The Guantánamo detention center is a high security prison located in the Naval Base of Guantánamo Bay, located on the island of Cuba. It is an American property. Since 2002, US authorities have used it as a detention center for detainees accused of terrorism, most of them detained in Afghanistan during the invasion of this country, which followed the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The United States considers them "illegal enemy combatants" - most of them are accused of belonging to the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and not prisoners of war, so it understands that they do not have to apply the Geneva Convention and, therefore, that they can to hold them indefinitely without trial and without the right to representation of a lawyer, something that has been criticized by governments and human rights organizations around the world. The United States later admitted that, except for the members of Al Qaeda, the rest of the prisoners did. it would be protected by international conventions. Some jurists consider that the situation is in a "legal vacuum".
The first judicial decision was made on July 31, 2002. The federal judge of Columbia, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, determined that the US legal system lacked jurisdiction over persons held at Guantánamo. This ruling was ratified in March 2003 by another federal judge. In June 2004, the United States Supreme Court ruled that "the United States courts have the jurisdiction required to dispute the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in hostile and incarcerated activities in Guantanamo Bay" and He ruled that three prisoners who had invoked their right to be tried could take their case before civil courts. However, the majority of federal judges, in whose hands is how to apply the doctrine marked by the Supreme, seconded the thesis of the Administration that It is possible to retain the "foreign combatants" indefinitely, without bringing charges against them or putting them on trial. In 2006, the Supreme Court again attacked the Pentagon's strategy, stating that organizing military tribunals for foreign prisoners of war "violates the Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention", and that, moreover, it is not included in any rules. The Congress, with a Republican majority at that time, reacted by passing a law that expressly covers these military courts.