Legal status

The peculiar legal status of Guantanamo Bay was a factor in the choice of Guantanamo as a detention center. Because sovereignty of Guantanamo Bay ultimately resides with Cuba, the U.S. government argued unsuccessfully that people detained at Guantanamo were legally outside of the U.S. and did not have the Constitutional rights that they would have if they were held on U.S. territory (see Cuban American Bar Ass'n, Inc. v. Christopher, 43 F.3d 1412 (11th Cir. 1995)). In 2004, the Supreme Court rejected this argument in the case Rasul v. Bush with the majority decision and ruled that prisoners in Guantanamo have access to American courts, citing the fact that the U.S. has exclusive control over Guantanamo Bay.

The U.S. classifies the prisoners held at Camp Delta and Camp Echo as "illegal enemy combatants", but has not held the Article 5 tribunals that would be required by international law for it to do so. This would grant them the rights of the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV), as opposed to the more common Third Geneva Convention (GCIII) which deals exclusively with prisoners of war. On November 9, 2004 US District Court Judge James Robertson ruled that the Bush Administration had overstepped its authority to try such prisoners as enemy combatants in a military tribunal and denying them access to the evidence used against them.

Another problem with the US treatment of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, is that most of them were captured and transferred to the camp from non-US soil. International laws regarding warfare would allow the US to do so, but only if the persons can be classified as prisoners of war. If they can not, the actions are kidnappings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay#Legal_status