Growth at base shows firm stand on military detention (Guantanamo)

Posted on Sun, Aug. 24, 2003

Growth at base shows firm stand on military detention
Cells with concrete walls planned at Guantánamo
BY CHARLES SAVAGE
csavage@herald.com

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Twenty months after it opened as a short-term solution early in America's war on terrorism, this much-criticized military detention and interrogation camp is evolving from wire mesh to concrete.

The hastily erected Camp Delta for ''enemy combatants'' will make a significant leap toward permanence with a previously undisclosed fifth phase that will be hard-sided and take a year to build, The Herald has learned.

Workers are also retrofitting a makeshift courtroom in case some of the 660 detainees from 42 countries, most of them suspected al Qaeda members or Taliban soldiers captured in Afghanistan, are tried before a military commission.

The developments suggest that the Bush administration is literally pouring concrete around its controversial policy of indefinitely holding alleged terrorists and supporters in legal limbo, without prisoner-of-war rights.

'' should exist as long as the global war on terrorism is ongoing if it helps our nation and our allies win,'' said camp commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. ``We are exceptionally good at developing intelligence that will help defeat the scourge of terrorism.'' (snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/6604462.htm

And how is that intelligence developed!?!

While the military intelligence is being developed.

----Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller