Where the First Guantánamo Detainees Are Now |
It was a scary, raw time just four months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the prison operation at Guantánamo Bay received its first prisoners from the U.S. military and intelligence invasion of Afghanistan. |
The secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, had declared the Navy outpost behind a Cuban minefield "the least worst place" to hold suspected Taliban and foreign fighters, most of whom had been handed over by local allies. |
 | | An image taken by the military on Jan. 11, 2002, shows the first 20 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay soon after their arrival.Petty Officer 1st Class Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy |
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I found myself sitting in the midday sun on a small dusty rise above the base airstrip watching pairs of Marines walk 20 captives down the ramp of a now obsolete military "Starlifter" cargo plane. |
A small knot of civilian reporters were permitted to watch, but not take photos, in exchange for sending a pool account to the Pentagon press corps. Here's an excerpt: |
2:55: First prisoner comes off. He is wearing a fluorescent orange jumpsuit, a shiny turquoise face mask, goggles, similar colored orange socks over white footwear, a brighter orange head cover that appeared to be a knit cap. His hands were manacled in front of him, and he limped. He was frisked and led, by at least two Marines, to the awaiting bus. |
When I talk to people about that day, on the radio or to students, I say, "Close your eyes and imagine men in orange jumpsuits on their knees at Guantánamo Bay." |
You've probably seen a picture of it. A Navy photographer took it at Camp X-Ray on that very first day and the Pentagon released it about a week later, capturing a moment in history whose continuing use in the media frustrates the military down there because not only does it look like torture to some people, but the military also now houses its remaining 40 Guantánamo prisoners indoors. |
The photo also haunted me at times, in a different way. The Pentagon called those first men "the worst of the worst," but refused to name them. Nearly from the start, I wondered: How do they know? |
Four months to the day before their arrival, the 9/11 attacks had exposed the United States' intelligence failures. Vice President Dick Cheney had said that the military "may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy" and that "we've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world." He called it "the dark side." |
Years would pass before I could put names to those first 20 men. It took triangulation: Comparing sloppily produced weight charts of each prisoner, by number not name, to flawed early intelligence profiles that leaked in 2011 and then consulting sources, including old notes. |
By then, we knew that the Bush administration had sent the people they thought were truly "the worst of the worst" to secret C.I.A. prisons, not Guantánamo — but that they had also repatriated eight of those original 20 prisoners. |
Then last year I found myself pinned down by the pandemic and set out to learn what became of those men in the photo. The trail took me back to old sources from my nearly 20 years of reporting there but also to new sources — former prisoners, whom I was forbidden to interview at Guantánamo and were also mostly stuck at home because of the coronavirus, experts on Afghanistan then and now, and foreign government officials. |
There were false starts, dead ends and men who did not want to be found. |
The reporting also required a crash course in this complex moment of Afghan peacemaking. Three of the prisoners in that photo are now part of a Taliban negotiating team in Qatar — and a fourth moves between Pakistan and Afghanistan, essentially functioning as a senior Taliban defense official. |
There were also sad tales. A Yemeni man from that photo has no income and is mostly homebound with his wife and daughter in his host country, Montenegro, because the possibility of work has vanished in the Balkans because of the pandemic. Two other Yemenis from that first flight are trapped in a prison in the United Arab Emirates, which never set up a resettlement program it promised. |
Carol Rosenberg has been covering the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, including detention operations and military commissions, since the first prisoners were brought there from Afghanistan in January 2002. |
Afghan War Casualty Report: March 2021 |
 | | Afghan security officials inspecting the scene of a bomb blast that targeted a police checkpoint in Injil District in Herat on April 1.Jalil Rezayee/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Here are four articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | Yeimi Sofía's coffin in the center of Puerto Cachicamo. Yeimi, 15, died during a military attack on a guerrilla camp in the jungles of southern Colombia.Federico Rios for The New York Times |
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"If we don't create change, if there is no investment, no other vision for our sons and daughters, we are going to fill our cemeteries with children." She was recruited by guerrillas at 13, then killed by her government at 15. In Colombia, young people are once again trapped in violent conflict. [Read the article.] |
"This is a big step toward making our military stronger and fairer." The Pentagon on Wednesday erased a Trump-era ban on transgender people serving in the military, issuing new rules that would offer them access to gender transition care and medical services denied under the Trump administration. [Read the article.] |
"We have defeated the enemy." The international community is scrambling to secure peace in Afghanistan, but the Taliban believe they have the upper hand — and are saying as much. [Read the article.] |
"Our biggest problem now is lack of money — and the war. Six years of war has completely devastated the people in every respect." For the second time in three years, the threat of widespread famine hangs over Yemen, where millions are displaced and struggle daily to find food. [Read the article.] |
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