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President Obama’s self-imposed deadline for closing the controversial detention operation at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is this Friday. He’s already acknowledged he won’t meet that deadline. The World’s Katy Clark toured the facility earlier this month to find out how people there are preparing for its closure, whenever that might be.
- Obama reaffirms Guantanamo Bay prison closure plans
- Katy’s debrief after her return from Gitmo
- Katy’s previous Guantanamo coverage on The World
- Q&A: Closing Guantanamo
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH, Boston. Shortly after taking office one year ago today, President Obama issued an Executive Order.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now. We will be setting up a process whereby this is going to be taking place.
WERMAN: The President’s deadline for closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is this Friday. Mr. Obama bas already said he won’t meet that time line, though he remains committed to closing it as soon as possible. The World’s Katy Clark recently toured the detention facility to find out what Guantanamo looks like on the eve of the President’s deadline.
KATY CLARK: The detainee library at Camp Delta is a good place to gauge the pulse of Guantanamo eight years after the first prisoners arrived.
ROSARIO: In this room we have our biggest selection.
CLARK: The librarian identifies herself only as Rosario, and she doesn’t allow her face to be photographed. Still, she proudly displays the camp’s collections, which occupied just one small room in a drab prefab building a few years ago.
ROSARIO: It used to be next door and it used to be small room that we have approximately about 5,000 books. Currently, we have 14,000 books. With magazines and DVDS, we are around 17,000 items.
CLARK: Rosario says the library had to expand because the detainees have been here so long they’ve already read and watched everything in the room. One thing camp commanders here have learned over the years is that keeping detainees occupied goes a long way towards keeping the peace. There are now art classes in several of the camps, and some detainees are learning to read and write in both English and their native languages. Close to 75 percent of the men being held here are now considered compliant, meaning they follow the camp rules. That’s up from around 11 percent two years ago. Still, there were reportedly more than 800 assaults on the guard force last year. And one guard tells me how small things continue to surprise them. Like when detainees in Camp Four refused to play with the foosball table in their recreation yard. They thought the players’ faces looked too western.
GUARD: So they demanded that we grind these off before they played with the foosball table. So we had to grind the faces off of all of the foosball little bunnies here, so they would not touch the table because it looked too westernized, really.
CLARK: In this same recreation yard, President Obama’s Executive Order to close Guantanamo by January 22, 2010 is posted for all detainees to see. The guard says the detainees have been looking forward to that date, though no one’s expecting to be leaving by the end of this week.
GUARD: Most of these detainees they get a lot of info before we even get it. I mean, between lawyers and ICRC, believe me sometimes we walk out on the block and they say hey guard let me talk to you. You know, we’re closing on the 22nd. Really? Got something in writing?
CLARK: For his part, President Obama has acknowledged that closing Guantanamo has proven more difficult than he’d anticipated, and a recent poll suggests that more than half of Americans think the facility should remain open. Rear Admiral Thomas Copeman is Commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. He says the uncertainty surrounding the future of the detention operation doesn’t bother them too much.
ADMIRAL COPEMAN: I think there was anticipation several months ago that we’d be closing in couple of weeks. But for us down here we’re not looking forward or disappointed or anything like that because we know that when we wake up in morning we have to provide their safe human, legal, transparent care and custody of these folks. That’s our job. And when we get orders to transfer them wherever that may be, that’s what we’ll do and then we’ll wrap up operations here after last detainee leaves.
CLARK: Copeman says he could transfer the 200 remaining detainees out of Guantanamo in about 10 days if he had to, but there’s still a lot to be worked out.
ADMIRAL COPEMAN: First of all, you have to Point B designated right now. Point A is GITMO. There is no Point B that’s been approved by the Congress and all that kind of stuff and funded.
CLARK: When Major Sam Maldonado of the Rhode Island National Guard got his orders last summer to deploy to Guantanamo, he was looking forward to being one of the last units to rotate through here, though that’s about all he’ll say on the matter.
MAJOR SAM MALDONADO: Rhode Island was initially involved in the opening and I thought what a neat thing to have Rhode Island also involved in the closing of that. But that was the only thing that I was looking forward to, not fact it was closing, but the fact that Rhode Island would be part of one of the units to close so, GITMO.
CLARK: Others, like Brigadier General Timothy Lake, the Deputy Commander of the Joint Task Force, say they’re concerned about what will happen to the detainees once Guantanamo closes.
GENERAL LAKE: I’m here at Guantanamo now and in the foreseeable future I might be back out on the battlefield. These individuals might in fact be on the battlefield in whatever capacity. I don’t know where they go, what they do, how they do it. Really, we have very smart people that’s actually reviewing, doing that analysis and we’re all trusting that they make the appropriate decision.
CLARK: There’s also the question of what will happen to the facilities here once the detention operation is shuttered. Over the past eight years, the U.S. Government has spent tens of millions of dollars on high-tech prisons and courtrooms at this remote base.
JOSHUA NISTAS: I’m going to pull it that way actually…
CLARK: Petty Officer Third Class Joshua Nistas opens a rusting gate into the original detention camp here known as X-Ray. Camp X-Ray housed the first detainees brought to Guantanamo in January 2002. The cells here resemble open-air dog cages. X-Ray was closed after four months, but it remains a potent symbol for those who’ve spoken out over the years about alleged abuse and torture at Guantanamo.
NISTAS: You have to be very careful because now it’s very weak. Nails don’t hold down too well.
CLARK: Several different judges have issued orders to preserve Camp X-Ray as evidence, but soon, there won’t be much left worth preserving. It makes you wonder if this is what the entire detention operation will also look like years from now, that is if it ever closes. For The World, this is Katy Clark, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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