Chronicle on Cuba - December 2006

Terrorism

December 7: The US military transferred the first group of detainees to a new maximum-security prison at Guantanamo Bay designed to restrict contact among the prisoners and prevent attacks on guards. More than 40 detainees were brought to the $37 million prison perched on a plateau overlooking the Caribbean Sea from another maximum-security facility at the US naval base in eastern Cuba, said Navy Commander Robert Durand. The 178-cell prison, constructed beside another maximum-security prison built in 2004, will allow the base to phase out an older facility, Durand said. UN human rights investigators and foreign governments have called on the United States to close the entire detention centre. (AP, 8/12/06)

December 8: In an abrupt about-face, the Pentagon has scrapped plans to invoke emergency authority to fast-track construction of a controversial $100 million legal compound at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Instead, Defense Department officials will seek permission from Congress for any new major buildings in which to stage the first war-crimes trials since World War II. California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a key Democrat on the Senate's military construction and armed services committees, announced the Defense Department's change of course in a news release -- after members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, had protested the move. (The Miami Herald, 10/12/06)