New Prison Facility at Gitmo Gulag

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New Prison Facility at Gitmo Gulag

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

AP via Yahoo - Dec 8, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061208/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guantanamo_new_prison


Guantanamo detainees going to new prison

By MICHAEL MELIA
Associated Press Writer

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The U.S. military transferred the first
group of detainees on Thursday to a new maximum-security prison at
Guantanamo Bay designed to restrict contact among the prisoners and prevent
attacks on guards.

More than 40 detainees were brought to the $37 million prison perched on a
plateau overlooking the Caribbean Sea from another maximum-security facility
at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand.

The 178-cell prison, constructed beside another maximum-security prison
built in 2004, will allow the base to phase out an older facility, Durand
said.

U.N. human rights investigators and foreign governments have called on the
United States to close the entire detention center because of widespread
allegations of abuse of detainees by guards. The United States labels
Guantanamo detainees "enemy combatants," which accords them fewer rights
than other prisoners.

About 430 men are currently held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to
al-Qaida or the Taliban, including about 100 who have been cleared for
release and are awaiting transfer to another country. Fewer than a dozen
inmates have been charged with crimes.

The new prison was originally designed as a medium-security facility. But
the military made several modifications, citing concerns raised by three
suicides in June and a clash in May between guards and detainees armed with
makeshift weapons.

It is now one of two facilities reserved for prisoners who are least
compliant -- an assessment the military says it bases on detainees'
adherence to base rules rather than their cooperation with interrogators.

Detainees will be confined in individual cells with long, narrow windows
overlooking areas with metal tables and stools that were meant to be shared
spaces but will now be off-limits.

An open-air recreation area has been divided into smaller spaces, which will
hold only one detainee at a time. Shower doors were redesigned to allow
guards to shackle prisoners' hands and feet before they leave the stalls,
and fencing was installed on second-tier catwalks to prevent detainees from
jumping over the sides.

The new prison also has air conditioning, an onsite medical center and two
rooms that will allow detainees to meet privately with their lawyers, Durand
said.

Air conditioning has not been available at all the camps despite sweltering
tropical heat. But the military is now installing it some prisons after
detainees used broken fan blades as weapons in the melee in May.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kris Winter said the modifications will help make guards
safer. In the last year and a half, the military has recorded more than 430
incidents in which detainees have thrown "cocktails" of bodily excretions at
guards, as well as 225 physical assaults.

"As a commander, I don't like my folks being in danger every day," Winter
said this week while leading journalists on a tour of the prison.

Guantanamo officials said the inability of the detainees to communicate with
one another will also improve safety. Officials have said the May 18 ambush
inside another facility on the base resulted from a plot hatched by
detainees as word spread that guards were searching cells for contraband
medication following two suicide attempts.

A defense attorney said the melee was sparked when guards tried to search
prisoners' Qurans.

Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the jail, has also described June
10 suicides at a minimum-security facility at the base as a coordinated
protest. Lawyers and human rights activists called the suicides an act of
desperation.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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