Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) is the US military unit based on the eastern tip of Cuba. Since around 2002 they came to world attention as the hosts or operator of Camp X-Ray and its successor Camp Delta which houses the stateless fighters captured in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9-11. Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility located at the Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ... A Camp Delta recreation and exercise area at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ...
The status of these detainees is hotly disputed. THe US calls them enemy combatants but stubbornly maintains that they have no Geneva Convention rights (due to their supposed "statelessnoss").
Other parties - chiefly ideological and political opponents of the Bush administration insist that the detainees be granted all the prisoner of war rights and privileges listed in Geneva Convention. Either on the grounds that the "are" POWs (under int'l law) or that the US, if it is to maintain the moral high ground, should go ahead and treat them nice anyway. Order: 43rd President Vice President: Dick Cheney Term of office: January 20, 2001 – present Preceded by: Bill Clinton Succeeded by: Incumbent Date of birth: July 6, 1946 Place of birth: New Haven, Connecticut First Lady: Laura Welch Bush Political party: Republican George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ...
Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhmyarov, two Russian nationals captured in Afghanistan in December of 2001 and released from Guantanamo in late 2002, were arrested by Russian authorities on August 30, 2005.
Guantanamo Bay is leased from Cuba and is nominally subject to Cuban sovereignty.
The original rulings were made for Cuban and Haitian refugees found on the high seas and sent to Guantanamo where they attempted unsuccessfully to apply for asylum and administrative hearings to avoid repatriation, but the rulings are applicable to other prisoners in Camp X-Ray according to legal precedent.
The mission of JointTaskForceGuantanamo is complex and challenging, but Harris is extraordinarily qualified, Army Gen. John Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said at the change of command ceremony.
The work of the taskforce is heavily scrutinized, he acknowledged, but he said he welcomes the scrutiny.
JointTaskForceGuantanamo is vitally important to the war on terror, Harris said.
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