The decision to house Afghan war prisoners at the US naval base in Cuba offers clear advantages to a US government seeking to maximise security while minimising public scrutiny, say analysts in Washington.
Just 850 kilometres from Miami, Guantanamo provides proximity while being beyond the convenient reach of the US legal system and journalists.
"They chose Guantanamo because it's out of the way, where reporters and the attention of the media will be less," said Ivan Eland, the Cato Institute's director of defence policy studies.
"It's close to US shores but is not part of the US."
"Guantanamo has the advantage that it is a totally controllable facility. No-one gets in, no-one gets out without US controls," said Anthony Cordesman, a defence and security expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"It is a sovereign enclave which means that the tribunals can operate in this area, and the problems of having constant, unauthorised media presence, leaks and all other issues that can turn any kind of treatment of prisoners of war into a political circus are avoidable."
The presence of the US base on Cuban soil has always been a sore point for Cuban President Fidel Castro, who has never relished the fact that his predecessors leased the bay to the United States in perpetuity.
US Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld, indicated that Washington was indifferent to Cuba's sensitivity about the base. "We don't anticipate trouble with Mr Castro in that regard," said Rumsfeld.
The US history with the base, home to some 500 US troops, is as complicated as its tortured relations with the government in Havana.
President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with Cuba on February 23, 1903 to lease the military post at Guantanamo Bay. Washington agreed to pay Cuba 2,000 gold coins a year for the base, a sum now valued at $US4,085 ($A8,080). The Cubans however have refused to cash the cheques from Washington.
Officials also said there were no plans yet to use the base for any trials of the detainees.
The United States currently holds eight suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters aboard the USS Peleliu, and 62 more at a US Marine base near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
