Sun-bleached and abandoned, these are the bones of Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay. The detention centre is notorious for the images of bound and kneeling detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits.Today the strip of ground where the smaller picture was taken in the facility's heyday is barely discernible.
Coils of razor wire look like tumbleweed as wild grasses have taken over in this US toehold in south-eastern Cuba - a 'legal black hole' thanks to the terms of America's 1934 lease on the site that places it under neither American nor Cuban jurisdiction. Camp X-Ray opened as a holding centre on January 11, 2002 but closed in favour of the more permanent steel cages of Camp Delta, half a mile away.
When it shut, Camp X-Ray housed 300 terror suspects from more than 40 countries, who were then transferred to Delta.
X-Ray's 78-tent city, erected to house the guards, has been torn down but the fences and chain-link cages remain. Detainees arrived shackled. Blacked-out goggles and earplugs deprived them of vital senses. They were interrogated in windowless huts. Six watchtowers stand along the outer ring of two perimeter fences. They housed snipers. Guards within the compound carried no weapons for fear of inmates disarming them. (Source: Daily Mail)
