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Friday, September 20th, 2019

The Cost of Running Guantánamo Bay: $13 Million Per Prisoner

Author:     Carol Rosenberg
Source:     The New York Times
Publication Date:     Sept. 19, 2019
 Link: The Cost of Running Guantánamo Bay: $13 Million Per Prisoner
Stephan:   It is my view that Guantanamo like Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan represents the complete geopolitical failure by successive American administrations both Democrat and Republican. Guantanamo is a moral obscenity, as this report describes.

A communal cellblock for some of the 40 prisoners who are detained at Guantánamo Bay.
Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, CUBA — Holding the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess as the lone prisoner in Germany’s Spandau Prison in 1985 cost an estimated $1.5 million in today’s dollars. The per-prisoner bill in 2012 at the “supermax” facility in Colorado, home to some of the highest-risk prisoners in the United States, was $78,000.

Then there is Guantánamo Bay, where the expense now works out to about $13 million for each of the 40 prisoners being held there.

According to a tally by The New York Times, the total cost last year of holding the prisoners — including the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — paying for the troops who guard them, running the war court and doing related construction, exceeded $540 million.

The $13 million per prisoner cost almost certainly makes Guantánamo the world’s most expensive detention program. And nearly […]

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3 Comments

  1. Monty on Friday, September 20, 2019 at 7:01 am

    Could someone please itemize. Sounds like more $700 hammers to me. Also, what time period does this represent? The entire “Military-Industrial Complex” should be “Non-Profit.”

  2. Felipe on Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 4:15 pm

    Gee, wasn’t that the place Obama said he would shut down?

    • Will on Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 5:24 am

      Gee, Felipe I think it was the repubicans that had a hissy fit about putting the so called terrorists in US prisons. The same bunch who have resisted any resolution of the unjust imprisonment of our fellow human beings. Apparently “memory holes” are expensive to maintain and really how many Americans know or care. Also they are likely saving Getmo for future uses.

      Just another part of the cruel gulag in a corrupt, declining empire called the USA.