Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp - Detainees

Detainees

Since January 2002, 779 men have been brought to Guantanamo. Eight men died in the prison camp and 600 have been released. Most of them have been released without charge or transferred to facilities in their home countries. The Department of Defense often referred to these prisoners as the "worst of the worst", but a 2003 memo by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says, "We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) with low-level enemy combatants ... GTMO needs to serve as an not a prison for Afghanistan." As of June 2012, 169 prisoners remained at Guantanamo. According to former US president Jimmy Carter, about half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom.

A small number of children were interned at Guantánamo Bay, in apparent contravention of international law.

In July 2005, 242 detainees were moved out of Guantanamo, including 173 that were released without charge, and 69 transferred to the governments of other countries, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has prepared a biography of some of the prisoners currently being held in Guantanamo Prison.

In September 2006, President Bush announced that fourteen suspected terrorists were to be transferred to the Guantánamo Bay detainment camp and admitted that these suspects have been held in CIA black sites. None of the 14 top figures transferred to Guantánamo from CIA custody had been charged until September 11, 2006. Some of the prisoners passed through the U.S. extraordinary rendition program before arriving at Guantanamo.

On February 11, 2008, the U.S. Military charged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Walid Bin Attash of commiting the September 11 attacks under the military commission system, as established under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

On February 5, 2009, charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were dropped without prejudice following an order signed by U.S. President Barack Obama to suspend trials for 120 days. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was accused of renting a small boat connected with the USS Cole bombing. He is one of the detainees known to have been interrogated with waterboarding prior to his transfer at Guantanamo.

Three have been convicted by military court of various charges:

• David Hicks was found guilty, after a plea bargain, of providing material support for terrorism in 2001, according to his military lawyer under retrospective legislation introduced in 2006.
• Salim Hamdan accepted a position on Osama bin Laden's chauffeur. On October 16, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated Hamdan's conviction, on the grounds that the acts he was charged with under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were not, in fact, crimes at the time he committed them, rendering it an ex post facto prosecution.
• Ali al-Bahlul made a video celebrating the attack on the USS Cole (DDG-67).

In 2010, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, stated in an affidavit that top U.S. officials, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, had known that the majority of the detainees initially sent to Guantánamo were innocent, but that the detainees had been kept there for reasons of political expedience. Wilkerson's statement was submitted in connection with a lawsuit filed in federal district court by former detainee Adel Hassan Hamad against the United States government and several individual officials.