Guantánamo remains a stain on America’s reputation

IT IS always twilight in the circular passage where the guards keep watch around the clock through wide windows, eyeing the “forever detainees” in Camp Six at America’s naval base at Guantánamo. These are the men who are deemed too dangerous ever to be set free but whose jihadist activities were apparently too shadowy to provide enough evidence to secure convictions in court. The passage is murkily lit so that the guards—and the rare visiting journalist—can peer through one-way glass unobserved by the detainees.

The official mantra is that the detainees’ treatment must be “safe, humane, legal, transparent”. But to anyone who believes in innocence until proof of guilt, visiting is a discomfiting experience. These men, however heinous their alleged crimes, have been detained without trial, most of them for more than a decade. They have had little prospect of freedom, or even of facing trial in America. Though the Caribbean laps against the shore nearby, none of them ever sees it.

In each walled-off section, ten prisoners or so mill around in a communal area with steel tables bolted down. Some lounge in chairs or on a sofa. A few read....