This Is How The ‘War On Terror' Drags On At Guantanamo

Twenty years after the September 11 attacks, the US “war on terror” is still being fought on a piece of hilly scrubland in southeast Cuba known as Guantanamo Bay.

Within months of the attacks, the United States rounded up hundreds of people with suspected ties to the perpetrator Al-Qaeda and dropped them in the US naval base.

They were labeled “enemy combatants” without rights; the only timeframe for their release, if ever, said then-vice president Dick Cheney, was “the end of the war on terror” — which, officially, is still ongoing. Now, most of the 780 suspects who were locked in cages and bare cells have been freed, often after more than a decade without being charged. Today, 39 remain, some promised a release that never materialised, some hoping for it, and 12 whom Washington regards as dangerous Al-Qaeda figures, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 plot.

Under President Joe Biden, their trials have resumed after a delay caused mainly by the COVID-19 pandemic.