Camp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo

Joint Task Force Guantanamo

Joint Task Force Guantanamo is a U.S. military joint task force based at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on the southeastern end of the island. JTF-GTMO falls under US Southern Command...

 on the U.S. Naval Base

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002.
It was named Camp X-Ray because various temporary camps in the station were named sequentially from the beginning and then from the end of the NATO phonetic alphabet. The legal status of detainees at the camp has been a significant source of controversy, ultimately reaching the United States Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

.

As of April 29, 2002, the official Camp X-Ray was closed and all prisoners were transferred to Camp Delta

Camp Delta

Camp Delta is a permanent detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between February 27 and mid-April 2002 by Navy Seabees, Marine Engineers, and workers from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root...

.

Background

Camp X-Ray was originally built to house "excludables" in the mid 1990s when Fidel Castro allowed any Cuban wishing to do so, to cross through the Cuban operated minefields and enter the base. Excludables were held in Camp X-ray near Post 37 before being sent back to Cuba. Excludables included troublemakers in the regular camps where Cuban Asylum Seekers (CAS) were being processed to emigrate to the United States. The US government was at the time allowed access to Cuban records to process these people. Over 100,000 CAS were processed in the mid 1990s and allowed to enter the United States.

During the War on Terror, the camp was reestablished to house captured combatants. The care of these detainees at Camp X-Ray was handled by Joint Task Force 160 (JTF-160), while interrogations were conducted by Joint Task Force 170 (JTF-170).
JTF-160 was under the command of Marine Brigadier General

Brigadier general (United States)

A brigadier general in the United States Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, is a one-star general officer, with the pay grade of O-7. Brigadier general ranks above a colonel and below major general. Brigadier general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral in the other uniformed...

 Michael R. Lehnert until March 2002, when he was replaced by Brigadier General Rick Baccus

Rick Baccus

Army Brigadier General Rick Baccus received a regular Army commission in 1974 as an Infantry Officer through the Reserve Officers Training Corps program and immediately entered active duty.- Education :...

. Since Camp X-Ray's closure and the subsequent opening of Camp Delta

Camp Delta

Camp Delta is a permanent detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between February 27 and mid-April 2002 by Navy Seabees, Marine Engineers, and workers from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root...

, JTF-160 and 170 have been combined into Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO).

In accordance with U.S. military and Geneva Convention doctrine on prisoner treatment, soldiers guarding the detainees were housed in tents with living conditions "not markedly different" from that of the prisoners while the permanent facilities at Camp Delta were under construction. This camp was one of several location where allegations of torture of the prisoners have been made.

Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....

, the then Vice President, has stated:

"Prisoners could be detained until the end of the natural conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Forensic examination

According to Carol Rosenberg

Carol Rosenberg

Carol Rosenberg is a senior journalist, currently with the McClatchy News Service.Rosenberg works at the Miami Herald, which has provided extensive coverage of the operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.-Biography:...

, writing for the Miami Herald, Camp X-Ray was visited by a court-ordered forensic FBI team in November 2009.
The team spent a week photographing the camp and searching for evidence of abuse of prisoners. They found none.