User:Geo Swan/Starbucks at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

There is a cafe that sells Starbucks coffee at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The United States Department of Defense subsidized the installation of the cafe.

The presence of Starbucks on the Guantanamo base has been the trigger for ongoing controversy. Human rights critics have challenged Starbucks over whether operating facilities in close proximity to the controversial detention camp measures up to the corporate goal of "respecting human dignity".

In 2012, following reporting that new interrogators had been able to persuade suspects to confess, merely by listening sympathetically, and offering Starbucks' coffee, commentators questioned why the CIA's interrogators had found it necessary to use torture.

In 2013 the Guantanamo Starbucks outlet was again at the center of a controversy, when the Chief Defense attorney at the Guantanamo Military Commissions testified that she had ordered her subordinates to stop using the military's official computer network to send and receive case-related files, and to use the free WIFI provided at Starbucks, instead.

Construction
Accoriding to expenditure reports acquired by the Washington Post the US Government spent $683,000 USD to renovate the cafe.

The outlet was reported to have been opened in March, 2005.

Michelle Shephard, the Toronto Star`s national security columnist, and a frequent visitor to Guantanamo, described Camp Justice, where the Guantanamo military commissions are held, as "just downhill" of the Starbucks cafe.

Like Starbucks cafes in the continental United States internet access is available in and near the cafe to computers and devices equipped with "wifi" capability.

Human rights activists have challenged Starbucks over its opening of facilities near the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The cafe is reported to be "just a stone's throw away" from the detainee camps. Starbucks official reply noted its ongoing support for the USA's men and women in uniform, while "refrain[ing] from taking a position on the legality of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay."

In February 2008 the subject of coffee from Starbucks and torture was reinforced following the publication of an article in the Washington Post about how the "clean team" had found they could get the most senior al Qaeda suspects to reveal incriminating details of their conduct through sympathetic listening.

Mike Nitza, of the New York Times noted that Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent asked: