Guantanamo prison will remains open for at least another 25 years

The Guantánamo prison, which includes prisoners accused of participating in the September 11, 2001 attacks, is set to remain open for at least another 25 years.

“We have to make sure our facilities can last 25 years”, said Admiral John Ring, commander of the operational force of the US military, which runs the controversial detention center.

“They told us we would stay here for 25 years or more”, he told reporters during a regular US military visit to the US enclave in southeast Cuba to show how his prisoners are being treated humanely.

President Trump decided at the end of January to keep the prison open, contradicting repeated attempts by his predecessor, Barack Obama, who did not find a closure of a prison condemned by human rights defenders because these detainees are not tried in civilian courts but by military commissions.

Their situation has raised objections in the judiciary and their trials have been postponed indefinitely.

But the US president signed a decree instructing the Pentagon to “keep all detention facilities at Guantanamo open”.

“The Pentagon sent us a memo saying, ‘Prepare for the prison to remain open for 25 years or more”, Admiral Ring told AFP.

The detainee, which was opened in 2002 to receive the first jihadists in the US military intervention in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, included a total of 780 prisoners.

Currently there are 40 prisoners between the ages of 37 and 71 remain in this prison.

Yemeni Ali Hamza Ahmed Al-Bahlul, one of Osama bin Laden’s followers, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Another detainee is awaiting his sentencing in the summer of 2019, while 26 are considered extremely dangerous and cannot be released.

Of the remaining 12 detainees, the military commissions were considered to be five to be transferred to another country while seven were being tried.

In order to pay attention to these detainees who were being humiliated, the detention center had to adapt its medical facilities.

But the 1800 men, who believe in its operation, from guards to cooks through naval surveillance patrols, are still staying in an old house, some of which are dilapidated.

The detainee’s annual budget is $ 78 million.

Admiral Ring said he had an urban contractor to try to ease the lives of the military serving at Guantanamo for only nine months, without their families who could not stay on the site.

Guantanamo has not received any detainees since 2008, but since his election campaign in 2016, Trump has not concealed his intention to send more “bad guys” captured in Syria and Iraq to jail, and his decree to send new detainees to him.

“We have not received anything yet”, Admiral Ring said: “We have no indications”, he said, suggesting that other jihadists could be transferred to Guantanamo soon.

NBC television reported at the end of August that the Trump administration plans to send members of the Islamic state, including two British jihadists from a cell called the Beatles, to Guantanamo.

Admiral Ring said the detainee could, if necessary, receive another forty detainees, with the same infrastructure and the same crew.

He added that the center can receive up to two hundred detainees without the need to expand it, but in this case will need more staff.