Cuba gets tough new camp

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: Looking through the narrow windows in the doors of their 7-foot-by-12-foot steel-and-concrete cells, detainees at the new Camp 6 of the Guantanamo prison complex will see metal tables and stools in a common room.

When the prison was designed two years ago, the communal area was intended to bring detainees together for meals, games and conversation, a place where they could mingle with brothers in faith, language and customs.

But virtually all time at Guantanamo has become hard time, and when the $38 million (Dh140 million) building begins taking in prisoners in the next few weeks, the common rooms will be off limits.

A May 18 riot in which dozens of detainees attacked US soldiers, the suicide of three prisoners in June, and changes in the camp population - including the arrival of 14 "high value detainees" - have transformed the camp into a maximum-security facility.

The first new arrivals in two years - the "high value" group including September 11 plotters Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and Ramzi Binalshibh - were flown in from secret CIA prisons abroad over Labor Day weekend.

But dozens have left in recent months, too, having been cleared by annual review boards for release or transfer to their native countries.

Negotiations also are under way between the State Department and foreign governments on the possible group repatriations of 300-plus Afghans, Saudis and Yemenis - if Washington can obtain sufficient assurances that the men will neither be tortured nor freed to threaten US or allied forces.

The 100 or so expected to remain once the transfers are completed will be the more hard-core and combative figures with little hope of release or reward for good behaviour, according to military jailers.

Hard-core

In addition to the incidents in May and June, officials discovered that prisoners with good behaviour records had been dismantling their faucets to fashion weapons.

That prompted military jailers to reconsider whether prisoners should be allowed to interact.

"We had to think about whether there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist," said Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, commander of the prison and interrogation network that houses 460 war-on-terror suspects.

Col Wade Dennis, who as commander of the Joint Detention Group is effectively Guantanamo warden, echoed Harris' concern that while the majority of detainees cooperated with camp rules, the recent violence suggested they had been hiding their true nature.

"Detainees have already demonstrated they have the will and the thought processes to do self-harm and I facilitate that if I let them live in a communal-type environment," said Dennis.