Guantánamo has come a long way since 2002 when the first detainees - alleged enemy combatants in America's "War on Terror" - arrived at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Early photos from Guantánamo showed orange-clad prisoners at Camp X-Ray kneeling on the ground, blindfolded and shackled. Men were also alleged to have been subject to water-boarding, sleep deprivation and other abuses.

Although X-Ray was closed after only a few months, eight years later those images still dominate the world's perception of Guantánamo - as do the allegations of torture and mistreatment.

Behaviour
Today X-Ray is abandoned and overgrown with weeds. Almost all detainees are now held at Camp Delta - a complex of six separate camps, a hospital and a library. Camps vary according to security levels and which camp a detainee is assigned to depends on his behaviour - not on what he's alleged to have done before getting to Guantánamo.

Camp 6 is medium security. Detainees sleep in cells, but have access to communal areas, as the Officer in Charge, or OIC, explains [Military personnel at Guantánamo don't give their names for security reasons]:

"As you can see, the detainees are meeting with the Red Cross. They eat communally. We actually provide them the food, and they serve themselves. Three meals a day are provided that way. We also allow them to use one of the empty cells on each block as a pantry and in there they'll store fruits and vegetables, yoghurt, juice, honey dates... And obviously, food, the TV, the library, playing soccer, it's helped improve their quality of life and we've seen a dramatic decrease in infractions. We've gotten to the point where their quality of life is so much better and they behave because they don't want to lose it."

Skype
As well as meeting with the Red Cross, detainees have legal visits and can talk to their families on Skype. Interrogations are now entirely voluntary and guards are carefully supervised to make sure they are treating the inmates humanely, in accordance with Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

And broadly speaking that is what happens, according to Cori Crider of prisoners rights organisation Reprieve, particularly in the lower security camps 4 and 6. Camps 3 and 5 are higher security and tensions between guards and detainees are more likely to arise but not to the extent there are any abuses, she says, it's more a question of forced cell extractions than anyone being beaten up.

The military also invites feedback from the detainees, says the Detention Group Commander:

"We do have sessions where our camp OICs sit down and talk to our detainees and they provide suggestions. We take some of those suggestions and make some improvements. They would like more Pepsi, so we're working with that. They would like to have more seasoning for their food. Stuff like that. TV - they wanted more channels so we have given them more channels for TV. So, those are the types of things we've been doing so far."

Despite these improvements, many of the nearly 200 men at Guantánamo are still held without charge, trial or sentence. A recent US government review of Guantánamo anticipates that, even if the detention centre in Cuba is shut down, 48 men will still face indefinite detention without charge, likely on the US mainland.

Light bulb
But that's not something that the people working at Guantánamo control, says Zaki. He's the cultural advisor to the detention centre and works as a mediator between detainees and the US military.

"The biggest issue is not in our hands, which is their time here. They know that and I keep telling them that. It's not in our hands. What we can do is fix that light bulb, fix the plumbing, bring you better quality food...That's what we can do. The legal issues, you handle with your lawyer. It's not in our hands."

It's still not possible to interview detainees at Guantánamo so, for the time being we can't hear their side of this story. Nevertheless, in terms of their physical environment it's likely that the Guantánamo Bay of 2010 isn't the Gitmo you think you know.