This Thursday, August 26, aboard a Delta Airlines plane chartered by the Pentagon to reach the Guantanamo base, the steward was still quite surprised: “I found out this morning where we were going. I thought Guantanamo was closed ”. Twenty years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, nineteen years after welcoming, in January 2002, the first detainees captured in Afghanistan – “The worst of the worst”, in the words of George W. Bush’s defense minister, Donald Rumsfeld -, the sinister prison is still there, forgotten, crushed by the tropical torpor. There are still 39 prisoners of the 780 or so to be passed behind the barbed wire at this naval base in southeastern Cuba.
Prevented by Congress, Barack Obama never succeeded in keeping his promise to put an end to this prison universe created by George W. Bush; Donald Trump did nothing; President Joe Biden, humiliated by the rout in Kabul, will find it difficult to complete its closure, which would be seen as an act of weakness as former Guantanamo detainees parade with the new Taliban government. In Guantanamo, we are not about to turn the page: the base gazette, GTMO Life, announces the commemoration ceremonies for the twentieth anniversary of September 11: ” We will never forget “. That day, a running race is organized, over a distance of 9.11 kilometers.
For nearly fifteen months, the base – an enclave of 117 square kilometers colonized on the island of Cuba, in 1898 – remained inaccessible, Covid-19 obliges. At the end of August, it’s a bit like the return of the regulars. On board, lawyers are there to defend three detainees accused of organizing the attacks in Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2002 and 2003, which left 202 and 12 dead. The correspondent of Miami herald passed to New York Times, Carol Rosenberg, is also present. She is the memory of the place, where she landed in January 2002 to witness the arrival of the first prisoners: a conscience must serve as a lookout in this lawless zone.
Locked access
The Pentagon imposes its routine, to disarm energies, like endless delays to access the base. “We are asked to arrive at 7 am in Andrews [près de Washington] for a Covid test; we spend hours waiting; the plane bypasses Cuba and when you land you have to take a ferry from the airport to the base, which is usually already gone. The trip lasts all day, it’s crazy ”, plague James Hodes, lawyer for Indonesian Encep Nurjaman, known as “Hambali”, former leader of the Indonesian radical Muslim organization, Jemaah Islamiyah, affiliated with Al-Qaida. As a welcome, signs pretend to mean that we are in a normal place: a first invites not to feed the iguanas that inhabit the base, another details the variety of fish, while a third indicates hiking trails.
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