Guantánamo Bay - Facts and figures

9 January 2009, 10:38AM

Sunday 11 January 2009 marks seven years since the first detainees were transferred to the US military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The following facts and figures were updated in December 2008.

• Nearly 800 detainees have been held in Guantánamo, the vast majority without charge or trial.
• Approximately 250 detainees are still held in the military prison. Nearly 100 of them were Yemenis.
• 26 Guantánamo detainees have been charged for trial by military commission; three had been convicted and sentenced; charges against six had been dismissed (although they could be re-charged); six were facing the death penalty.
• Approximately 520 detainees have been released from Guantánamo to other countries since 2002, including Albania, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, Egypt, France, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom and Yemen.
• A majority of those detained are believed to be held in isolation in Camp 5, Camp 6 or Camp 7.
• Camp 6 was built to house 178 detainees. Detainees are confined for a minimum of 22 hours a day in individual steel cells with no windows to the outside.
• At least 12 of those held at Guantánamo were under 18 years old when taken into custody. At least three were still there in December 2008.
• At least four men are reported to have died in Guantánamo as a result of suicide. Dozens more suicide attempts have been reported.
• Detainees have been taken into custody in more than 10 countries before being transferred to Guantánamo without any judicial process.
• An analysis of around 500 of the detainees concluded that only five per cent had been captured by US forces; 86 per cent had been arrested by Pakistani or Afghanistan-based Northern Alliance forces and turned over to US custody, often for a reward of thousands of US dollars.
• 14 detainees were transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006 after they had been held incommunicado in secret CIA custody for up to four and a half years; five other men have been transferred to Guantánamo since, at least two of them from secret CIA custody.
• An unknown number of people have been held in secret CIA custody. At least three dozen people believed to have been held in secret remain unaccounted for, their fate and whereabouts unknown.
• Hundreds of people remain detained without charge, trial or judicial review of their detentions at the US air base in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Download these facts and figures as a pdf document (41kb)

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