TIL that of the 780 prisoners who have been held in detention at Guantanamo Bay, only 16 have ever been charged by the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
#til #todayilearned
Discussion
That was essentially the legal structure they used for Gitmo.
Under the Patriot act they could detain people indefinitely using almost no evidence or justification.
Once you had to put together charges, then you had to start showing evidence and reasons for the detention.
Gitmo was mainly used for extrajudicial information gathering via advanced interrogation techniques, not to detain deadly terrorists.