When a picture says more than a thousand words

The famous picture of 20 prisoners in orange jumpsuits kneeling with heads bowed between two high-wire fences at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba defined the war on terrorism launched by President George W Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. Now 20 years later a series of official pictures taken by American military photographers after Guantanamo was first opened for terrorist suspects in January 2002 have been released for the first time. The pictures, made public following a freedom of information application by The New York Times, will reopen the accusation that the existence of the camp and the treatment of the hundreds of detainees sent there helped to inspire jihadist militants around the world against the US. One of the released images shows a prisoner being carried blindfolded, masked and shackled from a military bus into the camp by two soldiers. “With the shackles on, it was easier to transport them by carrying them,” Michael Pendergrass, a US navy photographer who took the picture is quoted as saying. A close-up picture of one detainee, identified by a tattoo on his left arm as David Hicks, an Australian who was taken prisoner when fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, shows him wearing goggles with duck tape over the lenses, earmuffs and a medical mask as he was taken down the ramp of a cargo plane which had brought him to Guantanamo. Hicks pleaded guilty to war crimes and was repatriated to Australia in 2007. He was released from Adelaide’s high-security Yatala Labour prison in December 2007 under a control order. In another photograph, the US stars and stripes flag has been placed in the hands of a blindfolded detainee. The initial flow of terrorist suspects were all brought to the Guantanamo facility, then known as Camp X-Ray, in buses which had had the seats ripped out. In their place a metal bar was welded to the floor and each prisoner was shackled to it. The first 20 prisoners were flown to the Guantanamo Bay naval base from Afghanistan via Incirlik in Turkey. Out of the 780 detainees sent to Guantanamo only 37 are now left. President Biden, like President Obama, has vowed to close the camp but the Pentagon which has overall responsibility for Guantanamo is still spending around $540 million a year to keep it open. The Biden administration has provisionally cleared 20 of the remaining detainees to be transferred to other countries. But ten detainees are awaiting trial under the military tribunal process, including the five, headed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a 58-year-old Pakistani, charged with masterminding the 9/11 attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001. These detainees were all interrogated by the CIA in secret “black” prisons in foreign countries and subjected to torture before being sent to Guantanamo . The numerous pre-trial hearings have largely focused on their treatment in legal arguments raised by defence lawyers paid for by the Pentagon. There are also another five detainees who have not been charged but who are considered too dangerous ever to be given their freedom. They have been called “the forever prisoners”.