How Did the US Get Stuck With Guantanamo?

The Inquiry

BBC

News Commentary, News

4.6 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2017

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2002 US military personnel at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were given 96 hours to prepare their sleepy base for the arrival of hundreds of prisoners. “The worst of the worst,” they were told. Beyond US jurisdiction, with no clear legal framework, prisoners accused of terror offences have been held there indefinitely without charge ever since. For many, Guantanamo has stained the image of the United States. When President Obama came to power in 2008 he vowed to close it. He failed. In this week’s Inquiry we are telling the full story of Guantanamo - from its creation to the so-called “forever prisoners” held there today.

Presenter: James Fletcher

(Photo: A US soldier walks next to a razor wire-topped fence at the abandoned 'Camp X-Ray' detention facility at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	One Saturday last December, a group of journalists were taking a tour of Guantanamo, the US prison camp in Cuba.
0:10.0	Such tours are highly controlled. Access is strictly limited. Interaction with
0:16.3	prisoners prohibited. Through one-way glass they could observe some of the detainees all of them captured as part of the United States ongoing war on terror
0:29.6	One of them a Yemeni man somehow knew that the journalists were there.
0:33.9	He went and got a picture he painted in an art class and held it up to the glass so the journalists
0:39.0	could see it. On the paper was a giant question mark and beneath its curve not a dot but a padlock.
0:51.0	The prisoner artist, Kalid Kossim, has never been charged and may never be freed.
1:01.0	When President Obama came to office eight years ago, he also wanted to be free of the Guantanamo
1:06.7	prison camp. But he leaves office this week with it still open. To understand why even the Commander-in-Chief couldn't shut down a
1:19.4	facility which came to be seen by many as a stain on America's image, you have to go back to the beginning.
1:28.8	I'm James Fletcher, and that's what we're doing on the inquiry this week, as we ask, how did the US get stuck with
1:35.8	Guantanamo? Part one. Part 1, an island of ambiguity.
1:45.0	An island of ambiguity. Ironically for the first couple of centuries of Spanish control of Cuba,
2:00.8	Eastern Cuba and Guantanamo particularly is actually identified with freedom.
2:07.0	Casting his historian's eye over this dry, rocky, undesirable corner of the Spanish Empire is Paul Kramer from Vanderbilt University.
2:17.0	It was actually an area that slaves, pirates, people that were trying to escape the worlds of state
2:27.0	colonialism would escape to because it was kind of under- colonized relative to other parts of the island.
2:34.0	The desire to shrug off the colonial yoke was not confined to Guantanamo.
2:38.8	In 1895, a revolutionary war against Spanish control broke out across the island.
2:45.0	A US warship was dispatched to Havana Harbour and then blew up under what were euphemistically called mysterious circumstances. The US joined the fight.
2:55.0	During the US operations against Spain, the US Navy gets a look at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba.
3:02.0	And in many respects respects this is the perfect
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.