It’s startling to consider that the U.S. military is building a $30 million, air-conditioned maximum security prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, given that it implies that captives from the war on terror are entering long-term residency.
The government won’t reveal exactly how many prisoners are at Guantanamo, but published reports estimate about 500. The new two-story prison will hold about 220 inmates when it opens this summer. It will have a health clinic, recreation yards and arrows pointing toward Mecca so that Muslims may face in that direction to pray. The facility is being built by a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
When prisoners captured during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan were first brought to Guantanamo three years ago, they were held in hastily constructed enclosures of chain-link fencing. The primitive facilities sparked outrage among U.S. and international human rights groups.
The U.S. has several detention camps with varying degrees of security on the 45- square-mile base, including a maximum-security lockup at Camp Delta.
In all, according to a statement by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. has spent more than $100 million on prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay that couldn’t be replaced.
That’s debatable. The main reason the detainees aren’t imprisoned on U.S. soil is the Bush administration’s convoluted reasoning, rejected by the Supreme Court, that at Gitmo, they’re beyond the reach of U.S. courts.
French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy just wrote a surprisingly pro-American book, “American Vertigo,” yet could not hide his contempt for Guantanamo.
“Seeing it with my own eyes, Guantanamo was unbearable,” he said in an interview with Salon. “It goes far beyond what’s necessary to ensure security. I understand that some terrorists may need to be jailed, of course – but not humiliated, not deprived of their rights.
“Every criminal has a right to a defense. This is a basic tenet of democracy, and when you begin to play with these elementary rules, it’s like you’ve got a worm in the apple.”
The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base itself has an odd legal status. The United States in 1903 (effectively at bayonet point) forced a newly independent Cuba to grant it a lease in perpetuity. Fidel Castro’s regime claims the lease is invalid and reportedly cashed only the first annual rent check it received from the U.S. but not any subsequent ones.
The administration won’t budge on the detention facilities, which have seriously damaged the U.S. image around the world. President Bush on Jan. 13 rejected a suggestion from new German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the prison be closed. And last week, Bush changed the subject when Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt brought it up during a meeting. France, China and Russia also have protested.
U.S. political figures including former President Jimmy Carter, Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del. and Mel Martinez, R-Fla., have urged closing the prison. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently said if prisoners are “in Guantanamo or Des Moines, Iowa, that’s not a critical issue to me” as long as basic human rights are observed. He supports Biden’s call for an independent commission to determine whether to maintain prison operations at Gitmo or close the facilities there and find an alternative location for the prisons. The idea fell on deaf ears in the GOP-controlled Congress, according to Biden’s office.
Gitmo’s prison facilities operate with fuzzy rules and purposes, its residents held without charges for indefinite terms. An in-depth review is needed, with a full exploration of the alternatives.
