Prison of Guantánamo - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

History

This prison is located on a ground of 30 000 acre S (121 km ²), currently rented by the government of the United States to the government of Cuba. This hiring is effective since the February 23rd 1903, under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and is inalienable except by assent of the two parts. A rent of 4 085 US dollars is paid every year per check. The cuban chief Fidel Castro always refused to box these payments (except that of the first year of the Revolution in 1959), because it does not accept that one of its larger enemies has a military base on its territory.

It is of this base (whose Sigle is JTF-GTMO for Joint Task force Guantanamo , or simply “ Gitmo ” for the Americans), whom in 1898, the United States (which counted at the time with most extremely of the Guerre Spanish-American 17 000 men at his base of Santiago) had conquered Puerto Rico with 500 men, thus allocating the sovereignty of this island of the the Caribbean.

A first temporary camp (the X-Ray Camp) is open at the end of 2001. It is definitively replaced the April 28th 2002 by the Delta camp.

The June 9th 2006, the suicide day before of three prisoners, the US president George W. Bush affirmed in a press conference with the Denmark its will to put a term at the camp of Guantanamo and to work with the repatriation of certain prisoners, or the judgment by American courts for others. At the end of the month, the Supreme court of the United States announces that the military tribunals created to judge the prisoners of Guantanamo are illegal. In July, the assistant secretary with Defense, Gordon England, indicated to the American soldiers that the prisoners of war were protected by the Geneva Conventions, which means that they are entitled to a fair trial and right.

Equipment

Camp Delta

The Camp Delta was created between on February 27th and mid-April 2002. It includes/understands 612 cells under the responsibility of the American military police force. The camp is subdivided in six parts where the newcomers forward according to their degree of co-operation. Starting from the level four, the prisoners have not only access to lawyers but can also discuss freely without witness.

Iguana camp

This camp smaller, less is made safe and is with one kilometer of the principal camp. Between 2002 and 2003, three teenagers of less than 16 years were held there. After their release in January 2004, it was closed then reopened with semi-2005 to place some of the 38 prisoners who had not been defined as illegal Combattants by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals but who was not authorized to leave for safety reason.

X-Ray camp

This camp was a camp of detention pending trial which was closed the April 29th 2002, after which its prisoners were transferred to the Delta camp. The name of this camp is still sometimes used to name the whole of the complex of detentions.

Legality of detention

The legality of the detention of the prisoners is an important subject of polemic.

An order in Council of George W. Bush authorizes unbounded detention and without count of indictment, on a territory not raising (theoretically) of the American legislation, of all the illegal Combattants captured. The Bush administration justified the prison by affirming that the members of Al-Qaïda and the talibans were not regular combatants respecting the laws of the war. However, the fact that there is no count of indictment can be regarded as an abusive detention.

The April 8th 2003, the representative of the United States at the commission of the Human rights of the the United Nations reaffirmed the independence of the judges, the respect of the international law and human dignity by its government. It moreover specified that the prisoners supposed terrorist were not ordinary prisoners, but of the combatants.

Dispute of the statute of illegal combatant

The November 10th 2003, the Supreme court of the United States announced that it would rule on the legality or not of the detention of the illegal combatants within the prison of Guantanamó. Its verdict was returned the June 28th 2004. It authorizes the prisoners of Guantanamó to dispute their statute of illegal combatants before the civil federal courts. But this decision does not rule on the legality of the statute of illegal combatants, nor on the procedures of detention applied to Guantánamo.

Thus the army created Tribunaux of examination of the statute of enemy combatant . But the January 31st 2005, an American federal judge, Joyce Hens Green, civil court of Washington D.C, declares unconstitutional these courts of examinations. She judges that the fact that the army prevents the suspects from being assisted of a lawyer and that the suspects cannot know the counts of indictment which are carried against them is anticonstitutional. It is important to stress that a few days before, another federal judge had pronounced a verdict opposed to that of judge Joyce Hens Green. There are strong chances that the final verdict is again returned by the Supreme court.

In July 2006, the assistant secretary with American Defense, Gordon England, announced that all the prisoners of the American military prisons were to profit from the protection of conventions of Geneva. Article 3 of conventions of 1949 stipulates that the prisoners captured on the face must be treated in a human way and must be judged during a fair trial before “a court regularly made up offering all the legal guarantees”.

A disputed prison

May 25th 2005, international Amnesty publishes his annual report in which it qualifies Guantánamo of modern Gulag . Are also evoked the multitude of prisons, more or less of the same type, that the government of the United States set up in Iraq and Afghanistan, inter alia.

The secretary of the Defense of the United States of the time, Donald Rumsfeld, disputed the name of Gulag, by considering it extravagant. William Schultz, representative of international Amnesty in Washington, declared that one did not have to regard Guantánamo as a Soviet Gulag , but it refers there all the same some common like the fact of maintaining with the secrecy the prisoners and of placing them apart from the civil legal system or the fact that some would have disappeared.

The June 5th, the democratic senator Joe Biden, member of the Commission of the foreign affairs of the Senate , required the closing of the prison. According to him, it is a danger to the Americans in the world, because it stigmatizes and amplifies the hatred of the Arab world against the United States.

The March 15th 2006, more than 400 intellectuals, artists and activists of the whole world sign a petition requiring the closing of the American centers of imprisonment of Guantánamo. “The Commission of the Human rights (of the United Nations) or the Council which will replace it must require the immediate closing of these detention centres arbitrary created by the United States and the suspension of all the obvious violations of human dignity”, reads one in this declaration. The document carries the signature of several Nobel Prize, of which Jose Saramago, writer Portuguese, Harold Pinter, British playwright , Nadine Gordimer, South-African woman of letters , Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Argentinian intellectual , Rigoberta Menchu, leading of the Guatemalan Indians , Wole Soyinka, of the Nigeria, Dario Fo, playwright Italy N.

In June 2006, the Supreme court of the United States estimates that George W. Bush exceeded her rights by instituting military tribunals of exception and thus violating the Geneva Conventions

Detention conditions

According to the little of information available, it is possible to advance that:

the prisoners, at the time of the opening of the prison, passed the majority of their time in individual cells of 2 meters out of 2, lit continuously - buildings into hard were built since;
the prisoners can be questioned at any time of the day or the night;
when they are moved, the prisoners have the hands and the handcuffed feet and a bag of fabric is placed on their head to prevent them from seeing;
the visits are limited (including those of the families and the lawyer S);
the dialog between prisoners is restricted;
of tortures (psychological and physical) weighs on the prison. Governmental organizations such as Amnesty International make the echoes regularly of them.
the prisoners are locked up in cells, with very strong music which plays constantly.

In March 2005, Anne-Marie Lizin, president of the Belgian Sénat acting for SOEC visited the site. She then declared that the detention conditions of the prisoners are better there than in Belgium .

But it also specified that this prison continue to harm the reputation of the United States seriously and that the country should dismantle this prison before 2008. The Belgian sénatrice described the living conditions by stating in particular that an arrow painted on the ground indicates the direction of Mecque and that each prisoner receives a specimen of Coran in his own language, a prayer mat, a Misbah, cloths, soap, a behavior as well as sandals. The call to the prayer is announced five times per day by loudspeaker and the guards (who would copiously be insulted by the prisoners) can communicate with them only with gestures .

The June 10th 2006, for the first time since the opening of the Camp Delta in 2002 and after many suicide attempts, three prisoners of Guantanamo (two Saoudis and an Yemeni) were found died, hung in their cell. This event revives the calls to close Guantanamo and the questions about the statute of the prisoners. The rear-admiral Harris, ordering base, declared that “ it is not a question of an act of despair, but of an asymmetrical act of war against us. ”. The families of the two Saoudis doubt the thesis of the suicide more especially as according to their lawyer “ the base exerts a control brought closer and continuous on the prisoners by an individual monitoring or cameras operating 24 hours a day ”.

Tortures

According to several testimonys, the prisoners would be tortured by the consulting soldiers and the civil.

Following the American law on the freedom of information, the Civil American Liberties Union (ACLU), the most important defense organization of the Human rights in the United States, could get several emails that an agent of FBI sent to the director, Robert Mueller. These emails go back to 2003 and 2004. This agent describes several scenes of tortures of which he was the witness. Shortly after their disclosures, the American army announced the opening of an investigation. July 11th, 2003, the spokesperson of the White House, Tony Snow, ensured that the prisoners were always treated humanly.

The business of profaned Coran

The April 30th 2005, the magazine Newsweek announces that an American soldier would have thrown the Coran in the toilets. This advertisement creates violent anti-American demonstrations in the Muslim world, in particular in Afghanistan where one will count about fifteen dead following bloody demonstrations. The Pentagone contradicted this information immediately. The May 15th, Newsweek reconsiders its information and declares that its anonymous source would have been mistaken.

After investigation, the Pentagon affirms the June 3rd, that very often they are the prisoners themselves which do not treat with respect the holy book of the Moslems. It quotes in particular examples where prisoners would have made use of Coran like pillow and others would have even torn pages. It attests all the same that certain guards would have had a behavior disrespectful with respect to the holy book, for example a guard would have urinated " accidentellement" above and another would have given a kick inside.

Hunger strike

September 1st, 2005, according to lawyers, at least 210 prisoners (76 according to the American army) were in Hunger strike to protest against their unlimited detention. A spokesperson of the army declared that “the number of strikers changes the every day”, without wanting to specify since how long the 76 prisoners deducted by the army had started to nourish himself more. “They are treated as well as possible”, it added.

As of the July 21st, a spokesperson of the army had been forced to admit that approximately 50 prisoners had ceased nourishing themselves. He had also specified that the strikers had been placed under Perfusion S and had been fed against their will, by nasal probe (probe introduced into the stomach by the nose), to prevent to them Déshydratation.

The Center for the constitutional laws (JRC), whose lawyers defend several tens of prisoners, declared that all this business could cease immediately if the army authorized lawyers to meet their customers.

Cancellation of the visit of UNO and his report/ratio

Friday November 18th 2005, UNO cancels its visit of Guantanamo Bay which was provided for the December 6th, because Washington refuses that the three members of UNO (the Autrichien Manfred Nowak, special protractor on torture in load of the file, the Pakistan ease Asma Jahangir, dealing with the respect of the religion in the prison and the Algérie Leila Zerougui, in load of the questions on arbitrary detention), speak freely and without witnesses with the prisoners.

Six months before, Manfred Nowak had declared: the fact that the access to the prisoners was refused during so a long time to the investigators of UNO is a sign which they wish to dissimulate certain things with the sight of the public .

Published the February 15th 2006, a report/ratio of UNO requires To close the installations of detention of Guantanamo Bay without additional time and that all the prisoners of Guantanamo are judged quickly or released immediately . Criticisms of the detention conditions relate especially to the fuzzy limits between certain techniques of interrogation which can be comparable with torture and so it is asked that all the special techniques of interrogation authorized by the Department of Defense are revoked immediately . This report/ratio was immediately denounced by the American administration, which shows it to be based only on rumors. One is reminded that moreover the detention conditions required in the report/ratio are those valid in times of peace, whereas the US government regards the prisoners as prisoners of war.

Publication of reports of audience by the Department of Defense

At the conclusion of a 18 months legal battle with the news agency Associated Press (AP) , the Pentagone is constrained to publish on its official Web site of the account returned of audience of the prisoners. Federal justice acceded to the request of the agency by basing on the Freedom off Information Act (FOIA) .

The documents present 5 000 pages of report/ratio. 317 names of prisoners are revealed (on approximately 760 prisoners passed by Guantanamo and 490 remainder at the end of March 2006), as well as very many precise details on the methods of interrogation of the geôliers. The March 3rd 2006, the Time Magazine publishes the integral official report of “prisoner 063”.

Documentary

GITMO-Tea New Rules Off War of Atmo films, January 2006.
The Road to Guantanamo '' of Michael Winterbottom.

The Guantanamo Guidebook is a rebuilding of Guantánamo in the United Kingdom which was diffused on Chanel 4 in 2005.

This Is Camp X-Ray , of Damien Mahoney, 2004.

Camp Delta, Guantanamo '' documentary radiophonic of Frank Smith diffused on France Culture, 2006.

External bonds

'' Prisoner misuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere '' - Center for Cooperative Research
Liste (name and nationality) of the 588 prisoners with Gantanamo within the framework of the investigation on the attacks of September 11th, 2001 published by the pentagon in April 2006
Site of the naval base of Guantanamo
Marie-Agnes Combesque, '' Violence and resistances to Guantánamo '', Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2006
Tortures of two held French 30 months with Guantanamo
'' Guantánamo: four years of too - New testimonys of torture '', on the site of Amnesty International
virtual Ballade in 3D of Camp Delta (from the Art project Zone*Interdite) the program is multilingual
complete Texte of the judgment of the Supreme court of the United States of June 29th, 2006 in business HAMDAN v. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OFF DEFENSE, AND Al

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