Few realize how expensive it is to keep Guantanamo Bay prison
operational. The Joint Task Force (JTF) detention center, which opened
in 2002, costs US taxpayers $140 million a year, breaking down to about
$800,000 per detainee.
The JTF was never meant to be permanent, yet twelve long years after
the first round of prisoners arrived, 149 prisoners remain detained
there indefinitely.
The oft-repeated lie that these men are the “worst of the worst” has
clouded the reality that the vast majority are completely innocent, and
were simply swept up in a dragnet in Afghanistan. 78 have already been
deemed innocent and cleared for release, yet pure political theater
keeps them imprisoned.
Moreover, only six of the 149 men have been formally charged with a
crime. Five are being tried together as alleged co-conspirators of 9/11,
although they are all said to have had varying operational levels, and
one stands accused of masterminding the USS Cole bombing. Yet the
commissions’ process is completely corrupted by absurd levels of
government secrecy, classification and intrusion.
A few weeks ago I traveled to Cuba to cover the continuing plight of
these men and conduct an in-depth investigation for Breaking the Set.
The report details how America came to host one of the most notorious
prisons in Cuba, the brutal and systematic torture that took place, the
sham of the 9/11 military commissions, the ongoing prisoner hunger
strike and how Guantanamo Bay prison could be closed for good.
Gitmo Exclusive Part I: An Untold History of Occupation, Torture & Resistance:
Gitmo Exclusive Part I: Media Brainwashing, Sham Trials & Closing Gitmo for Good:
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