US Southern Command shuts 'secretive' Guantanamo prison unit Camp 7; relocates inmates

The US military on Sunday closed its ‘most secretive’ communal cellblock Camp 6 located in the Naval base at Guantånamo Bay, Cuba where it had held 17 high-value detainees including Pakistani terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the principal architect who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. Forces also relocated the war-on-terror captives held by military captors and interrogated by The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 

The base’s clandestine detention facility was established by former US President George W. Bush's administration in 2002, where convicts were handed the death penalty and detained indefinitely without a trial, or transferred to other nations. The promise to shut the controversial United States military prison was made by the former President Barack Obama task force. Joe Biden’s aides, recently, launched a formal review to shut the once-secret unit, before he left office. 

At a White House presser, Biden’s Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that it was the administration's intend to shut down the prison cell, as it was something the Obama administration had vowed to do but ex-US President Trump reversed The Obama Guantanamo closure policy when he assumed the presidential office. The camp was officially closed in consultation with the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and other agencies, Psaki informed. 

[Guantanamo Bay. Credit: Brennan Linsley / AP]

Shut to 'increase operational efficiency'

Detainees held at the naval base facility in the southeastern edge of Cuba were transferred to prison cells at other defense bases. Miami-based US Military Southern Command, said in a statement, that the closure initiative was taken to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness while reducing operational cost.  “Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay (JTF-GTMO) has, safely and without incident, transferred all detainees from Camp VII to Camp V. This transfer consolidated all 40 detainees from three to two detention facilities,” US Southern command said.

“This adjustment does not compromise force protection, safety, or the mission to provide safe, legal and humane care to, and custody of the detainees at JTF-GTMO, and the planning involved the intelligence community,” the military forces added. Referred to as “Black sites”, Camp 7 opened in 2006 to hold prisoners from CIA detention facilities, and the US military had long denied its existence, never even acknowledging its location or permitting journalists inside the CIA’s network of secret prisons. Although, military personnel allowed 14 former CIA agents to have unencumbered access to two separate blocks of the unit known as Alpha and Bravo. 

(Image Credit: AP)