Military Grows More Defensive About Guantanamo Prison

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RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne. The United Nations top investigator into torture says the European union must continue to press the U.S. to close its detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. An investigative team from the UN last month found that Guantanamo violated human rights on several counts. Detention operations at Guantanamo have been criticized almost from the time the first terrorist suspects began arriving there more than four years ago.

NPR's National Security Correspondent Jackie Northam just returned from a week long visit to the remote base. She has this report on conditions there.

JACKIE NORTHAM reporting:

Every week over the past four years, the military has conducted tours of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Unidentified Woman: The first building on the right, those detainees have specifically requested not to be photographed.

NORTHAM: The detainees in Camp 4, the lowest security camp at Guantanamo, vanish into their cells with the arrival of visitors, usually journalists and members of Congress. The tour typically includes a look at cellblocks, food galleys, and recreation areas. It's also an opportunity to clear up misconceptions, such as this one raised by a South Korean journalist.

Unidentified Man: Have you tattooed a number on their skin?

Unidentified Woman: No. We do not, nothing physical. We have not tattooed anything on their arms.

NORTHAM: Officers at Guantanamo want to show that new procedures have been put in place to prevent a repeat of problems that have caused outrage over the detention operations in the past, such as guards occasionally desecrating the Koran. In each of the cells, the Islamic holy book is now cradled in a cloth surgical mask tied to the chain link cell wall.

Navy commander, Katie Hamp(ph).

Commander KATIE HAMP (US Navy): It is never touched by the guard force. If it needs to be inspected the interpreters are brought in and the detainee is asked to let the interpreter, look, open the Koran and let us look through it.

NORTHAM: Much effort is spent on showing how well the detainees are being treated. More recreation time, library books, and special meals. And new elliptical machines and stationary bikes to help burn off the 4,200 calories of food the prisoners are provided each day. Every once in a while, a finely honed tour is interrupted. Two detainees in the prisoner yell, Liar! Liar! Bush is a liar! Americans are liars! U.S. officials allow journalists to record the scene and then move on.

Despite the occasional glitch, the tours are designed to give Guantanamo what it desperately needs: good press. But that doesn't often happen. Guantanamo's reputation it seems is sealed. There are nagging rumors of detainee abuse; persistent questions about how much useful information interrogators are getting from the prisoners; and there's the ongoing complaint that the prisoners haven't been given due process. In order to address that the military set up annual administrative review boards called ARBs. Navy Captain Tom Quinn says the ARBs consider two factors into deciding whether to release prisoners.

Captain TOM QUINN (US Navy): One, is the detainee a threat to the U.S. or its allies? And two, is there intelligence value that can still be garnered from the detainee?

NORTHAM: Quinn says only about 10 percent of the detainees have shown up for their ARB hearing so far this year.

Capt. QUINN: Well, the first 22 ARBs, there were no detainees that elected to show up which is their absolute right. So we were over 22 and honestly a little nervous because then the process takes on an appearance that we're not trying to show.

NORTHAM: Namely, that the prisoners have lost faith in the review process or they've been told by their attorneys not to talk. There's been widespread criticism from defense lawyers and human rights groups over the legitimacy of the ARB hearings. The military says the detainees are given a fair chance to make their case to be released. Quinn says recommendations by the panel for release, transfer, or continue detention work their way through the chain of command. He says it's an enormous responsibility to decide whether to transfer or release detainees.

Capt. QUINN: And it's a tremendous risk we're taking to the ARB to recommend release or transfer because some of the people we have recommended to release have gone back to the battlefield. That is the danger you face.

NORTHAM: Several detainees who were released and sent back to (Yemen) broke out of prison there last month. More than 200 detainees have been released or transferred from Guantanamo since 2002. Some, such as a group of nine Uighurs, Chinese Muslims, are in limbo. The U.S. has determined the men are no longer a threat, but they're keeping them at Guantanamo because of concerns that they'll be persecuted if they're sent back to China. One of the festering complaints about Guantanamo is the effect that open-ended detentions are having on the prisoners. Over the years there have been more than 30 suicide attempts and there's an ongoing hunger strike. Colonel Jeremy Martin, a military spokesman, said that it began in August 2005 with approximately 75 detainees refusing to eat.

Lieutenant Colonel JEREMY MARTIN (Spokesman, U.S. Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba): And the number spiked to 131 around the anniversary of September 11. After September 11, the number of detainees on a hunger strike dwindled to the 30's and then around Christmas, December 25, another block of approximately 50 detainees refused to eat.

NORTHAM: Since then, the numbers have dropped dramatically. Six detainees are currently on a hunger strike. Three of them are being force-fed with the use of a restraining chair. The officer in charge of the detainee hospital, who did not want his name used for security reasons, says first the medical staff numbs the detainee's nose.

Unidentified Officer: And then we will take a small tube. It's flexible as you can see. We will gently place that through the nostril down into the stomach. We will insure it's in the stomach and then we will feed them over about a 20 minute period.

NORTHAM: The doctor says force-feeding is done only if the detainee's life is in jeopardy.

Unidentified Speaker: Our position is that as medical providers, our job as I have told the detainees multiple times, is to preserve their health and their life.

NORTHAM: Still, the force-feeding of detainees caused an international outcry and renewed calls to shut Guantanamo down. But there is little evidence that's going to happen. If anything, the base the expanding. There's a new intelligence building, several fast food restaurants have opened up, huge wind turbines that produce about 25 percent of the camp's power have been erected and there's much new construction.

(Soundbite of construction vehicles)

NORTHAM: More housing for the troops is being built and another prison is also under construction.

Major General JAY HOOD (Commanding General, Joint Task Force Guantanamo, U.S. Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba): Actually the entrance is around on the other side. We're gonna walk around there.

(Soundbite of footsteps)

Major General HOOD: I haven't been in here in a couple of weeks and I've...

NORTHAM: Major General Jay Hood, the Commander of the detention operations, says a lot of research went into the design of Camp 6, which is due to open in August. It's a hard-walled prison, modeled after a facility in Michigan, and will be capable of holding about 200 prisoners. Hood says the new prison will be divided into eight distinct sections.

Major General HOOD: The detainee population is not a homogeneous group. Many of them would attempt to do harm to each other if they had the opportunity. I mean, we have the ethnic Arabs don't necessarily get along with, or even speak the same languages, of course, as the Afghans do. You don't want to put a group of Shia and Sunni together in a place where they might tend to act out against each other.

NORTHAM: General Hood cannot say whether this will be the last prison built at Guantanamo. So much, he says, depends on how the U.S. courts decide to handle the issue of detainee rights. Whatever decision is reached, it's unlikely that the clamor to shut Guantanamo will subside anytime soon. Jackie Northam, NPR News.

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