Abstract

Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, President George W Bush issued a military order stating in unequivocal terms that the scale of the attacks ‘‘created a state of armed conflict that requires the use of the United States Armed Forces’’. Ever since, the United States and some of its allies have become engaged in what seems to be a constant state of
undeclared war. The ‘‘war against terror’’as it is commonly referred to, saw traditional military campaigns on two occasions. Besides these military operations there have been traditional COIN operations which led to the killing and capture of identified enemy targets. This article discuss the way the USA detained such persons in its more notorious 'Gitmo' prison complex, a modern legal Black Hole of international criminal justice.