Eyeballing Guantanamo Camp V Maximum Security Facility

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11 September 2006

8 September 2006

Gitmo Files and Photos:

DoD refuses to say where the CIA High Value Detainees transferred to Guantanamo Bay will be housed, and claims interrogation will continue:

http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3713
Q Admiral, Bob Burns from AP, ask you about the physical arrangements of their confinement. Are the 14 being held as one group? Are they being held in isolation or are they being held as part of the larger group?
ADM. HARRIS: Hey, Mr. Burns, all I can tell you is they're being held in a facility controlled by us, us being the JTF Guantanamo by me. The president described it yesterday as a high-security facility, which is in fact what it is. And beyond that, for operation security reasons, I'm not going to give you anymore information. I think you understand why.
Q This is Pam Hess with UPI. Will they continue to be interrogated? And if so, will that be by DOD or other government representatives?
ADM. HARRIS: Hi, Ms. Hess. Let me tell you that they will be available for questioning, as are all other detainees in DOD custody here at Guantanamo. This could include questioning by other agencies. But in order to preserve the -- you know, the effectiveness of the intelligence collection and law enforcement activities, I'm not going to comment on any plans in this regard now or in the future.

VOA News, 17 February 2006:

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-02/2006-02-17-voa83.cfm?CFID=14338913&CFTOKEN=43440153
SERGEANT: "Welcome to Camp Five. Here at Camp Five we house high value detainees that have been vetted by the Interrogation Control element and approved by the Joint Task Force Commander. This facility is actually designed based on an existing facility in Indiana."
That is the U.S. Army sergeant who is the senior non-commissioned officer at the new prison building known as Camp Five. He declined to give his name.
SERGEANT: "Please don't take any photographs of my control center. My control center is state of the art. My control clerks have a touch-screen computer monitor that controls all the doors and gates within the facility. They also monitor all the security cameras within the camp. This is a climate controlled environment. This facility also meets all U.S. standards and codes."
Camp Five is a two-story building surrounded by high fences and barbed wire, with fenced exercise yards nearby. It can house up to 100 detainees. And perhaps more important, there is another similar building under construction right next to it that will be known as Camp Six. The large cranes, hard-hatted construction workers and piles of building material do not look like part of any facility that is going to be abandoned anytime soon.

A likely high-security facility to house and interrogate the detainess is Camp V ("Five"), a maximum security facility with interrogation rooms and isolation cells.

The Miami Herald, August 24, 2003:

http://www.backspace.com/notes/2003/09/15/x.html

The new ‘Camp Five’ will take three times longer to build than the four existing camps, which are made from wire mesh and metal atop concrete slabs, with chain-link fences and wood towers. ‘It is a hard-sided concrete building,’ [General] Miller said. ‘Unfortunately, we have to ship everything into Guantánamo Bay by sea, and it takes time to get the materials down here.’ The contractor is Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Texas-based Halliburton. Halliburton referred questions to Navy public affairs officer John Peters, who said via e-mail that Camp Five will have about 24,000 square feet when completed in mid-2004. It was part of a $25 million task order issued June 6. Miller said it will increase Camp Delta’s detainee capacity by 100, to 1,100, but its main purpose will be ‘an enlargement of our ability to do interrogations’ — now conducted in trailers at the camp’s edge.

Camp V is one of the few 2-story detainee facilities and appears to be a building designed for long-term use compared to the other temporary facilities. Its "spoke-plan" design with a central monitoring and control area is more like a conventional panoptic prison than the other rows of temps. It has solid interior partitions unlike the wire-mesh partitions of the row buildings. The solid partitions serve as acoustic and visual isolations which the wire-meshes do not. Full-time isolation cells have pass-through panels in their doors for food service. Doors shown below do not have these panels although other cells may have them. The lack of food service panels indicate the prisoners go to a dining facility, singly or in common, or are served food by an open door -- which would be a security risk for a dangerous inmate.

Two wire-mesh-covered recreational areas are shown in the aerial photo at the north and east and appear to be divided into several units, with about 12 smaller ones in the north area and 3-6 in the east area. A detainee below appears to be alone in one of the smaller units.

Associated Press has published a number of interior photos of the interior of Camp V and a few of the exterior. There have been few recent aerial photographs of the Gitmo detainee facilities except on Google Maps.

Eyeballing

Guantanamo Camp V Maximum Security Facility

[Image]
Source

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=guantanamo,cuba&ie=UTF8&om=0&z=18&ll=19.902769,-75.095276&spn=0.004227,0.00839&t=k&iwloc=A

Captions by Associated Press

[Image]
In this June 26, 2006 file photo, reviewed by US military officials, U.S. soldiers keep watch over Cell Block A at Camp 5 maximum security prison, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. President George W. Bush on Wednesday Sept. 6 defended his war on terror and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects, including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, have been transferred from this system to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay for eventual trials. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)
[Image]
**FILE** In this June 26, 2006 file photo, reviewed by US military officials, a foot shackle is bolted to a floor covered by a decorative carpet, inside Interview Room 1, where prisoners are interrogated, inside Cell Block A at Camp 5 maximum security prison, Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. A new Army manual bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hooding and other procedures that have become infamous during the five-year-old war on terror. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

[Image]
In this photo, reviewed by US military officials, a U.S. soldier stands guard, as another does visual a check of the single prisoner in each cell at three minute intervals, inside block A of the maximum security prison at Camp 5, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, Monday, June 26, 2006. The Supreme Court this week is expected to rule on the legality of President Bush's decision to create U.S. military tribunals for the detainees at Guantanamo, the first such tribunals since World War II. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)
[Image]
In this photo reviewed by US military officials, U.S. military personnel stand guard, inside block A of the maximum security prison at Camp 5, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba on Monday, June 26, 2006. The Supreme Court this week is expected to rule on the legality of President Bush's decision to create U.S. military tribunals for the detainees at Guantanamo, the first such tribunals since World War II. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)

Captions by Associated Press
In this June 26, 2006 file photo, reviewed by US military officials, U.S. soldiers keep watch over Cell Block A at Camp 5 maximum security prison, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. President George W. Bush on Wednesday Sept. 6 defended his war on terror and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects, including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, have been transferred from this system to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay for eventual trials. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)	FILE In this June 26, 2006 file photo, reviewed by US military officials, a foot shackle is bolted to a floor covered by a decorative carpet, inside Interview Room 1, where prisoners are interrogated, inside Cell Block A at Camp 5 maximum security prison, Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. A new Army manual bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hooding and other procedures that have become infamous during the five-year-old war on terror. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
In this photo, reviewed by US military officials, a U.S. soldier stands guard, as another does visual a check of the single prisoner in each cell at three minute intervals, inside block A of the maximum security prison at Camp 5, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, Monday, June 26, 2006. The Supreme Court this week is expected to rule on the legality of President Bush's decision to create U.S. military tribunals for the detainees at Guantanamo, the first such tribunals since World War II. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)	In this photo reviewed by US military officials, U.S. military personnel stand guard, inside block A of the maximum security prison at Camp 5, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba on Monday, June 26, 2006. The Supreme Court this week is expected to rule on the legality of President Bush's decision to create U.S. military tribunals for the detainees at Guantanamo, the first such tribunals since World War II. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)