March
12, 2008
Gitmo
Detainees Allowed Phone Calls
By Michael Melia, Associated Press
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — The U.S. military
said Tuesday that it will allow detainees to make regular phone
calls to their families from Guantanamo Bay prison, where many
have been confined in extreme isolation for as long as six years.
The new policy by the Defense Department, which previously said
security concerns prevented such calls, is part of a strategy
to ease conditions for frustrated prisoners at the U.S. Navy base
in southeast Cuba.
Critics suggest the move aims to improve the image of the prison,
which has been a flash point for criticism of Bush administration
policies at home and abroad since it opened in January 2002.
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said the telephone
policy reflects a commitment to maintaining the health and well-being
of Guantanamo detainees. No start date has been set for the program.
It was not clear how the military plans to monitor the calls.
A spokesman for the detention center, Army Lt. Col. Ed Bush, said
it is working out procedures and has no timeline for starting
the program.
He declined to provide details about which detainees would be
eligible and how often calls would be permitted.
Inmates' contact with the outside world generally has been limited
to mail delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross
and meetings with their lawyers. The military has allowed a small
number of detainees to speak with their families, but typically
only on "humanitarian" grounds such as following a death
in the family.
Detainees' attorneys welcomed the phone calls but said reconnecting
with family could make life more painful for those at Guantanamo,
where the U.S. military holds about 275 men on suspicion of links
to terrorism, al-Qaida or the Taliban.
Human rights advocates and foreign leaders have repeatedly called
for its shutdown, raising complaints about the duration of detentions
and the U.S. decision to classify detainees as "enemy combatants"
without the same protections as traditional prisoners of war.
Marc Falkoff, a Northern Illinois University law professor who
represents 17 detainees, said one of his Yemeni clients has a
6-year-old daughter with whom he has never spoken.
"To be honest, I don't know whether speaking with her will
lift him from his depression or simply shatter him," said
Falkoff, who added that the man has grown so hopeless he has asked
his lawyers to stop meeting with him.
He also suggested the policy aimed to cast a better light on the
prison ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on detainee rights.
Chicago lawyer H. Candace Gorman, who represents a Guantanamo
detainee, said she learned on a recent visit with her client that
prisoners will be allowed to speak with their families for one
hour every six months.
Some attorneys are skeptical the calls will ever happen.
"I will believe it when I see it," said Wells Dixon,
a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights,
which represents many Guantanamo detainees.
In an attempt to reduce hostility inside the detention center,
military commanders have recently pursued plans for humanities
courses and more open communal areas for men held in isolation
22 hours a day. Attorneys for detainees say the assaults against
guards are partly triggered by frustration among men with no real
chance to confront accusations that they are enemy combatants.
Copyright
2008. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
