 2004. This study corroborated the finding that most (55 percent) of the detainees had not committed any hostile acts against the United States or other coalition allies. The study further found that only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by U.S. forces, while 86 percent were arrested by either Pakistani authorities or Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance at a time when large bounties were being offered for suspected terrorists or Taliban fighters. Many detainees were compelled to serve with the Taliban-led forces, according to this investigation.

In May 2006 the United Nations Committee on Torture, which was established by the 1984 Convention Against Torture, called on the United States to close the Guantánamo detention facility and to cease holding any prisoners there. The committee found that the detainees had been held for protracted periods “without sufficient legal safeguards.” The same month four inmates attempted to commit suicide, and other inmates attacked their guards. Then in June three detainees committed suicide, according to military authorities.

In June 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5 to 3 decision ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the military tribunals established to try the Guantánamo detainees violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions. The Court rejected the Bush administration’s claim that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detainees. The Court further ruled that the military commissions violated the fair trial requirement of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The majority opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, held that the military commissions violated the “judicial guarantees” of Common Article 3. The Court found that under the military commission rules the defendant, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, and his attorney could be barred from trial proceedings and evidence could be withheld from them, while evidence based on hearsay and testimony obtained by coercion could be introduced.

In making their ruling, several justices noted that the lack of congressional authorization for the military tribunals represented an important flaw in the Bush administration’s approach. The administration attempted to address this issue and other findings in the ruling by helping craft legislation known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which Congress passed in October 2006. Some legal experts described the law as a “rejoinder” to the Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

The new law granted immunity to U.S. officials accused of torture or cruel or inhumane treatment of detainees prior to passage of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, a period when the worst abuses at Guantánamo were reported to have occurred. It also addressed the failure of the Detainee Treatment Act to suspend habeas corpus petitions retroactively to those detained before 2005 by making it impossible for any detainee at Guantánamo to seek a habeas corpus petition in U.S. courts. Instead, detainees are to appear before combatant status review trials run by the military. In addition the law stipulated that any evidence obtained by cruel and inhumane treatment prior to 2005 could be admissible at trial. Finally, the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld had rejected the Bush administration’s contention that conspiracy could be regarded as a war crime. However, under the Military Commissions Act, the charge of conspiracy was defined as a war crime. Conspiracy generally allows a lower standard of proof because the prosecution only has to show that a crime was being planned, not that a crime actually occurred.

The detention facilities at Guantánamo were expected to become the site of high-profile military trials after President Bush announced in September 14, 2006,that prominent terrorist suspects would be transferred to Guantánamo. The suspects had previously been held in a secret prison network maintained by the CIA. Among the detainees was Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

In December 2006 the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it had transferred an additional 33 detainees to their home countries, leaving detention facilities at Guantánamo with a population of 395, few of whom had been charged with any crime. The same month an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) revealed that only a small percentage of released detainees were ever charged with a crime or brought to trial in their home countries after they were released.

The AP was able to trace 245 released detainees and found that 205 were either released without being charged or were cleared of wrongdoing. The remaining 40 continued to be detained or were charged with crimes. Of the approximately 83 Afghani citizens returned to Afghanistan, all were freed. The head of Afghanistan’s reconciliation commission reported that many were innocent and were turned over to U.S. authorities because of tribal or personal rivalries. Similarly, 67 of 70 detainees returned to Pakistan were freed within a year. A Pakistani Interior Ministry official found that most had been falsely accused of links to al-Qaeda so that the accusers could collect bounties offered by U.S. forces. The AP investigation also found that all 29 detainees returned to Australia, Bahrain, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Maldives, Russia, Spain, and Turkey were freed and never charged. Nine detainees returned to Britain were almost immediately released upon their return.

In January 2007 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released documents showing that FBI agents in a 2004 survey reported 26 incidents in which they had witnessed possible mistreatment of detainees at Guantánamo. FBI agents alleged that guards and interrogators had shown disrespect for the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, or used other techniques that insulted Islamic religious practices. One agent reported an episode in which an interrogator bragged that he had forced a detainee to listen for hours to “Satanic black metal music,” then dressed as a Catholic priest and “baptized” the prisoner. Other alleged abuses involved shackling prisoners to the floor for long periods and using female interrogators to make sexually suggestive gestures while Muslim prisoners were praying.