Base Ready For Terror Trials, U.S. Says

Miami Herald ^ | June 26th, 2003 | Carol Rosenberg

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Miami Herald
June 26, 2003

Base Ready For Terror Trials, U.S. Says

By Carol Rosenberg

The U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is prepared to stage military tribunals against terror suspects, the commander of the Pentagon's Southern Command said Wednesday.

Army Gen. James T. Hill said the infrastructure at America's first-ever offshore detention center for terror suspects has been in place since April in case the Pentagon orders that the commissions be staged in the U.S.-controlled corner of Cuba.

The Pentagon is awaiting a decision by President Bush on whether and whom to put on trial, and where.

There is no timeline for an announcement.

Meantime, sailors, soldiers and other military support staff have already built a courtroom inside a pink building once used by the joint U.S. military task force that established the prison project, Army Lt. Col. Bill Costello said.

They have also built defense and prosecution offices, a conference room and judges chambers as well as a media center to accommodate what is expected to be keen interest in the proceedings, which provide for the death penalty as the maximum punishment for convicts.

''We fashioned a courtroom facility out of one of the existing structures on the installation as well as facilities for participants in any eventual proceedings,'' Costello said. ``There is no execution facility constructed at Gitmo yet.''

Hill also said that, of the 680 suspects held there, 10 are Iraqi citizens who were picked up as suspected al Qaeda members during U.S. military operations in and around Afghanistan.

None of the suspects were brought there from this year's U.S. invasion of Iraq.