Deteriorating facilities draw scrutiny as Gitmo eyed for possible prisoner influx - Published: February 9, 2019

NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — Black, blue and brown tarps hang from the ceiling of the metal dwelling, framing a shoulder-width hallway from the front door to the rear and carving out tiny, makeshift rooms — home for the six U.S. Army sergeants sharing the space during their nine-month tour here.

The room is a little cramped, the soldiers said. Sometimes the air conditioning does not work well. The tarps crinkle when someone walks by, which is annoying, especially when they are trying to sleep between shifts at the infamous detention center just down the street.

“You make the best of it, right? You know, it could be worse,” said one of the sergeants, all of whom are military policemen assigned to Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay — the 1,700-trooper-strong U.S. military team responsible for running the detention facility that houses 40 remaining detainees captured on battlefields in the months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

For nearly 17 years, the American troops stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have spent their rotations here living in Camp America — this block of temporary housing built quickly as the U.S. worked on the encampment that would house the first arriving enemy combatants. The majority of the remaining 40 detainees — down from a high of more than 600 — are housed in facilities that have been upgraded or rebuilt three times on this 45-acre, U.S.-run facility on the coast of southeastern Cuba. Yet the MPs still live in the original temporary dwellings, which never were intended to last more than five years.

President Barack Obama pledged to close the controversial facility in 2008, calling out mistreatment of detainees held without charges, turning them into “forever prisoners.” For years, projects to update facilities around the detention center — including new servicemember housing — were put off as he attempted to fulfill his campaign promise.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump pledged to reverse Obama’s policy statement to work toward closing the facility.

So now, the Guantanamo detention facility is slated to remain open indefinitely and the Trump administration is weighing sending more enemy combatants here, something that has not happened in more than a decade.

State Department spokesman Robert Palladino on Monday said that the detention center could be used to house nearly 1,000 suspected Islamic State fighters currently in the custody of U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in eastern Syria after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.

Trump ordered that withdrawal in December, and unnamed military sources told the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon is preparing to pull all U.S. forces out of Syria by the end of April. Other military officials pushed back, saying the eventual drawdown will be based on battlefield conditions, not the calendar.

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https://www.stripes.com/news/deteriorating-facilities-draw-scrutiny-as-gitmo-eyed-for-possible-prisoner-influx-1.568062