GUANTANAMO BAY - The United States military finished building a temporary prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, yesterday, meaning it can more than double its population of Taleban and al Qaeda prisoners.
The number of prisoners at the US Navy base camp has stood at 158 since January 21, when the last of six groups of prisoners was flown from Afghanistan to the chain-link prison known as Camp X-Ray.
The US then suspended prisoner flights, in part because the camp was at capacity and military officials did not want to put more than one prisoner in each cell, for security reasons.
The camp has been expanded to 320 cells, divided into six cellblocks with four showers and five or six portable toilets each.
Construction crews, battling spiders, scorpions and scorching heat in arid southeastern Cuba, will take a few days off, then start adding wooden floors and other improvements to the tent city where many of the troops guarding the prisoners live.
The prisoners will eventually be moved into a more permanent prison, to be built from prefabricated modules. That will take 55 days to build, once Congress gives approval.
At the temporary prison camp, there are three air-conditioned, wooden huts where intelligence officers and representatives of other US agencies interrogate prisoners, one at a time in shifts that typically last about an hour. They hope that the interrogations will yield information to thwart additional attacks and shut down the al Qaeda network.
At the weekend, at least one prisoner was carried to an interrogation session on a stretcher.
Camp spokeswoman Petty Officer Krystyna Johnson said some prisoners who had suffered wounds in Afghanistan were still unable to walk.
"If he is unable to walk, and he must be moved, we carry him on a stretcher."
- REUTERS
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Camp X-Ray ready to take more prisoners
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