A Guantanamo prison cell door opened a crack to reveal an eye peering from the shadows within. A photographer focused through layers of fencing and barbed wire, and the door snapped shut. When the door cracked open again, the accused terrorist inside responded to a discreet wave by waving back.
Elsewhere at the medium-security Camp Four detention center, inmates attended to laundry fluttering in the breeze or strolled along a sidewalk from cell to cell. Many stayed out of sight in the Caribbean summer heat. As a visit to the camp showed last week, conditions for the roughly 265 detainees at the US military prison at Guantanamo have improved since most were transported from Afghanistan and elsewhere to the infamous cages of Camp X-Ray in January 2002. About 500 have since been released.
Although Camp X-Ray has been closed for six years and its chain-link cells are overgrown with weeds, pictures of the caged inmates in orange jump-suits remain the public image of the detention system at the US Naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has become a lightning rod for criticism of the United States and its treatment of detainees.
The prisoners' ultimate fate remains uncertain, although the first US war crimes trial since World War Two finally began this month and more trials before a special military court are scheduled.
The Pentagon plans to charge about 80 of the Guantanamo inmates with terrorism and other crimes. But the US government asserts a right to hold any inmate as an "enemy combatant," regardless of trial verdicts, until it considers the open-ended battle against terrorism is over. Attorney General Michael Mukasey last week asked for legislation reaffirming that right.
Salim Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden, is in the second week of his trial on charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism. "It's a show trial," Michael Berrigan, deputy chief defence counsel, told reporters last Friday. He complained that the government was intentionally hampering Hamdan's lawyers. "I reject it," deputy chief prosecutor Colonel Bruce Pagel said of Berrigan's charge. He said the case was open to observers, and defendants could challenge the evidence.
'DEADLIEST CATCH' Meanwhile, inmates pass the time in the sprawling, secretive, Camp Delta complex of prison buildings opened when X-Ray closed in April 2002. At Camp Four, inmates live in communal cells, are allowed outdoors 12 hours daily, and can get together to watch DVDs of television programs and soccer games. The high-seas fishing show "Deadliest Catch" is a favourite, camp officials said.
The orange jump-suits are gone; prisoners can wear traditional white gowns as uniforms. Nearby maximum-security Camps Five and Six are modelled on US prisons. Electronic doors clang shut. In Camp Five, a narrow slit of a window in each cell is covered with a thin wash of view-obscuring paint. There are no outside windows in the $37 million Camp Six, opened in November 2006.
Water bottles are stripped of labels for security, officials said. The security risk posed by the labels was unclear. Prisoners deemed uncooperative still wear orange, but better behaved inmates are given tan clothing. One difference from a US prison: on each concrete bed slab, a painted arrow points to Mecca.
Another difference: the Geneva Conventions rights for prisoners of war are posted on bulletin boards at the exercise pens of Camp Five. The Bush administration originally deemed that the conventions did not apply to Guantanamo detainees, but reversed its stand after the US Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the prisoners were entitled Geneva Conventions protection.
Hamdan's trial is the first case in America's war-crimes court, which has been criticised by human rights groups as unfair to defendants. At issue is whether Hamdan was an active al Qaeda conspirator or a lowly employee.
The case has cast a spotlight on Hamdan's interrogations by more than 40 different government agents. He has said he was deprived of sleep and otherwise mistreated during his confinement but interrogators said they saw no sign of this.
Outside the camps, life on the Naval base bordering communist Cuba approximates everyday American life - save the wandering iguanas which enjoy protected status. The 7,000 soldiers and civilians can buy video games at the base store, watch the latest Hollywood releases on an outdoor movie screen and eat at McDonald's and Subway restaurants.
Guantanamo's two sides came together when an interrogator told the trial he fed Hamdan McDonald's french fries to calm him. FBI special agent George Crouch said, "Mr Hamdan even appreciated that McDonald's fries are not good cold."
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