Camp Seven (also known as Camp Platinum) is the most secure camp known within the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...
s, in
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
.
Its existence was kept secret for the first two years of its use. It was constructed to hold the fourteen "
high-value detainees" who had been held by the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
, and were transferred to military custody on September 6, 2006.
Details
The detainees held in this camp are placed in hoods when transferred from the camp to other locations for their military commission or other purposes.
Some of the detainees, who faced charges before the
Guantanamo military commissions
ThGuantanamo military commissionswere established by President George W. Bush – through a Military Order – on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of e ...
, had attorneys who were initially told that they could not interview their clients. The attorneys were told it would be a breach of the camp's security for them to know the camp's location.
When attorneys
Suzanne Lachelier and
Richard Federico offered to wear the same hoods the detainees wore to visit the camp, they were eventually allowed to visit the camp without wearing blindfolds. They were transported to the camp in the same windowless van as the detainees, so they did not know the camp's location.
Attorney James Connell was the first person to visit a client at the prison. He visited his client
Ammar al Baluchi
Ammar Al-Baluchi ( ar, عمار البلوشي, ; also Romanization of Arabic, transliterated as Amar Al-Balochi, born Ali Abdul Aziz Ali,Shannon, Elaine. ''Time (magazine), Time''Al-Qaeda Moneyman Caught 1 May 2003 29 August 1977) is a Pakistan ...
at Camp 7 in August 2013.
A 2013 budget request from the United States Southern Command for new prison construction at the base was presumed by reports to be for the replacement of Camp 7, though specifics of existing facilities were not discussed.
According to an article by
Carol Rosenberg, published in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', on September 17, 2019, Camp Seven had at least two recreation yards.
At a preliminary hearing held that day prosecutors read a transcript of a conversation
Ammar al Baluchi
Ammar Al-Baluchi ( ar, عمار البلوشي, ; also Romanization of Arabic, transliterated as Amar Al-Balochi, born Ali Abdul Aziz Ali,Shannon, Elaine. ''Time (magazine), Time''Al-Qaeda Moneyman Caught 1 May 2003 29 August 1977) is a Pakistan ...
had with another captive, conducted by yelling over the wall of his recreation yard to the nearby recreation yard of the other man. It had not been known, until the release of this transcript, that the recreation yards contained hidden listening devices.
See also
*
Camp No—an alleged secret detention and interrogation facility
References
External links
{{GuantanamoExtrajudicialDetentionCamps
Prisons in Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay detention camp