‘It’s a huge political albatross’: Guantánamo Bay, 20 years on

The US-run enclave has proved hard to dismantle over two decades, a legal anomaly and lead weight wrapped around America's global reputation

On 4 January 2002, Brig Gen Michael Lehnert received an urgent deployment order. He would take a small force of marines and sailors and build a prison camp in the US-run military enclave on Cuba's south coast, Guantanamo Bay.

Lehnert had 96 hours to deploy and build the first 100 cells, in time for the first plane-load of captives arriving from the battlefield in Afghanistan on 11 January. The job was done on time: a grid of chain-link cages surrounded by barbed wire and six plywood guard towers manned by snipers. There were five windowless huts for interrogations. It was named Camp X-Ray.