Guantánamo

U.S. detention facility on Cuban territory used to hold enemy combatants apprehended in the war on terrorism. The Guantánamo facility, located at Guantánamo Bay, has been a U.S. naval base since 1903, and it is the oldest overseas U.S. base still controlled and operated by the United States.

The U.S. base at Guantánamo has remained occupied by the United States despite the communist regime in Cuba led by Fidel Castro. However, since the rise of communism and Castro in Cuba during the late 1950s, relations have been strained between the two countries, creating some tense situations on Guantánamo. The most tense situation involving the United States and Cuba was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. This dangerous standoff between the United States and Soviet Union over Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba led to the evacuation of Americans from Guantánamo until the missiles were removed in December 1962.

Initially used as a coaling station for ships, Guantánamo has evolved through the years. After Fidel Castro took power in 1959, his purge of the Cuban elite caused many to flee to Guantánamo for refuge and possible asylum in the United States. Consequently, Guantánamo became a refugee processing location that handled not only Cuban but Haitian refugees as well. Beginning in January 2002, Guantánamo assumed its latest primary mission—to hold and interrogate enemy combatants seized in the ongoing war on terrorism. Selected because of its unique position as a U.S. base on foreign territory, Guantánamo does not fall under any U.S. legal jurisdiction. The federal government has used this status as a rationale for holding enemy combatants for indefinite time periods and outside standard judicial review. The responsibility of holding enemy combatants was given to the U.S. military under the Joint Task Force Guantánamo, whose mission is to detain individuals and support the interrogation of enemy combatants for intelligence purposes.

The detention of enemy combatants at Guantánamo has been vigorously debated in the public and in legal circles in the United States and elsewhere. The status of detainees being held as enemy combatants has been challenged against the prisoner-of-war principles of the third Geneva Convention of 1949.