The National Stain Known As Gitmo

Earlier this year we watched a very disturbing film called The Mauritanian. The 2021 film was directed by Kevin Macdonald and starring Tahar Rahim as Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Jodie Foster as his defense attorney Nancy Hollander, and Benedict Cumberbatch as a military prosecutor. It depicts the true story of Slahi—a Mauritanian man held at Guantanamo Bay for 14 years without charges. 

The movie explicitly portrays the severe horrors he endured, including prolonged torture (e.g., sleep deprivation, beatings, sexual assault threats, and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques), based on his bestselling memoir Guantánamo Diary.

Slahi himself noted that the film's depictions were toned down compared to the reality. His book, and the subsequent film, is widely regarded as a powerful indictment of the prison's abuses. (For me, his story brought to mind the horrors American servicemen like John McCain and Lt. David Wheat suffered during the Vietnam War in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.)

A recent Substack post, "Don't Leave Until He Bleeds", by journalist and author Seymour Hersh brought additional light to the horrors of Guantanamo and triggered this blog post. Hersh cites a report by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). 

Summary of the Center for Constitutional Rights' 2023 Findings on Guantánamo.

Public domain

CCR is a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to monitoring and challenging human rights abuses. The organization has long advocated for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In 2023, CCR published key resources highlighting the ongoing crisis, including the fact sheet Guantánamo by the Numbers (updated April 2023) and the profile report Faces of Guantánamo (updated June 2023). These documents emphasize the facility's 21st anniversary as a symbol of indefinite detention, torture, and Islamophobia, with 30 men (all Muslim) remaining imprisoned as of early 2023—down from a peak of nearly 800 since 2002. CCR's analysis underscores systemic failures across multiple U.S. administrations, including stalled transfers and a lack of accountability for abuses.

Regarding prisoner numbers and demographics, CCR reports that 780 Muslim men and boys have been detained at Guantánamo over its history, with 86% captured via bounties (often $5,000 per person) during the early "War on Terror" era—many sold by locals without evidence of involvement in hostilities. One of these was the man featured in The Mauritanian.

What gets me is how people never seem to learn anything from past stupidities. This business of offering financial incentives to turn in "terrorists" easily escalates beyond ethical bounds when there is no due process or oversight. In 2008 I wrote about the manner by which American museums acquired shrunken head collections a century ago. You can read that story here: Shrunken Heads and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

According to the CCR report, by January 2023, only 35 men remained at Gitmo, isolated from families and the outside world, the beginning of the prison's third decade. Circumstances included prolonged solitary confinement in Camps 5 and 6, severe psychological trauma from torture (e.g., waterboarding, sleep deprivation), and inadequate medical care. Nine men had died in custody (from suicide or illness), matching the number convicted via military commissions—none for high-level terrorism. No senior U.S. officials have faced accountability for the wrongful detentions or torture documented in declassified reports.

The Faces of Guantánamo report humanizes the detainees through profiles, detailing stories like that of Yemeni national Sharqawi Al Hajj, detained for 20 years without charge, enduring CIA black sites before Guantánamo, and expressing fears of dying in isolation. CCR highlighted broader conditions: annual operating costs of $540 million (the world's most expensive prison per detainee), ongoing violations of international law (e.g., Geneva Conventions), and the Biden administration's slow progress—only 10 transfers in three years despite promises to close the facility. 

Closing the facility has been no easy task. President Obama made closing the Guantánamo Bay detention facility a prominent campaign promise and one of his earliest actions in office. On January 22, 2009, he signed Executive Order 13492, directing the prison's closure "as soon as practicable, and no later than one year" from that date, while mandating reviews of detainee cases. For a variety of reasons this never happened.

Despite numerous calls for immediate compliance with President Obama's 2009 Executive Order on humane conditions, nothing changed.

For full details, here are direct links to CCR's primary 2023 publications:

• *Guantánamo by the Numbers* (April 2023)
• *Faces of Guantánamo* (June 2023)
• PDF Download: Faces of Guantánamo (June 2023)
• CCR's January 2023 Statement on the 22nd Anniversary

These resources remain relevant, as Guantánamo's population has since decreased to around 30 as of late 2025, but core issues persist. CCR continues to represent detainees and push for closure through litigation and advocacy.