Friday 10pm FRONTLINE: Out of Gitmo - Documentary - A detainee is released from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp after serving 14 years; the struggle to free prisoners who are deemed international terrorists; the history of the prison.
When President Barack Obama took office, he signed an executive order to close the controversial military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — where the U.S. has held terror suspects for years without charges. Though he didn’t succeed in closing Gitmo, a symbol of the post-9/11 war on terror, Obama made a final push to clear out the camp before he left office. He released 52 detainees, nearly half of them men who had been held indefinitely without charges. Once deemed too dangerous to let go, the detainees were cleared for release and scattered around the world in secret deals with foreign governments.
What happens to them once they’re Out of Gitmo? Correspondent Arun Rath examines the release of these “indefinite detainees.” Rath goes inside the prison itself, follows the trail of one of the last men released by Obama, and sits down with former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who personally signed off on the release of more than 40 detainees.
Then, in collaboration with Retro Report, a second segment, Forever Prison, tells the little-known story of how the military base first came to be used to hold people beyond the reach of U.S. law — a decade before 9/11, when some 70,000 Haitian refugees fled their country seeking asylum in the U.S.
Together, Out of Gitmo and Forever Prison provide essential context for the continuing debate on the future of Guantanamo.
