Andy Worthington: Six Years of Guantánamo

Six years ago, on January 11, 2002, the first of 778 prisoners -- referred to as "detainees," and identified only by numbers -- arrived at a hastily erected prison in the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where, ever since, they have been subjected to a disturbingly lawless experiment.

Under the terms of a military order initiated in November 2001, the President claimed that he could hold the detainees indefinitely, without charge or trial, as "enemy combatants." Guantánamo, leased from Cuba in 1903 under an arrangement that cannot be broken unless both countries agree to it, was specifically chosen for this experiment because it was presumed to be beyond the reach of the US courts.

For two and a half years, the administration succeeded in its aims, running an illegal offshore interrogation center, which mutated into a torture prison when the detainees proved resistant to interrogation