Advertisement
Photo: McNeal/Fox
2002
January 11 First detainees arrive, hooded.
February 7 Bush: Geneva Conventions do not apply; administration can make up its own rules.
October 11 Staff attorney: Jack Bauer of 24 "gave people lots of ideas" for interrogations. (Pictured Above)
December 2 Donald Rumsfeld approves use of dogs, sexual humiliation. Calls for harsher stress positions: "I stand 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?"
Advertisement
Photo: Higgins/USMC/Getty
2003
March 14 Justice Dept.: War Crimes Act doesn't apply to Gitmo interrogations.
April 16 Rumsfeld OKs constant sleep deprivation and exposure to heat.
April 25 Joint Chiefs chair says it's OK to hold children at Gitmo: "They're not on a Little League team . . . they're on a terrorist team."
August 15 Pentagon: Thirty suicide attempts.
October 9 Red Cross blasts detainee health.
Advertisement
Photo: Wilson/Getty
2004
June 28 Supreme Court rules detainees can challenge detention in federal court.
July 7 Administration approves using coerced evidence to list detainees as "enemy combatants."
August 2 Detainees found chained to floor in fetal position, covered in feces, subject to extreme heat, left for 24 hours with no food or water.
August 30 First civilian lawyer meets with detainees.
October 20 Judge orders Pentagon to stop eavesdropping on detainee conversations with lawyers.
Advertisement
Photo: Hondros/Getty
2005
May 25 Amnesty International calls for shuttering of Gitmo.
June 23 Rumsfeld calls Gitmo "a model detention facility."
September 13 Pentagon acknowledges it is force-feeding 18 hunger-striking detainees.
November 10 Senate passes "Graham amendment," stripping detainees of habeas-corpus rights.
Advertisement
Photo: Linsley-Pool/Getty
2006
February 8 Government documents: Half of detainees hadn't committed a hostile act against the U.S.
June 10 Three detainees hang themselves; administration calls suicides a "PR move."
June 15 Administration bars media from the prison; calls Gitmo "the most transparent detention facility in the history of warfare."
June 29 Supreme Court rules that Geneva Conventions cover detainees; violations would be "war crimes."
Advertisement
Photo: Loeb/AFP/Getty
2007
May 16 Mitt Romney: "We ought to double Guantánamo."
May 30 Detainee commits suicide.
June 13 Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) praises prison's "lemon chicken," insists that detainees have "never been more comfortable in their lives."
December 21 Mike Huckabee: "If anything, it's too nice."
Advertisement
Photo: Courtesy of Washington Post via Getty Images
2008
January 16 Canada puts U.S. on torture-watch list over Guantánamo.
June 17 Former Navy counsel: Gitmo helps recruit insurgents, ranks second only to Abu Ghraib as "causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq."
Aug. 6 After six years, first detainee convicted.
Sept. 9 Military prosecutor quits in protest over government deception in case against a teenage combatant.
December 15 Dick Cheney's final analysis: Gitmo "has been very well run."
[From Issue 1072 — February 19, 2009]
Related Stories:
- More from Issue 1072
- National Affairs Blog: All The News That Fits From the Beltway and Beyond
- Follow Omar Khadr From an Al Qaeda Childhood to a Gitmo Cell