19/06/03
Guantanamo officials are ready to provide a courtroom, a prison and an
execution chamber if the order comes to try terror suspects at the base in
Cuba, the mission commander said.
Although no new directive has been given and no plans have been approved,
a handful of experts are looking at what it will take to try, imprison
and, if need be, execute detainees accused of links to Afghanistan's
fallen Taliban regime or to the al-Qaida terror network.
"We have a number of plans that we work for short-term and long-term
strategies but that's all they are plans," Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey
Miller said in a telephone interview Monday.
Isolated on Cuba's eastern tip and out of the jurisdiction of U.S.
civilian courts, Guantanamo is a likely location for U.S. military trials.
Last month, officials
named Army Col. Frederic Borch III the chief prosecutor and Air Force Col.
Will Gunn as chief defense lawyer for the proposed trials. The Pentagon
has listed 18 war crimes and 8 other offenses that could be tried,
including terrorist acts, and has issued rules for the tribunals.
Borch said he was
looking at prosecuting at least 10 possible cases before a tribunal.
Some 680 detainees
from 42 countries are in Guantanamo, categorized as unlawful combatants by
the U.S. government. It has refused demands from human rights
organizations to recognize them as prisoners of war. They have no
constitutional rights as non-U.S. citizens being held outside U.S.
territory, and none have been formally charged or allowed access to
attorneys.
The cases would be
decided by a panel of three to seven military officers who act as both
judge and jury. Convictions could be handed down by a majority vote; a
decision to sentence a defendant to death would have to be unanimous.
Some civil liberties
advocates have criticized the process.
"Any further
movement in the direction of trying these men in commissions that could
have the power to carry out death sentences is cause for great concern,"
Vienna Colucci of Amnesty International's Washington D.C. office said
Monday.
Miller said
renovations on a building being considered as a courtroom began in March
and likely will be completed next month. The building is being rewired and
could be used as a courthouse with facilities for media and military
officers.
There also are plans
to build a permanent modular detention facility, to imprison detainees who
might be sentenced to indefinite terms, and an execution chamber should
any be sentenced to death, he said.
"We're getting
ready so we won't be starting from scratch," Miller said, speaking
while on a visit to Washington D.C.
About 5 people have
been drafting several plans for the last 6 months, he said. It was unclear
how much money it would take to sustain such a permanent mission.
After the detention
center opened in January 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
called the detainees "among the most dangerous, best trained, vicious
killers on the face of the Earth." But, after lengthy interrogation,
many are thought to be low-level former Taliban fighters and unlikely
prospects for commission trials.
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