Hellholes by Halliburton.
Matthew X
profrv at nex.net.au
Sun May 9 07:37:01 PDT 1999
Halliburton to Build New Cells at Guantanamo Base WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Halliburton Co. has been awarded a $9.7 million contract to build an
additional 204-cell detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba to hold additional suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, the
Pentagon said on Friday.
The move will expand the high-security prison on the base, where hundreds
of such "detainees" from Afghanistan are already being held in 612 small
cells.
The prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station has played a major part in the
U.S. war on terrorism declared after September's attacks on America in
which more than 3,000 people died. No prisoners have been charged, but some
could eventually face military trials.
Brown and Root Services, an engineering division of Halliburton, will build
the additional 6-by-8-foot cells on the windward side of the remote U.S.
base at the southeastern tip of Cuba, the Pentagon said.
The work is expected to be completed by October. But the Pentagon suggested
on Friday that the facility could grow even more and that the contract
could eventually total as much as $300 million if additional options were
exercised over the next four years.
Vice President Dick Cheney is the former chief executive officer of
Halliburton, whose main business is providing oilfield services. The
company has come under heavy pressure this year because of concerns about
its liabilities and a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission into
its accounting for cost overruns on construction projects.
Additional Cells Sought By Rumsfeld
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier this month asked Congress to
approve expanding the prison facility, which currently has 612 cells, by
204 cells.
Army Lt. Col. Joe Hoey, a spokesman for the task force running the prisoner
operation at the naval base in Cuba, said earlier that the United States
was holding and interrogating 564 suspected Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners.
The prisoners were captured in the U.S.-led war against the al Qaeda group
blamed for the September attacks and against the Taliban government that
sheltered them in Afghanistan.
The captives were moved in April to Camp Delta, a permanent facility built
to replace Camp X-Ray, a series of makeshift chain-link cells hastily
erected when the U.S. military first brought prisoners from Afghanistan to
Guantanamo in January.
The United States drew fire from human rights groups after photographs were
distributed of the prisoners squatting in their cells in the blazing Cuban
sun. Human rights activists have criticized that U.S. stance that the
captives are not prisoners of war under the Geneva conventions.
The fate of the prisoners being held at Guantanamo is still uncertain. The
United States government has set guidelines to try some of them before
military tribunals but has not said when that might happen.
Camp Delta is made up of solid cells in rows that look like long mobile
homes. Unlike Camp X-Ray, they have wash basins with running water and
floor-style toilets that flush.
Like X-Ray, Camp Delta is surrounded by fences topped with razor wire and
ringed by wooden guard towers manned by sharpshooters. But the new camp is
enclosed inside a green mesh curtain, which prevents visitors from seeing
in and keeps the prisoners from seeing the tightly guarded shoreline a few
hundred yards away.
author: Charles Aldinger
news service: Reuters url:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0727-02.ht...
date: 2002-07-27
Habeus Corpus is dead for 2 aussis held illegally by the great Satan.
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