Following are some facts about the detention operation at the U.S. Naval base in eastern Cuba: * The United States set up the prison after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan in pursuit the al Qaeda network behind the hijacked plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. * Upon taking office in 2009, Obama ordered the detention operation at Guantanamo Bay closed by January 2010 but missed the deadline, partly because Congress imposed tough restrictions on where prisoners could be transferred. Repatriation of prisoners was not a policy viewed sympathetically by many Americans, even though the vast majority of the 166 inmates still at the prison have been held for more than a decade without charge. * The first 20 prisoners arrived on January 11, 2002. They and other early arrivals were held at "Camp X-Ray," in chain-link wire cages that have long since been replaced by modern prison buildings. The prison has held a total of 779 foreign captives. Those who remain are from 23 nations and range in age from about 26 to 65. * They include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 plot, and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating a bombing that killed 17 U.S. sailors aboard the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000. They also include low-level foot soldiers cleared for release by U.S. military and intelligence officials, and members of China's Uighur minority who were cleared years ago by a U.S. federal court. * The ongoing tribunals at Guantanamo were authorized by President George W. Bush under rules that were later revised by the Obama administration. But only seven cases have been completed in 11 years, and convictions in two of those were overturned on appeal. * Almost two-thirds of the Guantanamo prisoners - 103 of them - are taking part in a hunger strike to protest the failure to resolve their fate. With the fast now in its fourth month, 32 captives have lost so much weight that medics are keeping them alive by force-feeding them liquid nutrients through tubes inserted in their noses and down into their stomachs. * Obama said on Thursday he had lifted a moratorium on repatriating prisoners to Yemen. He suspended transfers there in 2010 due to reports that an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen was behind a failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airplane on Christmas Day 2009. A total of 86 Guantanamo prisoners have been cleared for release or transfer, 56 of them from Yemen, but Obama did not indicate when those Yemenis would go home. * Obama also urged Congress to lift a ban on transferring Guantanamo prisoners to the United States and asked the Defense Department to designate a U.S. site to hold military tribunals for those facing charges. * Nine prisoners have so far died at Guantanamo. Seven deaths were classified as suicides, mainly by hanging, and two were attributed to natural causes, namely colon cancer and heart attack. * Many detainees have said they were tortured at Guantanamo. The U.S. government has acknowledged that interrogators used now-banned techniques that included sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and loud music. Prisoners were also chained in painful "stress positions." The CIA admitted using the simulated drowning technique known as "waterboarding" on three of the captives who were held at secret prisons and then transferred to Guantanamo. * The United States spends $150 million a year to run the Guantanamo prison, or about $900,000 a year per prisoner, and the Defense Department has asked for some $200 million more to replace worn-out buildings that were meant to be temporary. By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend $60,000 to $70,000 a year to house each inmate. Guantanamo costs are high in part because of the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, which forces the military to import food, fuel and supplies to the base from the United States. (Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by David Brunnstrom)
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