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Exactly whose jurisdiction does Guantanamo fall under if not America? And why are the laws of that jurisdiction not applied to those people?

• dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Exactly whose jurisdiction does Guantanamo fall under if not America? Cuba's, under the particular concept of territorial jurisdiction stemming from the Supreme Court ruling in Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), that the Executive Branch sought to leverage when it established the detention facility at Guantanamo. It is worth noting, however, that this broad application of the Johnson v. Eisentrager precedent in Guantanamo was generally rejected by the Supreme Court in cases including Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004) and Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008).
  • malandrew 12y ago
    Why doesn't Cuba do something about the situation at Guantanamo? They are already embargoed indefinitely. I don't understand why they don't address the situation there.
    • dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Why doesn't Cuba do something about the situation at Guantanamo? Like, what? Start a war with the US? There's a pretty obvious reason not to start a war with a country who you are close enough to that there aren't many logistical barriers to them bringing their military force fully to bear on you, and whose annual military budget is on the order of 10 times your GDP. Cuba's jurisdiction over Guantanamo is a legal fiction that the prior administration tried to leverage (largely unsuccessfully, given the Rasul and Boumediene decisions), not something that has real substance.