June 23, 2011: Activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods protest torture and call for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility outside the White House.

September 14, 2001: US congress passes AUMF bill, giving President Bush unprecedented authorisation to use force against "nations, organisations and individuals" whom he determined were connected in any way with the 9/11 attacks or future acts of international terrorism.

September 17, 2001: President George Bush signs memorandum authorising CIA to set up detention facilities outside the US containing specific information relating to the sources and methods by which the CIA was to implement the detention programme.

December 28, 2001: Justice department memorandum to Pentagon says because Guantanamo Bay is not sovereign US territory, federal courts should not be able to consider habeas corpus petitions, or right to a fair trial, from "enemy aliens" detained at the base.

January 11, 2002: The first detainees are transferred to Guantanamo from Afghanistan and are held in wire mesh cages in an area known as Camp X-Ray.

August 01, 2002:  Justice department memorandum to then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales says president can authorise torture, that interrogators may cause severe pain before crossing torture threshold. Another justice department memorandum to CIA gives legal approval for the agency to use 10 interrogation techniques against Abu Zubaydah. Techniques include stress positions, sleep deprivation, confinement in a small box and "waterboarding", in which the process of drowning the detainee is begun.

July 07, 2004: Pentagon announces formation of Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) – panels of three military officers who will review whether Guantanamo detainees are "properly detained" as "enemy combatants".

May 25, 2005: Amnesty International, the UK-based group, calls for the Guantanamo detention facility to be closed. The call is joined by UN experts, former US Presidents Carter and Clinton, heads of state from Europe and elsewhere, and other human rights and legal organisations.

July 20, 2007: President Bush issues an executive order authorising and endorsing secret detention so long as "conditions of confinement and interrogation practices of the programme" remain within limits set out in his order.

May 01, 2008: Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman was arrested by the Pakistani army in 2001. Al-Hajj spent six years in Guantanamo and was finally released without charge.

January 22, 2009: Two days after his inauguration, President Obama signs three executive orders, one of which states the detention facility at Guantanamo "shall be closed as soon as practicable and no later than one year from the date of this order".

May 21, 2009: In a major speech on national security, President Obama restates his commitment to closing Guantanamo but endorses indefinite detention without criminal trial of some detainees.

November 13, 2010: The US attorney-general, Eric Holder, announces five Guantanamo detainees accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks will be transferred to US and prosecuted in federal court. These same five detainees had been charged by Bush administration for trial by military commission in 2008.

January 22, 2010: Obama's one-year deadline for closure of the Guantanamo detention facility passes with 198 detainees still held in the base, about half of them Yemeni nationals. The Guantanamo Review Task Force issues final report, revealing that 48 detainees could neither be prosecuted nor released and had been "unanimously approved for continued detention under the AUMF".

December 01, 2011: Almost two years after President Obama called for its closure, 171 men from more than 20 countries remain held at Guantanamo, most of them without charge or trial.