Timeline Of Guantanamo Events
(with thanks to The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, and The Daily Camera)
Nov. 13. 2001: President Bush signs an Executive Order authorizing the Defense Secretary to hold non-U.S. citizens in indefinite detention.
Dec. 27, 2001: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirms that the Pentagon will move warn terror detainees from Afghanistan to the U.S. Navy Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, ''the least worst place'' to hold them.
Jan. 9, 2002: Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and Special Counsel Robert J Delahunty advise the Pentagon that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the Taliban or Al-Qaeda and that the President has the authority to suspend the Geneva Conventions.
Jan. 11, 2002: The U.S. military sends 20 prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, a figure that would swell to 750 men and teenaged boys in the course of three years.
Jan. 19, 2002: Some clergy and law professors led by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark file a habeas corpus petition for Guantánamo detainees; it is dismissed because no petitioner is a captive's kin.
Jan. 22, 2002: Then Assistant Attorney General James Bybee advised White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the detainees.
Jan. 27, 2002: Rumsfeld makes his first visit to Guantánamo and the prisoners there “will not be determined to be POWs”
Feb. 7, 2002: President Bush issues a directive defining Taliban and al Qaeda captives as ''unlawful combatants,'' not prisoners of war.
Feb. 19, 2002: Empowered by family members, The Center for Constitutional Rights files a habeas petition in federal court in Washington D.C. on behalf of Guantánamo detainees David Hicks of Australia and Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal of Britain, Rasul v. Bush.
Feb 27, 2002: Almost two-thirds of detainees go on a hunger strike to protest a rule against turbans in the first organized act of defiance. U.S. officials decide to allow the turbans.
March 18, 2002: U.S. government asks the court to dismiss Rasul v. Bush, saying Guantánamo is not U.S. jurisdiction.
March 21, 2002: The Bush administration announces new military tribunal regulations.
April 5, 2002: U.S. officials discover detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi, thought to be a Saudi, was born in Louisiana, and swiftly evacuate him from Guantánamo Bay to stave off federal court intrusion into the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. Read the article.
April 25, 2002: Construction of the 410-bed Camp Delta is completed.
June 11, 2002: Hamdi, now held without access to an attorney at a Navy Brig in Norfolk, Va., files a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The government replies that President Bush's war powers give him authority that extends beyond judicial review to detain him indefinitely and to deny him access to counsel and the courts.
Aug. 8, 2002: U.S. District Court dismisses Rasul v. Bush, saying Guantánamo detainees cannot file habeas corpus petitions because they are non-U.S. citizens detained outside U.S. jurisdiction.
Oct 11, 2002: Officers at the Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp ask their superiors for permission to use harsher interrogation methods against inmates.
Nov 4, 2002: Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller takes command of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay with a mandate to get more and better information from prisoners there.
Nov 27, 2002: Rumsfeld issues an order allowing harsh interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay, including forcing prisoners into “stress positions,” interrogating them for 20 hours at a time, removing their clothing, and intimidating them with dogs.
Jan 15, 2003: Rumsfeld rescinds his order. No explanation is given.
March 11, 2003: U.S. Court of Appeals rejects appeal of Rasul v. Bush, setting the stage for a Supreme Court confrontation.
April 16, 2003: Rumsfeld issues a new list of 24 interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo Bay, 17 taken directly from the U.S. field manual and four requiring notice to Rumsfeld when used.
Oct 9, 2003: The Red Cross issues a public statement noting “deterioration in the psychological health” of a large number of detainees.
Nov. 10, 2003: The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Rasul v. Bush.
Dec 3, 2003: Australian-born David Hicks is the first prisoner to be given a lawyer.
Jan 12, 2004: Five military lawyers assigned to defend detainees say they plan to tell the Supreme Court that some of the rules drawn up for the military tribunal are unconstitutional.
Feb. 13, 2004: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld tells the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce that prisoners are not being tortured or otherwise mistreated at Guantánamo Bay. See the transcript.
March 9, 2004: Pentagon sends four Guantánamo prisoners to Britain, including Rasul and Iqbal, who are detained for a day and set free; the issue of whether Guantánamo detainees can sue is still bound for the Supreme Court.
April 20, 2004: Former Philadelphia federal judge John Gibbons, 79, a Nixon appointee, argues at Supreme Court that Guantánamo is U.S. jurisdiction and foreign detainees have right to file habeas petitions on behalf of the detainees. A former Japanese American internee, former judges and military lawyers, retired diplomats and civil liberties professors join him in written briefs. Hear the argument.
May 14, 2004: Freed Britons Rasul and Iqbal write an open letter to President Bush declaring that U.S. soldiers abused and humiliated them at Guantánamo Bay. They said guards used strobe lights, dogs and loud rap music to extract information.
June 28, 2004: The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Guantánamo detainees can challenge their captivity in federal courts. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissent. In a related case, the court also says Hamdi can be held as an enemy combatant but he, too, may challenge his detention in U.S. courts.
July 1, 2004: Civilian habeas corpus lawyers write Secretary Rumsfeld seeking to meet their clients at Guantánamo Bay.
July 30, 2004: In a bid to mollify the Supreme Court and create a substitution to challenge at the federal courts, the Pentagon creates military panels of officers to review each detainee's ''enemy combatant'' status on a case-by-case basis. Lawyers are banned from the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, CSRTs. See the CSRT summary.
Aug. 24, 2004: The Pentagon convenes its first ever Military Commission at Guantánamo Bay. Five U.S. military officers, only one an ex-lawyer, formally charge four of the 550 or so captives with war crimes, using rules written by the Defense Department rather than charge them in federal courts.
Aug. 30, 2004: The Pentagon permits the first civilian lawyer -- Gita Gutierrez of a Newark, N.J., firm -- to meet a Guantánamo detainee filing a habeas suit. Gutierrez sees British detainees Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abassi, who have since been sent home.
Oct. 20, 2004: U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly orders Pentagon to stop intelligence eavesdropping of lawyer-client conversations at Guantánamo, calling lawyerclient privacy a ''bedrock'' American principle.
Nov. 8, 2004: U.S. District Judge James Robertson orders the Pentagon to halt the war crimes trial of alleged a Yemeni who worked as Osama bin Laden's driver, saying the Military Commissions are flawed and likewise calls the Pentagon's CSRTs an inadequate, non-judicial alternative to habeas proceedings in federal courts.
Dec. 17, 2004: Pentagon notifies Guantánamo detainees that they can sue for their freedom in a U.S. court, distributing the court's Washington D.C. address to detainees for the first time.
Jan. 19, 2005: U.S. District Judge Richard Leon dismisses seven Guantánamo prisoners habeas petitions, ruling that President Bush's war time powers permit the Pentagon to hold enemy combatants and review the detentions on their own.
Jan. 31, 2005: U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green rules the opposite of Leon, saying Guantánamo Bay captives can sue for their freedom, and specifically citing torture allegations and criticizes the CSRTs as fundamentally flawed. The stage is set for a U.S. Court of Appeals decision and likely later review by the Supreme Court.
March 30, 2005: The DOD announces that it has completed all Combatant Status Review Tribunals.
June 16, 2005: The Senate holds hearings on Guantanamo Bay, and several senators criticize the limited role the Senate has played in setting the terms for wartime detentions. The Pentagon defends the conditions of and practices at the U.S. naval base, testifying the United States has the right to hold foreign detainees for the duration of the U.S.-led War on Terror, and that the annual reviews are both "rigorous and fair." Nonetheless, there is general talk of the possibility of downsizing the detention center. Following the hearings, over 50 senators head down to Guantanamo for a series of "fact finding" missions.
June 25, 2005: The New England Journal of Medicine publishes an article which claims that doctors at Guantanamo have been involved in the interrogation process, a violation of medical ethics. The Pentagon denies this, but issues a statement "reaffirming" its medical policies.
July 26, 2005: Reversing Robertson's decision in November of 2004, a Federal Appeals Court upholds the use of military tribunals at Guantanamo. Among those making the decision was Justice Roberts, who was nominated for a Supreme Court appointment shortly afterwards.
August 6, 2005: The Bush Adminstration announces that it is negotiating the transfer of nearly 70 percent of the detainees to prisons in their home countries, primarly Yemen and Afghanistan. Their transfer is scheduled to begin by early 2006.