On 4 January 2002, Brigadier General Michael Lehnert received an urgent deploy-ment order. He would take a small force of marines and sailors and build a prison camp in the US-run military enclave on Cuba’s south coast, Guantánamo Bay.
Lehnert had 96 hours to deploy and build the first 100 cells, in time for the first plane load of captives arriving from the battlefield in Afghanistan on 11 January. The job was done on time: a grid of chain-link cages surrounded by barbed wire and six plywood guard towers manned by snipers. There were five windowless huts for interrogations. It was named Camp X-Ray.
Camp X-Ray was built in three days, but the sprawling Guantánamo Bay prison camp that grew out of it has proved very hard to dismantle. About 780 detainees have been held there over the past 20 years, many of them swept up arbitrarily. One university study found that 55% of them had not committed hostile acts against the US or its allies. Three of the past four US presidents (Donald Trump being the exception) have tried to close it, but 20 years on it is still there, a legal anomaly and lead weight wrapped around the country’s global reputation.
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