Twenty years later, the insoluble puzzle of Guantanamo

From our correspondent in Washington

Twenty years ago, on January 11, 2002, a US Air Force plane landed on a forgotten American base on the southern coast of Cuba. On board, dressed in bright orange overalls, handcuffed, blindfolded, about 20 prisoners captured during the first months of the "war on terror" declared by the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks. The captives are locked in rudimentary cells, open-air wire cages topped with barbed wire, assembled in a few days by the Marine Corps. In the months and years that followed, planes followed one another and the number of prisoners increased to several hundred.

Guantanamo quickly becomes famous, symbol of the legal and moral drift of American power, attracted by international jihad in a battle where the victories, but above all the defeats, are above all symbolic.

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