The Guantánamo Docket

The New York Times has done a major overhaul of its invaluable Guantánamo Docket, making it -- if this is possible -- even more invaluable. Check it out here.

Since 2002, roughly 780 detainees have been held at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Now, 40 remain. Of those, 12 are being handled by the military commissions war court — three are facing proposed charges, seven are facing active charges and two have been convicted. In addition, 19 detainees are held in indefinite law-of-war detention and are neither facing tribunal charges nor being recommended for release. And nine are held in law-of-war detention but have been recommended for transfer with security arrangements to another country.

This is an astounding, granular resource. BZ to the Times team that produced it. In the At War newsletter, Carol Rosenberg writes:

In the minds of many people, the roughly 780 men and boys who were held at remote Guantánamo are still nameless, identically clad men locked behind razor wire. Forty remain there today, while the rest have been repatriated or dispersed around the world.

But in the tug of war for transparency there, time does win out.

The latest testament to that can be found in The New York Times’ online database of prisoner profiles called The Guantánamo Docket, which recently underwent not just a redesign but an update of nearly a decade of developments and documents — a herculean effort undertaken during the pandemic by a far-flung group of Times software engineers, editors and journalists.