The Pentagon’s detention operation at Guantánamo once held hundreds of men who were captured by U.S. forces and their allies in the war against terrorism. Now there are just 15 prisoners as the prison enters its 24th year.
President George W. Bush opened and filled it. President Barack Obama tried to close it but couldn’t. President Donald J. Trump said he would load it up with “bad dudes” and didn’t. And President Biden said he wanted to finish the job Mr. Obama started but will not be able to do it.
Unless Congress lifts a ban on the transfer of Guantánamo prisoners to U.S. soil, the costly offshore operation could go on for years, until the last detainee dies.
Who Is at Guantánamo Now?
The 15 remaining prisoners range in age from 45 to 63. They are from Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. One is a stateless Rohingya, another is Palestinian.
All but three were transferred to Guantánamo from the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prison network, where the Bush administration hid people it considered the “worst of the worst” until 2006.
Five are defendants in the Sept. 11 case, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of planning the attacks. One is a Saudi man accused of orchestrating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 that killed 17 U.S. sailors. These are capital cases that have never reached trial.
The longest-serving prisoner is Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who was brought to the base from Afghanistan the day the prison opened, four months after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. He is the only prisoner currently serving a sentence of life in prison.
In the early years of the detention operation, some of the youngest prisoners were teenagers. Today, the youngest is Walid bin Attash, 45, a defendant in the Sept. 11 case who has a deal to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison rather than face a death-penalty trial.
The oldest is Abd al-Hadi al Iraqi, 63, who is the most physically disabled prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. He has been convicted of committing war crimes in 2003-04 wartime Afghanistan.
The prison has been used exclusively for suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban or their associates. None have been women or U.S. citizens.
Why Hasn’t a President Closed It?
Congress will not allow it.
Each year it adopts legislation that forbids the transfer of any Guantánamo detainee to U.S. soil for any reason.
But the Obama administration concluded that it could not release everybody and that to close the prison, at least a few of the prisoners would have to be held in Guantánamo-style detention in the United States.
Also, the C.I.A. would likely object to third-country transfers of its former prisoners who know classified information related to their detention, such as the identities of people who they say tortured them.
For now, U.S. intelligence agencies monitor all their communications to make sure they do not divulge state secrets.
Do We Know How Much It Costs?
Not exactly. The last comprehensive study of the costs of running the prison, by The New York Times in 2019, put the figure at more than $13 million per year for each prisoner. Most of that went to supporting court operations and the prison staff.
At the time, there were 40 prisoners and a Pentagon staff of 1,800 U.S. forces.
By that measure, it would cost $36 million to hold each prisoner there in 2025.
But operational costs have changed. The Pentagon has reduced the staff by more than half and hired more contractors, who may be more expensive than soldiers serving on nine-month tours of duty.
The war court proceedings have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries, infrastructure and transportation. Since 2019, the Office of Military Commissions has added two new courtroom chambers, new offices and temporary housing, more lawyers, more security personnel and more contractors.
Increasingly, the costs of court operations are considered national security secrets and not subject to public scrutiny. But snapshots emerge. Prosecutors paid a forensic psychiatrist $1.4 million in consulting fees in the Sept. 11 case.
Is the C.I.A.’s Torture to Blame?
It is a factor. If some of these prisoners had been taken directly to the United States soon after they were captured, they would have been in federal custody and potentially already put on trial in U.S. courts.
Instead, 12 of the last 15 were held in overseas “black site” prisons run by the C.I.A. where they were held incommunicado and interrogated with waterboarding, beatings, sleep deprivation and years of isolation.
Because of what was done to them, and where, the Bush administration government chose to have the men tried in a new national security court it created at Guantánamo Bay. The trials have been stuck in pretrial hearings, two for more than a decade, that have focused on the taint of their torture; how much the prisoners’ lawyers, and the public, could know about it; and efforts to have cases dismissed because of it.
The health of the remaining detainees is deteriorating, both physically and mentally, and lawyers blame it on their long-term solitary confinement and abuse. Some have brain damage and disorders from blows and sleep deprivation. Others have damaged gastrointestinal systems from rectal abuse.
Congress is funding a new $435 million medical clinic on the base.
Can More Prisoners Be Released?
Three of the 15 prisoners are designated for release if the State Department can find countries to resettle and track their activities. They are the stateless Rohingya, a Somali and a Libyan.
Three other prisoners who have never been charged, all former C.I.A. prisoners, have not been cleared but get periodic reviews. One of them is an Afghan man whom Taliban leaders want repatriated.
Also as part of his plea deal, the disabled Iraqi prisoner could serve his sentence, which expires in 2032, in the custody of a U.S. ally better able to care for him. The State Department has a plan to send him to a prison in Baghdad. But he is suing the government to stop that transfer. His lawyers argue that Iraqi prisons are inhumane, which would violate U.S. obligations to not forcibly send someone to a country where he might be abused. They also say that Iraq does not have the capacity to provide him with adequate care, a condition of his plea deal.
Who Released the Most Prisoners?
The George W. Bush administration sent about 780 men and boys to Guantánamo, and released about 540 of them in the first years of the enterprise. The C.I.A. delivered the last detainee there in 2008. No other administration has sent detainees to Guantánamo Bay.
The Obama administration released another 200. Many of them were resettled in third countries because their home nations were too unstable to help them re-enter society or to monitor their activities.
Although Mr. Trump campaigned before his first election to fill the place up, his administration did not send anyone there. It let one go — a Saudi who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia to serve his war crimes sentence there.
The Biden administration released 25 prisoners, about half through repatriations, and mostly in his final days in office.
