The Pentagon has built a series of prison camps at Guantánamo Bay since it inaugurated its offshore interrogation center for terrorist suspects in January 2002 by airlifting captives to remote Cuba from Bagram, Afghanistan. They include:

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Camp X-Ray: The first camp, with 320 cells made of chain-link fencing, has emerged as the iconic image of the rugged, makeshift accommodations granted so-called enemy combatants in remote Cuba. A maze of kennel-like cages, the camp housed prisoners for about four months. It was an arrangement that allowed them to chat and pray communally and at one point organize the first hunger strike. Now abandoned, and overgrown with weeds, it provides journalists from around the world an opportunity to see how the detention center's infrastructure has evolved. Opened: Jan. 11, 2002. Current population: zero.

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Camp Delta, also known as Camps 1-2-3: This was the first improvement for housing the detainees. Halliburton workers from the Indian subcontinent welded metal shipping containers to create about 720 individual steel and mesh cells in boxcar-style arrangements. Built in stages for well over $30 million, its first phase, built in May 2002 with a projected five-year life span, has been renovated to make it harder for captives to rip steel parts from the walls and floors of the cells. In June 2006, three Arab captives were simultaneously discovered hanging in their cells, initially unnoticed by guards because they hung towels to block the view. By January 2009, a Pentagon report said, it was being used to house an undisclosed number of hunger-striking detainees being force-fed nutritional shakes through tubes tethered up their noses and into their stomachs. Opened: April 28, 2002. Current detainee population: About 10.

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Camp Echo: This 24-cell camp has been used for captives to meet lawyers inside shed-style buildings containing a tiny cell, a toilet and shower, with adjoining space for a table and chairs, and an ankle shackle fixed to the floor. Until a federal judge ordered the practice halted in November 2004, it was used as a special segregation site for detainees facing war-crimes trials before Military Commissions. Confessed al Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks of Australia lived there on and off for long stretches of his five-year stay at Guantánamo and was segregated from the "enemy combatant" population following his guilty plea while awaiting repatriation to his homeland. A few detainees live there permanently for reasons the military has not explained. Opened: Date unknown. Current detainee population: Three to five.

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Camp 4: Meant to be a showcase, pre-release detention area for 175 or so of the most cooperative, least dangerous captives, it was designed to resemble a traditional prisoner-of-war lockup. It has 10-cot bunkhouses, communal showers and toilets and a common outdoor eating area with picnic tables where captives could pray together. Commanders also added exercise bicycles and ordered AstroTurf for a dirt soccer field below a watchtower. Guards all but emptied it after what they described as a foiled uprising attempt in May 2004. Today there are the first sprouts of a garden in one recreation area and a bunkhouse bay transformed into a classroom with four desks and leg shackles for Arabic and Pashto classes. Opened: February 2003. Current detainee population: About 70.

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Camp 5: A maximum-security building modeled after a state prison in Bunker Hill, Ind., the $15 million building houses 100 captives monitored by guards using closed-circuit cameras and a central locking system. It has special interrogation cells, outfitted with faux Persian carpets, blue velour reclining chairs with an ankle shackle point, monitors, panic buttons and open-air, cage-like recreation areas. It houses 100 prisoners considered of greatest intelligence value, each in a single cell with toilet and fixed sleeping shelf under constant monitor by guards who peer through their windows. Each detainee gets all of his meals slid through a slot in the metal door, and canf exercise in a chain-link fence encircled recreation yard. In June 2009, about half the prison camp residents staged a two-week sit-in at the recreation yard. They turned trash bags into toilets, their water bottles into urinals. Guards didn't break it up and instead delivered the detainees their meals in the cages. Opened: May 2004. Current detainee population: Fewer than 50.

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Camp 6: This $39 million, centrally run, 200-cell prison was meant to be a minimum-security, all-enclosed version of Camp 4, with communal eating areas, easy-access showers and its own medical and dental clinic based on a Michigan model. After guards fought detainees inside Camp 4 in May 2006, it was redesigned as a maximum-security lockup. Captives at Camp 6 eat every meal and spend at least 22 hours a day inside single-occupancy 6.8-by-12-foot cells furnished with a stainless steel sink and toilet, a bunk and a steel desk with a slot to serve as a Koran holder. A common recreation yard was subdivided into five chain-link-fence-style cages, separating them from each other for up to two hours in the enclosures. Opened: December 2006. Current detainee population: About 50.

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Camp 7: Very little is known about this secret camp within the camps, whose existence was revealed Dec. 8, 2007, in declassified notes belonging to the only attorneys ever to meet so far with former CIA-held captives. The camp is not on the tours that the prison camps run for visiting media, which the detention center promotes as "the most transparent" detention facility "in the world." The Pentagon has so far declined to provide information on the camp's costs or other details about its establishment. It is not run by the same senior military officer who runs the Joint Detention Group at Guantánamo, an Army colonel who holds the job on a rotational basis. A Military spokesman at Guantánamo says it is a Department of Defense facility officially declared off-limits to visitors by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and will not identify the name, rank or service of the officer in charge. Adm. Patrick Walsh, no. 2 at the Navy, visited the camp in February 2009 and described it as similar to a "SuperMax" prison in the United States -- with climate controlled cells, a recreation yard surrounded by a chain-link fence and media rooms where detainees can watch videos and play with hand-held games. Only one Camp 7 detainee has been known to ever leave Guantánamo: Tanzanian Ahmed Ghailani, who on June 9, 2009 was sent to New York for federal criminal trial. Opened: Date unknown. Current detainee population: 15.

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Camp Iguana: Now housing 13 ethnic Uighur Muslims from China, plus Afghan Mohammed Jawad and another, in a chain-linked fence and razor-wire enclosed compound of wooden huts and a washhouse, created to separate the men from other detainees still classified as "unlawful enemy combatants." There, up to 20 detainees can get greater privileges, including more phone calls, a prayer room and a Wii. Guards watch over a half dozen wooden huts, surrounded by barbed wire, on the edge of the Caribbean.Opened: Date unknown. Current population: About 15.

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Behavioral Health Unit: A separate building adjacent to the detention center hospital serves as the psychiatric ward for mentally ill or otherwise troubled detainees. Known at the prison camps as the BHU, short for Behavioral Health Unit, it can hold up to 12 detainees in special cells, which are supposed to be under constant surveillance. The military has yet to confirm detainee and attorney reports that a Yemeni captive died in his cell there in the summer of 2009 in what the prison camps called an "apparent suicide." Reporters on weekly media visits see it in passing during prison camps tours but have not been permitted to visit the facility. Opened: 2006. Current population: About 10.

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updated Oct 20, 2009
Carol Rosenberg, Miami Herald

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