"Please torture me in the old way … Here they destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks."

Letters From Guantanamo.

Standard issue supplies and items issued by the military to detainees at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Five detention facility.

You mean not only do I get indefinitely detained, but I get all this swag, too? To keepsies!

(via thepoliticalnotebook)

"Ten years after it was established, 171 detainees are still being held at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. Despite promises at the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency, the facility seems unlikely to be shut down anytime soon. While the very existence of the camp is controversial, some cases have drawn particular attention."

The Problem Prisoners: Ten of the most controversial detainees still held at Guantánamo.

BY THE NUMBERS: 10 years at Guantánamo Bay

think-progress:

10 years since the first 20 detainees arrived at Guantánamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray

1 year, 11 months, 21 days since President Barack Obama’s deadline to close Gitmo

242 detainees at Gitmo when Obama took office

171 detainees still held at Guantánamo Bay

89 detainees still held after being cleared for release

92 percent of prisoners were never al Qaeda fighters according to the U.S. government

13 years old, the age of the youngest detainee

89 years old, the age of the oldest detainee

$139 million per year to keep the Guantánamo Bay prison open

$800,000 per year to house each detainee

More facts at ThinkProgress.

Happy 10th birthday, Guantanamo Bay!

thepoliticalnotebook:

As Al Jazeera aptly writes: “Few places do more to conjure up anti-American sentiments than the Guantanamo Bay detention centre…”

Here are a collection of drawings done by Guantanamo prisoners, first reported on by Slate, and then the BBC and the Huffington Post some months later.  All photos taken by Emma Reverto of BBC Mundo.

[via]

Afghan Prisoner at Guantanamo Dies in Apparent Suicide

theatlantic:

An Afghan prisoner was found dead at Guantanamo on Wednesday, having apparently committed suicide, the U.S. military has said. The prisoner, a 37-year-old man known as Inayatullah, is believed to be the sixth suicide at Guantanamo since the military began detaining suspected terrorists there in January 2002.

The details of Inayatullah’s death aren’t yet clear—The Guardian says he was found dead in a recreation yard, while Politico says he was found in his cell. The Associated Press report says “the military would not immediately disclose any details about the circumstances of the death, including the method of the apparent suicide or in which section of Guantanamo the prisoner was detained.”

Read more at The Atlantic Wire

Rethinking Guantanamo After Detainee Info Led to Bin Laden

squashed:

theatlantic:

Anti-Guantanamo activists have to deal with the fact that the “best” information came from illegal detention centers, including Guantanamo.

(Read more at The Atlantic Wire)

I’ve pulled out the last quote—because it highlights some of the problems with claims that specific illegal and inhumane practices circuitously led to Bin Laden’s death. The linked article highlights a number of uncertainties—but it certainly looks probable that some critical information was received from detainees who had been waterboarded and held at Guantanamo.

• Did the illegal nature of the interrogation and detention produce more or better information than the detainees would have produced if they had been held legally and treated humanely?
• Did wasted resources following unreliable information obtained through torture delay the process?

It shouldn’t surprise anybody that valuable information came from the people we tortured. After all, we only tortured the people we were pretty sure had valuable information.

Of course, even if we answer these questions and decide that the torture directly led to actionable information (which it’s not at all clear that it did), we still have the question of whether the violence and loss of good-will inspired by the torture outweighed any gain. And even if we had a net gain from torture, we’re still stuck with the question of whether it was right. “We got away with it” doesn’t address that question.

Guantanamo Bay: How the White House lost the fight to close it

longformorg:

Inside Obama’s most glaring reversal.

Anne E. Kornblut,Peter Finn | Washington Post | Apr 2011

(Source: longform)

motherjones:

What torture looks like to the guys who plan it

Via Xeni at Boing Boing, here’s a sketch from the notes of Dr. Bruce Jesser, one of the psychologists who helped the US establish its “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantanamo. There’s more where this came from.

shortformblog:

Wikileaks: Former Gitmo detainee now key Libyan rebel figure: Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu spent nearly a year in Guantanamo on the belief he had ties to al-Qaeda. Now he’s a leader amongst Libyan rebels. source

(Source: shortformblog)