Reply #10: Guantanamo Bay is anticipating more political prisoners to torture

[Trevelyan]

Defiant US Presses On With Construction of Maximum-Security Prison Complex
By Con Coughlin 17/02/2006

America is pressing ahead with the construction of a complex of high-security jails at Guantanamo Bay despite calls from the United Nations for the prison camp to be closed.

The US military has just finished building a $16 million (£9 million) 100-bed maximum-security prison, and a second jail capable of holding 200 prisoners is due to be completed this summer.

Senior officers at Guantanamo say they aim to have all of the 500 detainees currently held at the US Naval base housed in the maximum security prisons, which are based on a state-of-the-art jail in Idaho.

Work on the jails is continuing despite a call from the authors of a UN human rights report for the immediate closure of Guantanamo and prosecution of American officials found guilty of torturing the inmates.

The White House last night dismissed the report as a "discredit to the UN". "They haven't even looked into the facts, all they've done is look at the allegations," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "We know that al-Qa'eda terrorists are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations."

The Pentagon has rejected the findings of the UN report, and says it will continue to hold the detainees, which it classifies as enemy combatants, so long as they can provide intelligence and until they are no longer deemed to be a threat to the security of the US.

SOURCE: The Telegraph