Camp X-Ray (Guantanamo)

Camp X-Ray, shown here under construction, was a temporary holding facility for detainees held at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002. It was named Camp X-Ray because various temporary camps in the station were named sequentially from the beginning and then from the end of the NATO phonetic alphabet. The legal status of detainees at the camp has been a significant source of controversy, ultimately reaching the United States Supreme Court.

As of April 29, 2002, the official Camp X-Ray was closed and all prisoners were transferred to Camp Delta.

Background

Detainees upon arrival at Camp X-Ray, January 2002

Camp X-Ray was originally built to house "excludables" in the mid 1990s when Fidel Castro allowed any Cuban wishing to do so, to cross through the Cuban operated minefields and enter the base. Excludables were held in Camp X-ray near Post 37 before being sent back to Cuba. Excludables included troublemakers in the regular camps where Cuban Asylum Seekers (CAS) were being processed to emigrate to the United States. The US government was at the time allowed access to Cuban records to process these people. Over 100,000 CAS were processed in the mid 1990s and allowed to enter the United States.

During the War on Terror, the camp was reestablished to house captured combatants. The care of these detainees at Camp X-Ray was handled by Joint Task Force 160 (JTF-160), while interrogations were conducted by Joint Task Force 170 (JTF-170). JTF-160 was under the command of Marine Brigadier General Michael R. Lehnert until March 2002, when he was replaced by Brigadier General Rick Baccus. Since Camp X-Ray's closure and the subsequent opening of Camp Delta, JTF-160 and 170 have been combined into Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO).

In accordance with U.S. military and Geneva Convention doctrine on prisoner treatment, soldiers guarding the detainees were housed in tents with living conditions "not markedly different" from that of the prisoners while the permanent facilities at Camp Delta were under construction. This camp was one of several location where allegations of torture of the prisoners have been made.

Dick Cheney, the then Vice President, has stated:

"Prisoners could be detained until the end of the natural conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Forensic examination

According to Carol Rosenberg, writing for the Miami Herald, Camp X-Ray was visited by a court-ordered forensic FBI team in November 2009. The team spent a week photographing the camp and searching for evidence of abuse of prisoners. They found none.