Posted on 05/23/2003 6:40:20 PM PDT by quidnunc
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – The camp is reached through multiple wire fences, is shrouded from the outside world by green tarpaulins, and patrolled by hundreds of United States military police, almost all of them reservists, called from other lives as policemen, prison wardens, teachers and students.
Wooden watchtowers, fitted with searchlights, loom over rows of steel huts. There is a sound of the wind flapping in flags, the whirring of guards' electric fans, and the barking of large dogs.
Each maximum security cell is a one-man steel cage, painted pale green throughout, except for a black stencilled arrow, pointing towards Mecca.
The outer walls are neatly formed from a shipping container, with a floor of non-slip metal, and walls of rigid mesh.
The door is of stout bars, with two hatches at waist and ankle height, through which shackles are fixed to arms and legs before a prisoner leaves the cell.
A faint stench rises from a squat lavatory set into the floor next to a low sink for ablutions. A bunk of pale green steel, topped with a thin mattress, takes up much of the rest of the cage.
Despite the baking heat outside the cell blocks are merely warm, cooled by high ceilings and revolving roof vents.
Though it is largely invisible you can smell the Caribbean Sea crashing on rocks a few feet away.
The Pentagon's initial silence bred worldwide suspicion, fed from the very start by images of the first inmates arriving, stumbling along blindfolded, ears muffled, or pinioned to trolleys. Further anger was sparked when American officials insisted that the detainees were not prisoners of war but "enemy combatants" not covered by the Geneva Convention.
Lawyers for detainees quickly discovered that Guantanamo was not chosen just for its isolation.
This unique American naval base, which is leased from communist Cuba under an unbreakable treaty dating from the 19th century, is a legal limbo, beyond the reach of any civilian court.
Only last month a chance question to the commanding general of Camp Delta uncovered the fact that Guantanamo held three juveniles under 16, one of them as young as 13.
Defence chiefs have yet to concede a single point of law. But they appear newly determined to show the world that their camp is humane.
The Telegraph, the first British media organisation allowed inside Camp Delta, was offered access to guards, camp commanders, doctors, pastors, even the camp cook this week.
Curried fish stew was swiftly ladled from a vast tub. It tasted quite good. A cold military ration pack — lunch for the maximum security inmates — was produced. It was OK.
In a move to instil an esprit de corps, the commanding general has ordered Camp Delta troops to bark "Honour bound …" every time they salute an officer.
Officers, in turn, must complete the motto "… to defend freedom" as they salute back, though some rather mumble the line.
The guards are young and fresh-faced, swigging bottles of Gator-Aid like high school students in camouflage. They are earnest and unabashedly patriotic.
Specialist Gordon Leslie, 20, a reservist from Connecticut, admitted to anger at criticism of Camp Delta from outsiders. "It's military, so it must be bad — that's what people think," he said."We could give them cake, fan them, feed them grapes by hand, and people would still complain.
"People think because it's not under the Geneva Convention there's no rules. But we probably have more rules than if they were legal PoWs."
There are about 100 women among the guards who endure everything from sullen hostility to prisoners spitting at them. In the only concession to Islamic culture female guards do not supervise male detainees when they shower.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at portal.telegraph.co.uk ...
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – It is not horror that crushes your spirits when you enter the cells at Camp Delta. Instead, it is an absolute sense of defeat, of being hopelessly caught in a great steel machine, remorseless in its efficiency and patience.
Just a moment inside a maximum security cell — newly vacated for repairs — is enough to bring on despair. The hundreds of terrorist suspects brought to Camp Delta, on its scrubby hillside at the eastern tip of Cuba, were men seething with dreams, fuelled by visions of conquest and hate.
Camp Delta, newly built to replace the temporary facility of Camp X-Ray, is designed to smother such dreams, reducing the world to a steel cage, 8ft by 6ft 8in.
It is not a place of visible humiliation or cruelty. Some of its key facilities, from medical care to the food, are exactly the same as those provided to the guard force of US military police.
The call to prayer is piped through the cells five times a day, and each inmate has a copy of the Koran, prayer beads and holy oil.
But from the Stars and Stripes flags nailed to the camp's watchtowers, to the female troops who help patrol its cell blocks (outraging many inmates), it is intended to assert the final victory of the United States.
The Guantanamo Bay camp was, until very recently, shrouded in secrecy. The Pentagon will not confirm the nationalities of its 680 detainees, though it is known that nine are from Britain.
But the camp is clearly here to stay. American military commanders have drawn up plans for a permanent terrorists' prison at the site, including a possible execution chamber. Special military tribunals that could pass death sentences are expected to begin sitting this year, with defence lawyers asked to secure "secret-grade" security clearance.
-snip-
(David Rennie in The Telegraph, May 24, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
The letters stopped arriving months ago. In their place, Agnes Belmar received four photocopied A4 sheets last week, courtesy of the Foreign Office, containing pictures of her son's 8ft by 6ft cell, his shower and the exercise yard where he is allowed to take in the fresh air for 15 minutes twice a week.
The photographs were part of an attempt by the Government to persuade the families of the nine Britons held without charge for 18 months in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay that their relatives are not complaining of maltreatment and are in good health.
If the pictures were meant to appease and reassure the British families, many of whom have received no correspondence from their relatives since last July, they have failed.
Speaking for the first time about her 23-year-old son, Richard, Mrs Belmar, a devout Roman Catholic who lives with her husband, Joseph, in north London, said: "I feel my son has been forgotten about, abandoned.
"Even if he has done something, even if he was involved in something he should not have been, no one has charged him with anything. He has been held so long, without access to his lawyer or anyone, surely he has served his sentence by now? Sometimes I find it hard to believe I will ever see him again."
Like all the British detainees at Guantanamo, Richard Belmar, who became a Muslim after being expelled from school as a teenage troublemaker, has been refused access to his lawyers for the last 18 months.
His mother, who lives on a council estate in Maida Vale, was as powerless as any parent when her son announced in 2001 that he was going to Pakistan to study.
"My son was a normal young boy, he went to raves, he behaved badly for a time. Then he became a Muslim, he changed, he became polite and respectful and worshipped regularly at Regent's Park Mosque.
"He is a Muslim but he is not a terrorist. He went to Pakistan before the September 11 attacks. I didn't want him to go, but he is an adult and I could not stop him. Then we got a phone call from the Foreign Office to say he was being held in Cuba. My husband was so shocked he could not speak."
British lawyers say Mr Belmar and the other eight Britons — Moazzem Begg, 35, Shafiq Rasul, 24, Asif Iqbal, 20, Ruhal Ahmed, 20, Feroz Abbasi, 22, Jamal Udeen, 33, Tarek Dergoul, 24 and Martin Mubanga, 29 — are in legal limbo: they are denied the rights of prisoners of war or the opportunity to defend themselves in court because no charges have been laid against them.
"If they had been fighting they might have been held as prisoners of war but they should have been released once the hostilities were over," said Louise Christian, who represents Mr Abbasi and two others. "If [the Americans] have any evidence of terrorist involvement they should bring the defendants before a court."
-snip-
(Sandra Laville in The Telegraph, May 24, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
Wild animals belong in cages.
O' Well screw them. As far as I am concerned, they can rot there until they die
Outstanding! Duty bound...to defend freedom.
Mrs. Belmar, your son has not been forgotten nor abandoned. He has been placed on a shelf where his murderous philosophy and ideologies cannot hurt others. He will be taken down periodically, examined, and placed back on the shelf if deemed appropriate.
Being locked up under the control of women guards must be a real ego-crusher.
But when prison camp guards are ordered by their CO's to shout military mantras with every salute, it's over the top. A crisp salute is plenty.
Just my dos centavos, your mileage may vary.
"Airborne!"
If they miss the retort, they ain't in the club.
You know what holds up a chicken's rear?
Two legs.
Not the military I was in.
All in the name of "religion of peace"
BTW did you catch this
Some of the choicest profanities lose something in translation, said Specialist Leslie. "They're pretty keen on calling us donkeys. They seem to expect that to really hurt our feelings, so they'll wait for a big event to throw that one out."
Even they know a demorat is a lowlife creature.
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