The men are being moved from Camp X-Ray, made up of open-air wire cages, to "Camp Delta," which consists of rows of 8 by 6 feet steel cells cut from shipping containers, providing them with even less room than they currently have.

A feature article in the Newark Star Ledger reports that some men have told the Muslim naval cleric assigned to the prison that they do not want to be moved because they will be cut off from contact with others incarcerated at the base. In the desert conditions at Guantánamo, all but a few of the steel cells will be cut off from the sea breeze, making them a living hell.

The KRT News Service reporter whose story the Star Ledger ran said that "some prisoners may come to pine for the chaotic and convivial Camp X-Ray instead of the new Camp Delta, which resembles an industrial park consisting of 408 steel and mesh cells that look like railroad boxcars."

Army Lt. Col. William Cline, the warden of the military prison, said the men will "probably be more restricted in terms of them talking." Navy Lt. Abuhena Saiful-Islam said the "tension may be that they can see each other right now; when they go to Camp Delta, they can't see each other as much." Each cell will have a metal bed welded to the floor, a wash basin, and a toilet.

The article says the construction of the new camp "is meant to make easier the work of the 600 or so soldiers and Marines" who guard the prisoners and who "have bristled under the duty of shackling prisoners hand and foot before shuffling them to latrines."

Even Camp Delta is a "temporary solution to what may emerge as a long-term problem--the indefinite incarceration of young warriors too dangerous to release to the world but unsuitable to face military tribunals." The reason they are unsuitable, the article says, is that "evidence to build cases has been scarce, in part because some prisoners are not cooperating with their interrogators."

So U.S. officials are now planning yet another facility "suitable for holding prisoners for life," the article says.

Meanwhile, U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said April 15 that the U.S. government "has every right" to hold without charges U.S. citizen Yasser Esam Hamdi at a military base in Norfolk, Virginia, after transferring him from the prison at Guantánamo where for weeks he had been telling officials he was born in the United States. Hamdi has neither been charged with a crime nor given access to legal representation since his arrest.

Rumsfeld said the "idea that he's being held indefinitely... of course is just silliness. We've had him a relatively short period of time.'"

"I don't know any law, international or domestic, that allows you to hold people without charges, without bringing them before some kind of court, without any access to lawyers," said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.  
 
 
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