Guantánamo Bay
Guantánamo Bay is a corner of Cuba militarily occupied by the USA, which uses it to hold a detention centre for alleged terrorists. The prison was built in 96 hours after 9/11 and has held 780 prisoners. It was extremely controversial during the War on Terror years, as the US government insisted that their basic human rights obligations didn’t apply there, until the Supreme Court decreed in 2006 that they did.
Conditions that the prisoners were held in included being confined to iron-barred cages 1.5 by 2 metres in size, being allowed outside only 15 minutes a day with a hood over their head and in strict silence, blows to the face, and interrogations without a lawyer.
Barack Obama was elected promising to close down Guantánamo Bay, but by the end of his eight years in office he still had not done so. Donald Trump cancelled any plans to shut it down. Now Biden is in office, and it still hasn’t been closed.