2.18.2006
Trapped in a Legal No-man's Land (Telegraph.co.uk)
(Filed: 17/02/2006)
Blair favours closing Guantanamo, claims minister
In a rare visit by a British journalist, Con Coughlin reports on the changes that have taken place at Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
They are the lost souls of the war on terror. Four years after they were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, the hundreds of al-Qa'eda and Taliban fighters held at America's Guantanamo Bay detention centre find themselves trapped in a legal no-man's land.
During a rare visit this week to Camp Delta, the sprawling, heavily-guarded network of buildings where the inmates are held, I found a variety of detainees of varying ages and backgrounds still trying to come to terms with their incongruous surroundings on a Caribbean island.
I came across an elderly Pashtun tribesman with an immaculately groomed long, white beard and fierce, brown eyes, standing proudly outside his prison cell. There was a group of young Pakistani men in their early twenties engaged in a highly competitive game of football. And sitting in a quiet corner, under a metal shelter protecting them from the fierce midday sun, I found a group of middle-aged Afghan men engaged in soft-spoken conversation as they shared a communal meal.
These, according to American officials, are some of the most dangerous men on earth (there are no women detainees at Guantanamo). Of the estimated 70,000 fighters captured during the American-led coalition's war in Afghanistan, the 750 detainees that have been held at Guantanamo, the 45-square mile US Naval Base the American government leases from Cuba, have been identified, following security and intelligence checks, as key figures in the al-Qa'eda and Taliban terror networks who can provide information about terror campaigns against the West.
(More ... Telegraph | News | Trapped in a legal no-man's land) ¶ 18:47
Blair favours closing Guantanamo, claims minister
In a rare visit by a British journalist, Con Coughlin reports on the changes that have taken place at Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
They are the lost souls of the war on terror. Four years after they were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, the hundreds of al-Qa'eda and Taliban fighters held at America's Guantanamo Bay detention centre find themselves trapped in a legal no-man's land.
During a rare visit this week to Camp Delta, the sprawling, heavily-guarded network of buildings where the inmates are held, I found a variety of detainees of varying ages and backgrounds still trying to come to terms with their incongruous surroundings on a Caribbean island.
I came across an elderly Pashtun tribesman with an immaculately groomed long, white beard and fierce, brown eyes, standing proudly outside his prison cell. There was a group of young Pakistani men in their early twenties engaged in a highly competitive game of football. And sitting in a quiet corner, under a metal shelter protecting them from the fierce midday sun, I found a group of middle-aged Afghan men engaged in soft-spoken conversation as they shared a communal meal.
These, according to American officials, are some of the most dangerous men on earth (there are no women detainees at Guantanamo). Of the estimated 70,000 fighters captured during the American-led coalition's war in Afghanistan, the 750 detainees that have been held at Guantanamo, the 45-square mile US Naval Base the American government leases from Cuba, have been identified, following security and intelligence checks, as key figures in the al-Qa'eda and Taliban terror networks who can provide information about terror campaigns against the West.
(More ... Telegraph | News | Trapped in a legal no-man's land) ¶ 18:47
