GUANTANAMO BAY - The clang and clatter of construction continued to ring out at the United States naval base in Cuba yesterday as work crews worked on temporary cells to receive the first Taleban and al Qaeda prisoners.
Military work crews and civilian contractors are building cells with chain-link fencing and wooden roofs, open tot the elements on scrubland at the Caribbean base.
The prisoners are members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the former Taleban rulers that protected them in Afghanistan.
"They are the worst of the worst," said Navy spokesman Roberto Nelson.
A US official in Washington said the first C-17 planeload of some of the 368 "detainees" under US military control could leave within days for the facilities at Guantanamo.
CNN quoted military sources as saying that the detainees would travel in groups of 15 to 20 under heavy guard.
Transporting the prisoners was considered so dangerous that they might be sedated during the 15-hour flight.
Officials said measures being taken to keep the prisoners under control during the flights included using secure enclosures on the planes to confine them.
The Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, a 117 sq km US facility in a corner of southeast Cuba, is one of the final frontiers of the Cold War. It was used to house thousands of Cuban and Haitian refugees in the mid-1990s.
Founded after US Marines landed at Guantanamo Bay in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, the base has been virtually sealed since soon after Cuban President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, with US Marines and Cuban guards facing one another across barbed-wire lines.
Castro has called the base "a dagger plunged into Cuba's heart".
The US pays rent of $US4.08 ($9.57) a year under a 1934 treaty but Castro refuses to cash the payments.
Equipped with a McDonald's fast-food restaurant, a cinema and golf course, the tropical base now stands ready to take prisoners from the cold, bleak mountains of Afghanistan.
"We have constructed facilities to hold al Qaeda, Taleban and other terrorist personnel who have come under US control as a result of the ongoing global war on terrorism," Marine Brigadier General Mike Lehnert, in charge of the mission, said yesterday.
"Our job is to take these terrorists out of the fight by locking them up.
"We will treat them humanely in accordance with international law. They'll be held here under strictest security for as long as necessary."
The base is prepared to house about 100 prisoners immediately and will be ready for 220 soon, but military officials plan to build a more permanent prison to house up to 2000 eventually.
Prisoners, one to a cell, will be allowed out for showers and meals. They will be permitted to pray but will spend most of their time in confinement.
"We have no intention of making it comfortable. It will be humane. We are not aiming at comfortable," said Lehnert.
Unarmed military police will patrol inside the compound. Armed US Marines will watch the outside, some from watchtowers, others in Humvees with mounted machine guns.
The compound will be surrounded by chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
Red Cross and Red Crescent personnel will be on hand at the base.
"We are bringing some nasty guys here," said Army Lieutenant Colonel Bill Costello.
At the other end of Cuba, in the capital Havana, two visiting US senators who met with Castro last week said that he did not oppose the plan to hold prisoners at the base.
Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said Castro had ratified a Foreign Ministry statement that said Havana had not yet fixed its stance.
"He similarly is not raising an objection to the use of Guantanamo," Specter said after meeting the Cuban President along with Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.
Havana has condemned the September 11 attacks on the US but has also opposed the US bombardment of Afghanistan.
- REUTERS
Story archives:
Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
US readies tropical lock-down
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
