Chronicle on Cuba - August 2005

Terrorism

August 5: In a few years, Pentagon officials said, the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will have undergone a radical transformation. The sprawling detention site known as Camp Delta, with its watchtowers, double-wide trailers housing rows of steel cells and interrogation rooms will be mostly demolished. Instead, a sharply reduced inmate population of those the military considers the most hard-core will inhabit two nearby hard-walled modern prisons. The newest of those, which is still under construction, is modeled on a modern county jail in Michigan and is designed to counter international criticism of Guantánamo as inhumane and, to some, a symbol of American arrogance. The population will be reduced to 320, the capacity of the permanent prison buildings. (The New York Times, 6/8/05)

August 6: Colombia is demanding that Ireland hand over three Irish Republican Army-linked fugitives convicted of supporting terrorism in this South American country. The trio unexpectedly turned up in Ireland after eight months on the run. Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan disappeared in December after a Colombian appeals court reversed an earlier acquittal and sentenced the men to 17 years in prison for training guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. It had been thought they were hiding in Cuba or Venezuela. (AP, 6/8/05)