Guantanamo commanders seek new prison with hospice care for ex-CIA captives

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — The U.S. military’s mission at Guantanamo is shifting to permanent detention for al-Qaida and other war-on-terror detainees, commanders told reporters this week in a rare public pitch for Congress to fund a new $69 million, wheelchair-accessible prison — complete with a hospice-care cellblock — for the five accused 9/11 plotters and 10 other captives who were in some instances tortured in secret overseas CIA prisons.

“Picture in your mind elderly detainees, brothers taking care of one another. That is the humane way ahead,” said prison spokeswoman Navy Cmdr. Anne Leanos.

Guantanamo detention center leaders said Tuesday that they are shifting their mission because President Donald Trump’s January executive order canceled President Barack Obama’s mandate to close the prison. During the Obama administration, the prison camp made few building improvements, “putting a Band-Aid” on structural problems, said prison operations commander Rear Adm. John Ring.

Ring, Army Col. Steve Gabavics, chief of the guard force; and the prison’s top engineer, described the vision for the new “high-value detainee” prison:

Two wings would have wheelchair-accessible cells and communal space, which they currently do not. A third wing would be for hospice care, a first for overall prison operations begun Jan. 11, 2002. And the new prison would have attorney-client meeting rooms instead of a remote site where their special guards, Task Force Platinum, bring them in restraints inside a windowless van. It would be called Camp 8.

Military planners have been asking for $69 million to build the new prison since February 2014, and the commanders acknowledged that with design still underway a new Camp 8 would likely cost more. The Obama administration refused to back the plan and Congress has so far refused to fund it, despite a formal request from the Trump White House.

The House did not include it in its version of the defense policy bill for fiscal 2019, and the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version, released Wednesday, shows it did not. Absent special legislation, the last chance to fund it would be when the full Senate takes up the National Defense Authorization Act later this year.

All but one of the 15 men now held in Guantanamo’s clandestine, hillside high-value prison, called Camp 7, are in their 40s and 50s. The eldest is alleged al-Qaida commander Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, believed to be 57, who relies on a wheelchair and a walker after a series of emergency spine surgeries for a degenerative disc condition. The youngest is Majid Khan, 38, who has pleaded guilty to war crimes, is segregated and awaiting sentencing.

https:// www.stripes.com/news/us/guantanamo-commanders-seek-new-prison-with-hospice-care-for-ex-cia-captives-1.531486

Report describes Dubai real estate as money-laundering haven

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — War profiteers, terror financiers and drug traffickers sanctioned by the U.S. in recent years have used Dubai's real-estate market as a haven for their assets, a new report released Tuesday alleges.

The report by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies, relying on leaked property data from the city-state, offers evidence to support the long-whispered rumors about Dubai's real-estate boom. It identifies some $100 million in suspicious purchases of apartments and villas across the city of skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates, where foreign ownership fuels construction that now outpaces local demand.

The government-run Dubai Media Office said it could not comment on the report.

For its part, the center known by the acronym C4ADS said Dubai has a "high-end luxury real estate market and lax regulatory environment prizing secrecy and anonymity above all else." That comes as the U.S. already warns that Dubai's economic free zones and trade in gold and diamonds poses a risk.

"The permissive nature of this environment has global security implications far beyond the sands of the UAE," the center said in its report. "In an interconnected global economy with low barriers impeding the movement of funds, a single point of weakness in the regulatory system can empower and enable a range of global illicit actors."

The properties in question include million-dollar villas on the fronds of the man-made Palm Jumeirah archipelago to an apartment in the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. Others appear to be one-bedroom apartments in more-affordable neighborhoods in Dubai, the UAE's biggest city.

Among the highest-profile individuals named in the report is Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad and one of that country's wealthiest businessmen. The U.S. has sanctioned Makhlouf, who owns the largest mobile phone carrier Syriatel, for using "intimidation and his close ties to the Assad regime to obtain improper financial advantages at the expense of ordinary Syrians."

Makhlouf and his brother, also sanctioned by the U.S., own real estate on the Palm Jumeirah, according to the report. They also have ties to two UAE-based free-zone companies. The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms led from oil-rich Abu Dhabi, has opposed Assad in his country's yearslong war.

https:// www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/report-describes-dubai-real-estate-as-money-laundering-haven-1.532321

Sheikha Hala, former wife of Bahrain's crown prince, dies

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates

Sheikha Hala bint D'aji Al Khalifa, the former wife of Bahrain's crown prince, has died.

The state-run Bahrain News Agency announced Sheikha Hala's death early Sunday. It offered no details, and did not give her age.

The news agency described her as the "former wife" of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. The couple had four children, including Prince Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, who is second in line to the throne.

Sheikha Hala kept a low profile, but launched an anti-child abuse program in 2003. She also did other charity work.

Bahrain, off the coast of Saudi Arabia, is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet and a British naval base. The kingdom is in the midst of a yearslong crackdown on all dissent.

http:// www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article212905999.html