Hakki
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20020119/us/guantanamo_terrorist_central_1 .html Saturday January 19 1:54 PM ET
US Base Becoming Terrorist Central
By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The makeshift prison camp of chain-link cells set up by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is emerging as a clearinghouse for all manner of suspected terrorists, including some with little or no connection to Afghanistan, the Taliban or Osama bin Laden.
The all-purpose prison camp could allow the United States to scoop up all sorts of suspected international terrorists or criminals, as much for safekeeping as for eventual prosecution, lawyers and security experts said.
``Guantanamo will serve two functions,'' as a short-term processing center and a long-term holding pen, said Timothy Crawford, who studies U.S. policy in regional conflicts at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Even if never prosecuted by the U.S. government, detainees the military deems dangerous ``could sit there for a very long time'' before they are released, deported or turned over to a foreign government for prosecution, Crawford said.
The U.S. military has already brought more than 100 captives from Afghanistan to Guantanamo, and housed them behind razor wire in a group of open-air cells collectively called Camp X-ray. Workers are building a permanent prison to hold up to 2,000.
The government calls the prisoners ``unlawful combatants'' or ``detainees'' rather than prisoners of war with assigned legal rights, and has lodged no criminal charges. They are universally described as exceedingly dangerous, and at least one allegedly threatened to kill an American if given the chance.
The prisoners are a motley lot, a mix of nationalities and affiliations who probably hold differing legal rights, lawyers said.
The mix got more complicated Friday, with word that six Algerians transferred to U.S. military custody in Bosnia would be sent to Guantanamo. The men were originally arrested by Bosnian authorities on suspicion of terrorist ties, but there is no public allegation that they were members of bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
``They obviously weren't arrested on a battlefield in Afghanistan,'' said Morton H. Halperin, a senior fellow at the private Council on Foreign Relations. ``I think it makes clear that (the United States) views Guantanamo as a place to collect people they capture anywhere in the world. It's not clear what they plan to do with them.'' (...)