Guantanamo Bay Special Report

Taliban ambassador wielded power within Guantanamo

When U.S. guards frog-marched Abdul Salam Zaeef through the cellblocks of Guantanamo, detainees would roar his name, "Mullah Zaeef! Mullah Zaeef!" Zaeef, in shackles, looked at the guards and smiled. "The soldiers told me, 'You are the king of this prison,' " he later recalled.

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Archive by category ''Guantanamo Bay Special Report

GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

Easing of laws that led to detainee abuse hatched in secret

The framework that allowed the abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, and kept them detained for years without due process, was not the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers.
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

U.S. hasn't apologized to or compensated ex-detainees

To date, the U.S. government hasn't given any former detainee financial compensation or apologized for wrongfully imprisoning him, shipping him around the world and holding him without legal recourse. The 38 former Guantanamo detainees who've been found to be no longer enemy combatants by tribunal...
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

Deck stacked against detainees in legal proceedings

Guantanamo detainees appearing before the military tribunals that would decide their fate had little chance of receiving evenhanded hearings, an eight-month McClatchy investigation found. At least 40 former Guantanamo detainees of the 66 interviewed had tribunal hearings, but none was able to submit...
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

How Guantanamo became a recruiting ground for militants

By the time Mohammed Naim Farouq was released from Guantanamo in 2003, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he'd made connections to high-level militants.
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

Abuse of detainees routine at U.S. bases in Afghanistan

The American detention camp at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, which the U.S. military set up starting in late 2001, was a center of systematic brutality for about two years, a McClatchy investigation has found, yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

Lack of training led to Bagram abuse, soldiers say

The Defense Department has said that detainee abuse in places such as Bagram was the work of a handful of wayward soldiers. Cammack and other soldiers say the abuse was the outcome of sending troops, often reservists with no background in detainee operations, to installations where the rules were...
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

Documents undercut Pentagon's denial of routine abuse

Although Defense Department officials deny that detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in other American camps were routinely mistreated, official statements and court testimony undercut the claim.
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

Many at Guantanamo had low-level or no terrorism ties

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Mohammed Akhtiar was one of dozens and perhaps hundreds of men whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or...
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

Studies differ on threat from Guantanamo detainees

Had a majority of the men imprisoned at Guantanamo after 2002 attacked the United States or American troops? It depends on whom you ask.
GUANTANAMO BAY SPECIAL REPORT

About this project

Early in 2007, as the Bush administration indicated that it intended to release most of the detainees at the prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, McClatchy set out to track down as many of the freed prisoners as possible to help determine who they were, what had happened to them in the...