Built nearly 18 years ago to detain suspected terrorists on a remote island off Cuba, Guantanamo Bay has become what appears to be the most expensive prison in the world.
The United States government spent about $ 161.5 million on housing the alleged intellectual author of the 9/11 terrorist attacks – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And by Saturday, Mohammed should receive a coronavirus vaccine to be tried and sentenced to death if convicted.
Captured in 2003, Sheikh Mohammed confessed to mentoring some of the most prolific terrorist attacks in recent decades, most notably the 9/11 attacks.
The Mohammed death penalty trial was originally scheduled for January 11, 2021, but was postponed due to the pandemic.
The lack of vaccines would have made it difficult for federal prosecutors to move forward with war crimes hearings at the base, which is why Terry Adirim, President Biden’s assistant deputy defense secretary for health affairs, signed an order of January 27 to vaccinate terrorism suspects, a Pentagon spokesman told the New York Post. Two defense officials confirmed the plan to Fox News.
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The Department of Defense changed course on Saturday. “No Guantanamo detainees have been vaccinated,” tweeted Defense Department press secretary John Kirby. “We are interrupting the plan to move forward, while reviewing the force protection protocols. We remain committed to our obligations to keep our troops safe. ”
In February 2017, the photo provided by his lawyers shows Khalid Shaikh Mohammad in the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. (Courtesy Derek Poteet via AP)
It is not exactly clear how much the federal government spends sheltering its Gitmo prisoners, but it is somewhere between $ 9.5 and $ 13 million per prisoner, per year. The prison currently has 40 inmates. This is compared to $ 78,000 spent per inmate in a “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, where some of the most at risk prisoners in the United States live.
Using the $ 9.5 million figure that NPR achieved in a 2020 report, U.S. spending on the 17 years that Mohammed spent in prison exceeded $ 161 million.
Guantánamo has cost US taxpayers more than $ 6 billion since its inception. Included in this figure are chartered planes to and from the island with few passengers, hundreds of thousands of government devices that are destroyed every year to leak confidential information, Pentagon-funded defense lawyers at a price of half a million dollars a year and total court costs of $ 60 million, although Guantánamo has only one final conviction.
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But the New York Times count increases the number to $ 13 million per prisoner, per year. “I think it’s crazy,” former President Trump said of the cost.
About 770 foreign men and boys were held captive as prisoners of war in Guantánamo, with the prison population reaching 677 in 2003. The last prisoner to arrive on the island came in 2008.
The Bush administration, which opened the prison after 9/11, released about 540 detainees, most of them repatriating them back to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration released another 200.
Trump pointed out that his predecessor had tried unsuccessfully to close the facility. “See, President Obama said that Guantánamo Bay would be closed and he never did.” Obama was prevented by Congress from transferring the 40 prisoners to prisons on American soil, as members did not accept the idea of terrorists on American soil.
President Biden, who throughout his campaign supported closing the center, was asked last year as a Democratic candidate why the Obama administration was unable to do so.
“It takes Congressional authority to do this. They kept it open,” said Biden in a debate in December 2019. “We, in fact, think … it’s propaganda to create terror.”
In 2019, a leading lawyer there filed a complaint against the arrest, alleging “great financial waste” and “great maladministration”.
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The cost has increased dramatically over the years – a 2013 Department of Defense report estimated the cost of detention per prisoner at just $ 2.7 million.
Captain Brian L. Mizer, a Navy attorney who has represented Guantanamo detainees over the years, called the prison “the smallest boutique prison in America, reserved exclusively for alleged geriatric jihadists.”