Guantanamo: A Tainted Legacy
    The Associated Press

    Thursday 21 June 2007

    Washington - Hooded prisoners in steel cages. Abusive interrogations. Indefinite detention. These elements of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay have provoked global outrage - and may now be leading to its closure.

    Perhaps no other place in U.S. history has inspired more condemnation and controversy than Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban face indefinite incarceration without trial and four have been driven to commit suicide.

    The detention center opened on what was then a sleepy U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba in January 2002, when bound and blindfolded prisoners were put into cages exposed to the merciless sun and rain. In the 5 1/2 years since then, the U.S. military prison has been transformed - most detainees are now held in concrete-and-steel cellblocks.

    Now, senior Bush administration officials tell The Associated Press they are nearing a decision to close the offshore military prison - saying they are close to a consensus that this symbol of the U.S. global war on terror has become a burden.

    If so, it's a major reversal. U.S. officials have long insisted that Guantanamo is essential, that its critics are either wrong, misguided or worse.

    More than 770 men have been held there. About half have been released or transferred to countries, which promptly freed most of them. About 375 prisoners remain, deprived of any real opportunity to challenge the accusations against them.

    "Guantanamo was born purely out of fear and hysteria following Sept. 11 but over time more and more people have come to realize that we do not have to abandon our basic principles to protect ourselves," said Tom Wilner, a Washington attorney who has represented detainees. "And I think the administration is coming to the same conclusion."

    The military tried to shroud the detention operation in secrecy, not even revealing who was held there until May 2006, when it forced to do so in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

    Disturbing news came from the prison, mostly from attorneys who sought hearings for the detainees in American courts. When three detainees hanged themselves in their cells in June 2006 , the Navy rear admiral who was then the commander of Guantanamo called the suicides "an act of asymmetric warfare against us." Human rights groups and attorneys were outraged.

    "A stench of despair hangs over Guantanamo," Mark Denbeaux, a lawyer, said after the suicides, which occurred days after he visited the isolated military base.

    Three weeks ago, another detainee, a Saudi who had insisted he was only a foot soldier for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, died in an apparent suicide.

    Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney, was at Guantanamo on Thursday to visit his clients when senior Bush administration officials said a consensus is building for a proposal to shut the prison and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities.

    In an e-mail, Stafford Smith wondered what the United States would do with the prison complex it has built up since 2002, then noted with bitter humor that it could serve as a "pleasant Caribbean resort."

    "We have the airport, and we have the hotel space (albeit rather solid rooms, but no problem with losing your things, as the security is good)," he said.

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    Associated Press writers Ben Fox and Michael Melia contributed to this report from San Juan, Puerto Rico.