Guantanamo Bay: What next for Cuba prison camp?
- 14 January 2015
- US & Canada
After years of stagnation, there's been a burst of activity in transferring inmates out of the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Where will it end?
Five detainees - all Yemenis - are leaving Guantanamo, four to go to Oman and one to Estonia. They are the latest in a flurry of transfers out of the prison, part of a new effort to close the facility down.
Over the past year, 28 detainees have been transferred out of the prison and taken to countries such as Kazakhstan and Uruguay.
This leaves 122 men who are still held at Guantanamo. One of them is Shaker Aamer, the last British resident being held in Guantanamo Bay.
Mr Aamer, who is from London, has been held at Guantanamo since 2002.
Prime Minister David Cameron is visiting Washington this week and is planning to ask US President Barack Obama about Mr Aamer's release.
Today Mr Aamer is waiting to hear if he will be allowed to leave - as are others at the prison.
On Tuesday afternoon, one man at the prison was watching football on a big-screen television in a large room. He was held in a cellblock in Camp Six, an area of the compound where the "compliant" prisoners, as they're known, are housed.
He and other detainees were milling about in a communal area of the prison that could be seen through a one-way mirror. I was visiting the prison with three of my colleagues from the BBC and was escorted around the place by military officers.
A sign in the hallway says: "Close door quietly." The silence was broken only by the sound of keys clanking as a guard opened a door.
The hallway outside the communal area smelled like French coffee. Inside, an apple and several pears were displayed on a table. Another man in loose-fitting, tan pants was leaning back in a white plastic lawn chair, with his legs stretched out. He could have been waiting at a bus stop.
"They can do nothing but wait," said David Remes, a Washington-based human-rights lawyer who was visiting his clients at the prison on Wednesday - and spoke with me after getting off a ferry at the island. "One detainee told me that patience was their only weapon," he said.
The obstacles to getting him and other detainees out of the prison - and closing the place down - are immense.
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