What's Going On At Gitmo?

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Even as allegations of Koran abuse at the U.S.'s naval base in Cuba were still making headlines, the Pentagon was bracing for a new storm as reporters last week sorted through several thousand pages of transcripts from tribunals in which detainees challenged their designation as enemy combatants. Earlier, as the government prepared to release the transcripts, as required by a Freedom of Information Act filing, military officials reviewed them, looking for "potentially controversial and embarrassing items" about which their superiors should be notified in advance, according to a Pentagon memo that TIME has seen. To make sense of the latest Gitmo controversies, here is a look at Guantánamo during the war on terrorism. -By Daniel Eisenberg and Timothy J. Burger

WHO IS HELD THERE? Since the first 20 prisoners were taken there from Afghanistan in January 2002, the U.S. has used its naval base in Cuba as its main holding area for suspected members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Some 750 detainees have passed through its gates at one time or another. Today it houses about 520, with the majority hailing from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Yemen. The most recent batch of new prisoners arrived last September.

WHAT IS THEIR STATUS? The U.S. considers none of the detainees prisoners of war, which means they do not enjoy rights under the Geneva Convention, which protects POWs from indefinite imprisonment and aggressive interrogation. Because the detainees allegedly targeted civilians and did not belong to a conventional army-or, in the case of the Taliban, did not serve under a legitimate government, in the U.S.'s view-Washington classifies them as unlawful or enemy combatants, a decision that numerous critics vehemently disagree with.

CAN THEY APPEAL? Because Guantánamo is on foreign soil-leased from Cuba since 1903-the U.S. has argued that the detainees are beyond the reach of U.S. law. Last June, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners have the right to challenge their captivity in federal court. Since then, some 150 detainees have filed petitions doing just that. The government has argued that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals-panels of three military officers that have been in place since last July-have given detainees all the due process to which they are entitled. Earlier this year a federal judge strongly disagreed, citing the fact that detainees were not allowed to have lawyers present at the review tribunals and were not privy to much of the evidence used against them. Another federal judge came down on the government's side. A case before a court of appeals in Washington is expected to decide the issue. Meanwhile, a recently declassified letter to military authorities obtained by TIME raises a new question about the tribunals. In the April 30 letter, lawyer Marc Falkoff, who represents Yemeni inmate Abdulmalik Abdulwahab Al-Rahabi, says statements made by an important witness against his client "appear to have been obtained by use of torture." Falkoff's letter says the witness is the same detainee whom FBI agents at Gitmo, in internal e-mails disclosed earlier this year, called #63 and who they said was intimidated with a dog and showed signs of "extreme psychological trauma" after being subjected to "intense isolation for over three months."