Why is Guantanamo prison still open?

What the report says

Al Jazeera reports that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is still operating even though the US-led war in Afghanistan that helped bring it into being has long ended. The prison was opened after the US invasion of Afghanistan and at one point held hundreds of detainees. The outlet’s video segment, published on 8 Oct. 2026, focuses on why the site has not been shut down more than two decades later.

The key development is not a new policy announcement, but the continued existence of a facility that has become a symbol of the post-9/11 US detention system. According to Al Jazeera, Guantanamo was established in the early phase of the Afghanistan war and remains open 25 years later, despite the conflict’s conclusion. The piece is presented as an explainer by Noor Wazwaz.

The story matters because Guantanamo has been widely discussed for years in debates over national security, human rights and US legal authority. More broadly, the prison’s persistence reflects the difficulty of closing a site tied to long-running legal, political and diplomatic disputes. Al Jazeera’s report frames the question as one about why the facility has outlasted the war that helped justify it, rather than about a fresh change on the ground.