From: Miami Herald
The Pentagon has built a series of prison camps at Guantánamo Bay since it inaugurated its offshore interrogation center for terrorist suspects in January 2002 by airlifting captives to remote Cuba from Bagram, Afghanistan. They include:
Camp X-Ray: The first camp, with 320 cells made of chain-link fencing, has emerged as the iconic image of the rugged, makeshift accommodations granted so-called enemy combatants in remote Cuba. A maze of kennel-like cages, the camp housed prisoners for about four months. It was an arrangement that allowed them to chat and pray communally and at one point organize the first hunger strike. Now abandoned, and overgrown with weeds, it provides journalists from around the world an opportunity to see how the detention center’s infrastructure has evolved. Opened: Jan. 11, 2002. Current population: zero.
Camp Delta, also known as Camps 1-2-3: This was the first improvement for housing the detainees. Halliburton workers from the Indian subcontinent welded metal shipping containers to create about 800 individual steel and mesh cells in boxcar-style arrangements. Built in stages for well over $30 million, its first phase, built in May 2002 with a projected five-year life span, has been renovated to make it harder for captives to rip steel parts from the walls and floors of the cells. In June 2006, three Arab captives were simultaneously discovered hanging in their cells, initially unnoticed by guards because they hung towels to block the view. A spokesman said it closed in January 2008, but lawyers for some detainees said in the summer of 2008 that it wass sometimes used to segregate prisoners. Opened: April 28, 2002. Current detainee population: zero.
Camp Echo: This camp has been used for captives to meet lawyers inside shed-style buildings containing a tiny cell, a toilet and shower, with adjoining space for a table and chairs, and an ankle shackle fixed to the floor. Until a federal judge ordered the practice halted in November 2004, it was used as a special segregation site for detainees facing war-crimes trials before Military Commissions. Self-confessed al Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks of Australia lived there on and off for long stretches of his five-year stay at Guantánamo and was segregated from the “enemy combatant” population following his guilty plea while awaiting repatriation to his homeland. Opened: Date unknown. Current detainee population: Unknown.
Camp 4: Meant to be a showcase, pre-release detention area for 175 or so of the most cooperative, least dangerous captives, it was designed to resemble a traditional prisoner-of-war lockup. It has 10-cot bunkhouses, communal showers and toilets and a common outdoor eating area with picnic tables where captives could pray together. Commanders also added exercise bicycles and ordered AstroTurf for a dirt soccer field below a watchtower. Guards all but emptied it after what they described as a foiled uprising attempt in May 2004. Today there are the first sprouts of a garden in one recreation area and a bunkhouse bay transformed into a classroom with four desks and leg shackles for Arabic and Pashto classes. Opened: February 2003. Current detainee population: About 60.
Camp 5: A maximum-security building modeled after a state prison in Bunker Hill, Ind., the $15 million building houses 100 captives monitored by guards using closed-circuit cameras and a central locking system. It has special interrogation cells, outfitted with faux Persian carpets, blue velour reclining chairs with an ankle shackle point, monitors, panic buttons and open-air, cage-like recreation areas. It houses 100 prisoners considered of greatest intelligence value, each in a single cell with toilet and fixed sleeping shelf under constant monitor by guards who peer through their windows. Each detainee gets all of his meals slid through a slot in the metal door, and up to two hours of exercise a day in a 20-by-10-foot recreation yard encircled by a chain-linked fence. Opened: May 2004. Current detainee population: About 80.
Camp 6: This $39 million, centrally run, 200-cell prison was meant to be a minimum-security, all-enclosed version of Camp 4, with communal eating areas, easy-access showers and its own medical and dental clinic based on a Michigan model. After guards fought detainees inside Camp 4 in May 2006, it was redesigned as a maximum-security lockup. Captives at Camp 6 eat every meal and spend at least 22 hours a day inside single-occupancy 6.8-by-12-foot cells furnished with a stainless steel sink and toilet, a bunk and a steel desk with a slot to serve as a Koran holder. A common recreation yard was subdivided into five chain-link-fence-style cages, separating them from each other for up to two hours in the enclosures. Opened: December 2006. Current detainee population: About 100.
Camp 7: Very little is known about this secret camp within the camps, whose existence was revealed Dec. 8, 2007, in declassified notes belonging to the only attorneys ever to meet so far with former CIA-held captives. The camp is not on the tours that the prison camps run each week for visiting media or other dignitaries, and the Pentagon has so far declined to provide information on the camp’s costs or other details about its establishment. It is not run by the same senior military officer who runs the Joint Detention Group at Guantánamo, an Army colonel who holds the job on a rotational basis. th A Military spokesman at Guantánamo says it is a Department of Defense facility officially declared off-limits to visitors by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and will not identify the name, rank or service of the officer in charge. Opened: Date unknown. Current detainee population: About 15.
Camp Iguana: Now a site for prisoners to meet lawyers, it began as a single concrete-block, beachfront building that was encircled with a chain-linked fence and razor wire to house three Afghani captives aged 15 or younger until they were sent home in January 2004. Wooden buildings were added to the small site, and for a while held five ethnic Uighur Chinese Muslims before they were sent to Albania. Opened: Date unknown. Current population: Zero.
