Guantanamo to hold terror prisoners

 



  The U.S. naval base at Guantamano Bay, Cuba, once a detention 
center for thousands of Cubans and Haitians seeking freedom in 
America, may soon become a prison for men with a radically 
different view of the country.

  The Pentagon is planning to house captured al Qaeda terrorists 
and Taliban fighters for an undetermined time at the base on the 
island's isolated eastern coast, Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld said Thursday.

  Despite the logistical hurdle of moving at least several dozen 
presumably dangerous men around 8,000 miles from Afghanistan, 
Rumsfeld called Cuba ``the least worst place.''

  U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, said she supported the 
idea, in part, because it would underscore the naval base's 
strategic importance at a time when some members of Congress 
have urged returning the territory to Cuba.

  ``It's an excellent location,'' she said. ``It gives new life to 
Gitmo,'' as the base is often called.

  Because the base is not on U.S. soil, people detained there are 
not entitled to American residency and eventual citizenship 
privileges. U.S. officials began using it as an offshore holding 
station during a Haitian refugee crisis in 1991. During the 
1994-95 rafter crisis, 50,000 Cubans and Haitians were housed 
there in a tent encampment after U.S. naval vessels had picked 
them up at sea.

  The prisoners from Afghanistan are not expected to arrive for 
weeks, and Rumsfeld said there are no plans to stage military 
tribunals or trials at the base, which is home to about 1,100 
members of the Navy and Marine Corps.

  The biggest challenge may be getting prisoners from South Asia 
to the Caribbean. Some prisoners are reportedly being held on 
warships in the Afghan region. Others are at a U.S. military 
compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where U.S. forces built a 
stockade of sorts to house them.

  
1999 PLANS

  At the Southern Command in Miami, the Pentagon's base for 
military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, 
spokesman Steve Lucas said planners had pulled out blueprints 
from April 1999 -- when the Clinton administration had briefly 
considered housing up to 20,000 refugees from the Kosovo 
conflict at the base.

  Then, the concern was how to make comfortable traumatized 
victims of civil war uprooted from a violent, cold climate. 
Planners scrambled to deploy healthcare workers and Muslim 
clergymen before the White House abandoned that idea.

  In this instance, military sources said, the number of prisoners 
would be much smaller -- perhaps in the dozens -- and the 
logistics would focus more on security at the 45-square-mile 
base and less on the comfort of prisoners who are considered 
either members of a terrorist network or supporters of 
terrorists.

  As of Thursday, the United States had an estimated 45 prisoners 
in custody. Guantanamo has detention space for about 100 people.

  ``All of this is pretty well-planned out because we have used it 
to house illegal migrant detainees in the past, Cubans and 
Haitians,'' Lucas said. ``It will be a little bit of a different 
situation but a lot of the basic stuff is the same.''

  
SLICE OF U.S.

  With an outdoor movie theater, bowling alleys, a McDonald's and 
a mini-mall, Guantanamo Bay is a curious slice of Americana on 
the edge of the Caribbean. As of 1999, 2,400 civilians were on 
the base, including the families of the sailors and Marines who 
manage the port and patrol the fence line that separates the 
base from communist-ruled Cuba. No updated figure was available 
Thursday.

  The base is extremely isolated. Visitors can reach it only under 
strict military escort and with prior permission from the 
Pentagon, aboard special small shuttle flights that reach the 
base by a circuitous flight from the United States. On rare 
occasions, Cuban defectors get there by swimming through 
dangerous waters or by traversing a Cuban minefield.

  There is also a gate between Cuba proper and the base that is 
sometimes opened for meetings between military commanders, or to 
repatriate Cubans who have been taken to the base.

  Cuban leader Fidel Castro has long argued that the U.S. military 
occupation of the base is illegal, while U.S. officials say the 
base exists under a lease agreement that was part of a 1934 
treaty with Cuba. Some Washington diplomats consider giving back 
the land a potential carrot for negotiation with a democratic 
Cuban government.

  Ros-Lehtinen suggested Thursday that the move might raise the 
hackles of Cuba's government, but Rumsfeld dismissed those 
concerns.

  
``We don't anticipate any trouble with Mr. Castro,'' he said.



Copyright 2002 Miami Herald