US:Human rights organisations have renewed their calls for the United States to close its detention centre at Guantanamo Bay after more than 40 prisoners were moved to a new, maximum security facility at the base. The new prison, which cost $37 million (€28 million) to build and can hold almost 180 prisoners, is designed to limit contact between prisoners and to protect guards following an uprising by inmates in May.
Shower doors have been redesigned so that prisoners' hands and feet can be shackled by guards before they leave the stalls and an open-air recreation area has been divided into smaller spaces, which will hold only one detainee at a time.
US Navy Cmdr Kris Winter said the changes should reduce the more than 430 assaults by detainees using "cocktails" of bodily excretions thrown at guards and 225 physical assaults during the past 18 months. "As a commander, I don't like my folks being in danger every day."
Fewer than a dozen of the 430 people held at Guantanamo have been charged with any crime and about 100 have been cleared for release and await transfer to another country. Inmates in the maximum security section of the camp, those deemed least compliant with prison rules, are held in single cells with 30 minutes of outdoor exercise twice a week.
Human rights groups have pointed to hunger strikes and suicide attempts as signs of desperation among the inmates but prison authorities have described inmates' suicides as acts of "asymmetric warfare" against the US.
UN human rights investigators and foreign governments have called on the US to close the entire detention centre at Guantanamo amid reports of prisoner abuse and heavy-handed interrogations. The US claims that those detained at the base are "enemy combatants" to whom normal legal rules do not apply.
Meanwhile, Australian prime minister John Howard said yesterday he was unhappy that an Australian terror suspect remained in US custody at Guantanamo without charges.
But Mr Howard said he was hopeful that David Hicks, an alleged Taliban fighter who was taken prisoner by the North Alliance in Afghanistan five years ago, will be charged by the Pentagon early next year. Hicks (31) had pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit war crimes and aiding the enemy and had faced a preliminary hearing before a US military commission. But those charges were withdrawn when the US Supreme Court ruled the military commissions were illegal in June. Congress has since passed laws to overhaul the military commission system. - (Additional reporting AP)