January 11th marks 20 years since the opening of Guantanamo Bay, the infamous U.S. prison located on illegally-occupied territory in Cuba which critics say allows detainees to be held indefinitely outside of normal laws or judicial oversight.
Miami, January 11 (RHC)-- January 11th marks 20 years since the opening of Guantanamo Bay, the infamous U.S. prison located on illegally-occupied territory in Cuba which critics say allows detainees to be held indefinitely outside of normal laws or judicial oversight.
A product of the so-called “war on terror,” U.S. President Joe Biden, like his predecessor Barack Obama, had said he wanted to close the facility. Instead, it will be expanded under the Biden administration with a new $4 million courtroom to be built this year, according to The New York Times.
During the past two decades, 780 men have passed through the facility, which was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Today, the facility holds 39 men, according to disclosures from the U.S. government’s interagency Periodic Review Board made in October.
“These are detentions that are inescapably bound up with multiple layers of unlawful government conduct over the years – secret transfers, incommunicado interrogations, forced feeding of hunger strikers, torture, enforced disappearance, and a complete lack of due process,” said Amnesty International’s Daphne Eviatar in a statement.
