Guantanamo Bay Naval Base - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (also called Gitmo or GTMO) is located on 45 square miles (116.5 km²) of land and water at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

which the United States leased for use as a coaling (fueling) station following the Cuban-American Treaty

Cuban-American Treaty

The Cuban–American Treaty was signed on February 17, 1903, by the first president of Cuba, Tomás Estrada Palma, and on February 23, 1903, by the president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt...

of 1903. The base is located on the shore of Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba. It is the oldest overseas U.S. Navy Base, and the only one in a country with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations. The Cuban government opposes the presence of the naval base, claiming that the lease is invalid under international law

International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...

. The U.S. government claims that the lease is valid.

Since 2002, the naval base has contained a military prison

Military prison

A military prison is a prison operated by the military. Military prisons are used variously to house prisoners of war, enemy combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by the military or national authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime...

, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, for persons alleged to be unlawful combatant

Unlawful combatant

An unlawful combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a civilian who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war. An unlawful combatant may be detained or prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action.The Geneva Conventions apply in wars...

s captured in Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

and later in Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

. The alleged mistreatment of all prisoners, the proven mistreatment of some prisoners, and their denial of protection under the Geneva Conventions

Geneva Conventions

The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...

, has been a source of international controversy.

History

See also Timeline of Guantánamo Bay
Timeline of Guantánamo Bay
Noteworthy Events of Guantánamo Bay.-Timeline:*30 April 1494 — Christopher Columbus, on his second voyage of exploration, sailed into Guantánamo Bay and remained overnight...

See also List of commanders of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

Spanish Colonial Era

The bay is located in Cuba

Cuba

and was originally named Guantánamo by the Taíno

Taíno people

The Taínos were pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. It is thought that the seafaring Taínos are relatives of the Arawak people of South America...

. Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

landed at the location known as Fisherman's Point in 1494, naming the bay Puerto Grande. The bay was briefly renamed Cumberland Bay when the British took it in the first part of the 18th century during the War of Jenkins' Ear

War of Jenkins' Ear

The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1748, with major operations largely ended by 1742. Its unusual name, coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1858, relates to Robert Jenkins, captain of a British merchant ship, who exhibited his severed ear in...

. In 1790, the British garrison at Cumberland died of yellow fever

Yellow fever

Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....

as had a previous British force, before they could attack Santiago

Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana....

by land.

Spanish-American War

During the Spanish-American War

Spanish-American War

The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...

, the U.S. fleet attacking Santiago retreated to Guantánamo

Guantánamo

Guantánamo is a municipality and city in southeast Cuba and capital of Guantánamo Province.Guantánamo is served by the Caimanera port and the site of a famous U.S. Naval base. The area produces sugarcane and cotton wool...

's excellent harbor to ride out the summer hurricane season of 1898. The Marines landed

1898 invasion of Guantánamo Bay

The Battle of Guantánamo Bay was fought from June 6 to June 10 in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, when American and Cuban forces seized the strategically and commercially important harbor of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Capturing the bay from the Spanish forces was instrumental in the following...

with naval support, requiring Cuban scouts to push off Spanish resistance that increased as they moved inland. This area became the location of U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, which covers about 45 square miles (116.5 km²) and is sometimes abbreviated as "GTMO" or "Gitmo".

By the war's end, the U.S. government had obtained control of all of Cuba from Spain. A perpetual lease for the area around Guantánamo Bay was offered February 23, 1903, from Tomás Estrada Palma, who became the first President of Cuba. The Cuban-American Treaty

Cuban-American Treaty

gave, among other things, the Republic of Cuba ultimate sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay while granting the United States "complete jurisdiction and control" of the area for coaling and naval stations. The base was an important intermediate distribution point for World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

merchant shipping convoy

Convoy

A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.-Age of Sail:Naval...

s from New York City and Key West, Florida

Key West, Florida

Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...

, to the Panama Canal

Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is a ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, the canal has seen annual traffic rise from about 1,000 ships early on to 14,702 vessels measuring a total of 309.6...

and the islands of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

, Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, and Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

World War II

During the war the base was set up to use a non-descript number for postal operations. They used the Fleet Post Office, Atlantic located in New York, New York with the address: 115 FPO NY.

Post-World War II

A 1934 treaty reaffirming the lease granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year, to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars, and made the lease permanent unless both governments agreed to break it or the U.S. abandoned the base property. Since the Cuban Revolution

Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...

, the government under Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

has cashed only one of the rent checks from the US government. The Cuban government maintains this was only done because of "confusion" in the heady early days of the revolution, while the US government maintains that the cashing constitutes an official validation of the treaty. The remaining checks, made out to "Treasurer General of the Republic" (a position that ceased to exist after the revolution), were shown stuffed in a desk drawer in Castro's office during a television interview with the leader years ago.

Until the 1953-59 revolution

Cuban Revolution

, thousands of Cubans commuted daily from outside the base to jobs within. In mid-1958, vehicular traffic was stopped; workers were required to walk through the base's several gates. Public Works Center buses were pressed into service almost overnight to carry the tides of workers to and from the gate. By 2006, only two elderly Cubans still crossed the base's North East Gate daily to work on the base, because the Cuban government prohibits new recruitment.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

in 1962, the families of military personnel were evacuated from the base. Notified of the evacuation on October 22, evacuees were told to pack one suitcase per family member, to bring evacuation and immunization cards, to tie pets in the yard, to leave the keys to the house on the dining table, and to wait in front of the house for buses. Dependents traveled to the airfield for flights to the United States, or to ports for passage aboard evacuation ships. After the crisis was resolved, family members were allowed to return to the base in December 1962.

Since 1939, the base's water had been supplied by pipelines that drew water from the Yateras River about 4.5 miles (7 km) northeast of the base. The U.S. government paid a fee for this; in 1964, it was about $14,000 a month for about 2500000 gallons (9,463.5 m³) per day. In 1964, the Cuban government stopped the flow. The base had about 14000000 gallons (52,995.8 m³) water in storage, and strict water conservation was put into effect immediately. The U.S. first imported water from Jamaica

Jamaica

via barges, then relocated a desalination

Desalination

Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from saline water...

plant from San Diego, California

San Diego, California

San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...

(Point Loma

Point Loma, San Diego, California

Point Loma is a seaside community of San Diego, California. Geographically it is a hilly peninsula that is bordered on the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, the east by the San Diego Bay and Old Town and the north by the San Diego River...

). When the Cuban government accused the United States of stealing water, base commander John D. Bulkeley

John D. Bulkeley

John Duncan Bulkeley was a Vice Admiral in United States Navy and was one of the most decorated naval officers. Bulkeley received the Medal of Honor for actions in the Pacific Theater during World War II...

ordered that the pipelines be cut and a section removed. A 38 inch (970 mm) length of the 14 inch (356 mm) diameter pipe and a 20 inch (510 mm) length of the 10 inch (254 mm) diameter pipe were lifted from the ground and the openings sealed.

With over 9,500 U.S. sailors and Marines, Guantanamo Bay is the only U.S. base in operation in a Communist

Communist state

A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...

-led country.

"Gitmo" has a U.S. amateur radio

Amateur radio

Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...

call sign

Call sign

In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign is a unique designation for a transmitting station. In North America they are used as names for broadcasting stations...

series, KG4 followed by two letters. This is completely distinct from Cuban radio callsigns, which typically begin with CL, CM, CO, or T4. For "ham" purposes it is considered to be a separate "entity." This position is not recognized by Cuba's amateur radio society.

Notable persons born at the naval base include actor Peter Bergman

Peter Bergman

Peter Bergman is an American soap opera actor best known for his portrayals as Dr. Cliff Warner on All My Children, as well as Jack Abbott on The Young and the Restless.-Biography:...

and American guitarist Isaac Guillory

Isaac Guillory

Isaac Guillory was an American folk guitarist. He wrote over 70 songs during a career that spanned 30 years.-Personal life:...

.

In 2005, the Navy completed a $12 million wind project erecting four wind turbines capable of supplying about a quarter of the base's peak power needs, reducing diesel fuel usage and pollution from the existing diesel generators, while saving $1.2 million in annual energy costs.

On January 22, 2009, President Obama signed executive orders directing the CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

to shut what remains of its network of "secret" prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantanamo detention camp within a year. However he postponed for at least six months difficult decisions on the details. , Obama has yet to close the detention camp. His advisors are reportedly preparing an Executive Order allowing for the indefinite detention of some detainees.

Cactus Curtain

"Cactus Curtain" is a term describing the line separating the naval base from Cuban

Cuba

controlled territory. After the Cuban Revolution

Cuban Revolution

, some Cubans sought refuge on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. In the fall of 1961, Cuban troops planted an 8 miles (12.9 km) barrier of Opuntia
Opuntia
Opuntia, also known as nopales or paddle cactus , is a genus in the cactus family, Cactaceae.Currently, only prickly pears are included in this genus of about 200 species distributed throughout most of the Americas. Chollas are now separated into the genus Cylindropuntia, which some still consider...

cactus along the northeastern section of the 17 miles (27.4 km) fence surrounding the base to stop Cubans from escaping Cuba to take refuge in the United States. This was dubbed the "Cactus Curtain", an allusion to Europe's Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain

The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...

and the Bamboo Curtain

Bamboo Curtain

The Bamboo Curtain was a euphemism for the east Asian version of the Iron Curtain. As a physical boundary, it was marked by the borders around the Communist states of East Asia, in particular those of the People's Republic of China that were shared with non-Communist nations, during the Cold War...

in East Asia.

U.S. and Cuban troops placed some 55,000 land mine

Land mine

A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....

s across the "no man's land

No man's land

No man's land is a term for land that is unoccupied or is under dispute between parties that leave it unoccupied due to fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dumping ground for refuse between fiefdoms...

"around the perimeter of the naval base creating the second-largest minefield in the world, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. On May 16, 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

ordered their removal. They have since been replaced with motion

Motion detector

A motion detector is a device for motion detection. That is, it is a device that contains a physical mechanism or electronic sensor that quantifies motion that can be either integrated with or connected to other devices that alert the user of the presence of a moving object within the field of view...

and sound sensors to detect intruders on the base. The Cuban government has not removed its corresponding minefield outside the perimeter.

Detention camp

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the base was used to house Cuban and Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

an refugees intercepted on the high seas. In the early 1990s, it held refugees who fled Haiti after military forces overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a Haitian former Catholic priest and politician who served as Haiti's first democratically elected president. A proponent of liberation theology, Aristide was appointed to a parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies...

. These refugees were held in a detainment area called Camp Bulkeley

Camp Bulkeley

Camp Bulkeley was a detention center located within the United States military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where HIV-positive refugees and asylum seekers were held during the early 1990s...

until United States district court

United States district court

The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...

Judge Sterling Johnson Jr.

Sterling Johnson Jr.

Sterling Johnson, Jr. is a senior United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York. Before his appointment to the bench in 1991, Johnson was an attorney for 30 years, specializing in drug enforcement and the prosecution of narcotics cases...

declared the camp unconstitutional on June 8, 1993. This decision was later vacated

Vacated judgment

A vacated judgment makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court....

. The last Haitian migrants departed Guantanamo on November 1, 1995.

The Migrant Operations Center on Guantanamo typically keeps fewer than 30 people interdicted at sea in the Caribbean region.

Beginning in 2002, a small portion of the base was used to imprison several hundred individuals — some of whom were captured by US forces in Afghanistan

Afghanistan

— at Camp Delta

Camp Delta

Camp Delta is a permanent detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between February 27 and mid-April 2002 by Navy Seabees, Marine Engineers, and workers from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root...

, Camp Echo

Camp Echo

Camp Echo is one of seven Guantanamo Bay detention camps that make up the main Camp Delta, at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, run by the United States military. The facility is used to hold detainees in solitary confinement...

, Camp Iguana

Camp Iguana

Camp Iguana is a small compound in the detainment camp complex on the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Camp Iguana originally held three child detainees who camp spokesmen then claimed were the only detainees under age 16. It was closed in the winter of 2004 when the three were sent home...

, and the now-closed Camp X-Ray

Camp X-Ray

Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002....

. The US military has asserted that some, but not all, of these detainees are linked to Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...

or the Taliban. In litigation regarding the availability of fundamental rights to those imprisoned at the base, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the detainees "have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control." Therefore, the detainees have the fundamental right to due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. A district court has since held that the "Geneva Conventions applied to the Taliban detainees, but not to members of Al-Qaeda terrorist organization."

On June 10, 2006, the Department of Defense reported that three Guantanamo Bay detainees committed suicide

Guantanamo suicide attempts

On June 10, 2006 three prisoners held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps allegedly committed suicide. The United States Department of Defense stopped reporting Guantanamo suicide attempts in 2002....

. The military reported the men hanged themselves with nooses made of sheets and clothes. A study published by Seton Hall Law's Center for Policy and Research, while making no conclusions regarding what actually transpired, asserts that the military investigation failed to address significant issues detailed in that report.

The closing-down of the Guantanamo Prison has been requested by Amnesty International (May 2005), the United Nations (February 2006) and the European Union (May 2006).

On September 6, 2006, President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

announced that enemy combatants held by the CIA will be transferred to the custody of Department of Defense, and held at Guantanamo Prison. Among approximately 500 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, only 10 have been tried

Military tribunal

A military tribunal is a kind of military court designed to try members of enemy forces during wartime, operating outside the scope of conventional criminal and civil proceedings. The judges are military officers and fulfill the role of jurors...

by the Guantanamo military commission

Guantanamo military commission

The Guantanamo military commissions are military tribunals created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 for prosecuting detainees held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps.- History :...

, but all cases have been stayed pending the adjustments being made to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 was a U.S. Supreme Court decision reversing the dismissal of a habeas corpus petition brought on behalf of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen being detained indefinitely as an "illegal enemy combatant." The Court recognized the power of the government to detain enemy...

.

President Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

has stated that he intends to close down the detention camp and is planning on bringing detainees to the United States to stand trial by the end of his first term in office. On January 22, 2009, three executive orders were issued by President Obama, although only one of these orders explicitly deals with policy directed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, most noticeably, the camp's closure within one year. All three could possibly impact the detention center, as well as how any detainee future or present will be held by the United States.
While mandating the closure of the detention facility, the naval base as a whole was not subject to the order and will remain operational indefinitely. This plan was thwarted for the time being on May 20, 2009, when the United States Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

voted to keep the prison at Guantanamo Bay open for the foreseeable future and forbid the transfer of any detainees to facilities in the United States. Senator Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii and chairman of the appropriations committee, said he initially had favored keeping Guantanamo open until Obama produced a "coherent plan for closing the prison." As of September 26, 2009, policy is currently being drafted with an aim toward compromise.

Represented businesses

In 1986, Guantanamo became host to the first and only McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

restaurant within Cuba.

A Subway sandwich shop

Subway (restaurant)

Subway is an American restaurant franchise that primarily sells submarine sandwiches and salads. It is owned and operated by Doctor's Associates, Inc. . Subway is one of the fastest growing franchises in the world with 35,519 restaurants in 98 countries and territories as of October 25th, 2011...

was opened in November 2002.
Other fast food outlets have followed.
These fast food

Fast food

Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...

restaurants are on base, and not accessible to Cubans. It has been reported that prisoners cooperating with interrogations have been rewarded with Happy Meals from the McDonald's located on the mainside of the base.

In 2004, Guantanamo opened a combined KFC

KFC

KFC, founded and also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is a chain of fast food restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States. KFC has been a brand and operating segment, termed a concept of Yum! Brands since 1997 when that company was spun off from PepsiCo as Tricon Global...

& A&W

A&W Restaurants

A&W Restaurants, Inc., is a chain of fast-food restaurants, distinguished by its draft root beer and root beer floats. A&W was arguably the first successful food franchise company, starting franchises in 1921 in California. Today it has franchise locations throughout the world, serving a typical...

restaurant at the bowling alley and a Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise that offers different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread....

Express at the Windjammer Restaurant. There is also a Taco Bell

Taco Bell

Taco Bell is an American chain of fast-food restaurants based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., which serves American-adapted Mexican food. Taco Bell serves tacos, burritos, quesadillas, nachos, other specialty items, and a variety of "Value Menu" items...

, and the Triple C shop that sells Starbucks

Starbucks

Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 55 countries, including over 11,000 in the United States, over 1,000 in Canada, over 700 in the United Kingdom, and...

coffee and Breyers

Breyers

Breyers is a brand of frozen dessert and ice cream owned by Unilever . They have a large plant in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston....

ice cream . All the restaurants on the installation are franchises owned and operated by the Department of the Navy. All proceeds from these restaurants are used to support morale, welfare and recreation (MWR) activities for service personnel and their families.

Airfields

There are two airfields within the base, Leeward Point Field

Leeward Point Field

Leeward Point Field , also known as Leeward Airfield, is a U.S. military airfield located at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.-Facilities:...

and McCalla Field. The former is an active military airfield and the latter closed.

Leeward Point Field has a single active runway 10/28. Former runway 9/27 was 8500 feet (2,591 m).

McCalla Field was an auxiliary landing field with 3 runways: 1/19 at 4500 feet (1,372 m), 14/32 at 2210 feet (674 m), and 10/28 at 1850 feet (564 m). It was mainly used for blimp operations and ceased operations in 1976. Camp Justice is now located next to the former airfield.

External links

Official U.S. military website

NSGtmo.navy.mil — "U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay Cuba: The United States' oldest overseas Naval Base"
Reprocessed Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) Documents

White House Statement

Read the Sept. 6 2006 statement about Military Commissions, covering Guantanamo Bay

Maps and photos

Human rights affairs

Reporting on life behind the wire: The Sudanese journalist Sami al Hajj held in Guantanamo Bay, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

, June 7, 2007

International law

de Zayas, Alfred. Guantánamo Naval Base, Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law

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