I. The Courts and Guantanamo Bay

The Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp opened in early 2002 to hold prisoners captured by the United States in its prosecution of the War on Terror. The U.S. captured its first “Gitmo” prisoners after it attacked Afganistan. Gitmo currently holds about 200 prisoners but it has a capacity to hold 800 prisoners at once.  Since its inception, the prison has been a great source of both domestic and international controversy for the Bush administration and now the Obama administration. 

The five cases covered in this section – Padilla v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumedienne v. Bush – represent the most well-known legal actions brought by the prisoners of the War on Terror.  They all argue that they have been illegally imprisoned.  

Of these five petitioners, Jose Padilla, an American citizen of Puerto Rican descent, is the only one who is still in prison.  The rest of the petitioners that have been released were quickly sent to their home countries. In exchange for their release, many of the petitoners were forced to agree to never return to the U.S. or travel throughout much of the Middle East. In November 2008, Lakhdar Boumedienne became the first Guantanamo prisoner to be acquitted of all charges in an American court.