The Many Challenges at Guantánamo Bay, Encapsulated in One Case

The sentencing trial of an insurgent commander put a spotlight on the state of affairs at the wartime prison.

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A detainee at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in 2019 during the last visit by photojournalists before the prison ended media operations.

Many of the questions confronting the future of prison operations at Guantánamo Bay converged in the sentencing case of a confessed commander of Al Qaeda, from its aging population to secret plea deals.

At a hearing last month the prisoner sat in a padded hospital chair, with a four-wheeled walker and grab stick in reach, barely resembling the revered commander of insurgents he once was in Afghanistan. A paralyzing spine disease has left him disabled, and his lawyers say he is in constant pain.

In the jury box opposite the prisoner, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, 11 U.S. military officers looked fit and polished in their service uniforms. The panel sentenced him to the maximum possible punishment, 30 more years in prison, unaware that his fate had already been determined in a secret plea deal two years earlier.

Mr. Hadi, who was captured in 2006, is now one of just four convicted prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. But like most of the 30 detainees there, he has theoretically been approved for transfer to a stable, trusted U.S. ally. At 63, he is also the oldest prisoner and among the sickest in the offshore operation’s aging and ailing population.

In 2022, a Pentagon official in charge of the court agreed to cap his sentence at 10 years in consideration of his plea and cooperation with the U.S. government. In other words, the prisoner could go free in 2032. Under the agreement, he could leave earlier, if a country can be found to take him into custody and provide health care for him.

Eighteen other prisoners who have been held longer than Mr. Hadi have also been approved for transfer with security arrangements.

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