Main McElwain declined to say how a lot the consolidation value. Over time, he mentioned, the transfer would almost definitely imply a discount in troops from the 1,500 principally Nationwide Guard members who primarily serve nine-month excursions of obligation on the detention operation, which has been estimated to value $13 million per prisoner per yr.
Mr. Mohammed and the opposite high-value detainees had been held on the labeled Camp 7 web site after their switch to Guantánamo in September 2006. They’d spent three to 4 years within the George W. Bush administration’s secret abroad jail community, often known as black websites, the place the C.I.A. subjected its prisoners to sleep deprivation, pressured nudity, waterboarding and different bodily and psychological abuse.
By segregating the prisoners, beneath the watch of a particular guard unit referred to as Job Power Platinum, the intelligence businesses may strictly monitor and management their communications and forestall them from divulging what had occurred to them. Protection attorneys who had been ultimately granted entry to the boys had been certain by safety clearances to maintain their conversations labeled, together with in courtroom filings that accused authorities brokers of state-sponsored torture.
Camp 7 was lengthy one in all Guantánamo’s most clandestine websites. The Pentagon refused to reveal its value, which contractor constructed it and when. Reporters weren’t permitted to see it, attorneys had been required to acquire a courtroom order to go to and its location was thought-about labeled, though sources pointed to it on a satellite tv for pc map of the bottom.
Within the quick time period, Main McElwain mentioned, Camp 7 “shall be sanitized, shut down and locked.”
“A plan for its last disposition has but to be decided,” he mentioned.
The previous C.I.A. prisoners had been saved principally remoted of their early years at Camp 7. Every was allowed to talk with just one different prisoner by means of a tarp throughout recreation time, in conversations that had been recorded for intelligence functions.
Their attorneys described the situations as mind-numbing till current years, when the commanders permitted the prisoners to eat and pray collectively beneath strict surveillance. Additionally they had a cell the place they may put together meals to move time.
