Guantanamo builds tent city for tribunals

[unhappycamper]

Guantanamo builds tent city for tribunals
By Michael Melia - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Nov 10, 2007 17:22:40 EST

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — A network of canvas tents rising on a bluff overlooking the Caribbean Sea has been custom designed for the U.S. military’s embattled war-crime tribunals — with flexibility to pick up and move in case Guantanamo closes.

Nearly 100 tents and a windowless courthouse made of corrugated metal will form the $12 million Expeditionary Legal Complex, which is scheduled to open in the spring to hold trials for dozens of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base in southeast Cuba.

With a cloud of uncertainty over the future of the prison camp, which even President Bush has said he wants to close, the plan was scaled back dramatically from the $125 million permanent, three-courtroom structure that the Pentagon proposed last year.

The commander of the detention center, Navy Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, said the complex includes maximum-security detention areas and other features to accommodate trials for “high-value” detainees such as alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

At trials expected to involve classified evidence, the military judge will be able to cut off sound to spectators separated by a clear plastic window.

“It will have everything that is required to conduct multiple, simultaneous, highly classified commission hearings,” Buzby said in a recent interview.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_guantanamo_071110/