WASHINGTON, June 15: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has rejected calls to close the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, arguing that intelligence gleaned from suspected terrorists held there has stopped planned attacks and led to more arrests. Mr Rumsfeld said that the US extracted valuable information on Al Qaeda from a would-be September 11 hijacker who underwent rough interrogation tactics at the US prison also known as Gitmo.

The US defense secretary said information from Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th hijacker, and others led to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, the identities of 20 bodyguards of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden; and the disruption of planned terror attacks around the world.

“The real problem is not Guantanamo Bay,” Mr Rumsfeld said. “The problem is that, to a large extent, we are in unexplored territory with this unconventional and complex struggle against extremism. Traditional doctrines covering criminals and military prisoners do not apply well enough.”

The defense secretary’s remarks followed suggestions from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, as well as former president Jimmy Carter and human-rights groups, that the US close Guantanamo Bay prison.

“The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was established for the simple reason that the United States needed a safe and secure location to detain and interrogate enemy combatants,” Mr Rumsfeld said. “It was the best option available.”

Although President Bush exempted Guantanamo from the Geneva Conventions, Mr Rumsfeld said that conditions at the prison were better than those required by the Geneva protocols.

He said that detainees were eating well, noting that “the military spends more per meal for detainees to meet their religious dietary requirements than it spends per rations for US troops”.

The US spent more than $100 million to build the jail, and it now costs about $95 million a year to run it, Mr Rumsfeld said. He argued that “as long as there remains a need to keep terrorists from striking again, a facility will continue to be needed”.

“The kind of people held at Guantanamo include terrorist trainers, bomb-makers, extremist recruiters and financiers, bodyguards of Osama Bin Laden, and would-be suicide bombers,” the defense secretary said. “They are not common car thieves. They are believed to be determined killers.”

Agencies add: The United States is constantly reviewing whether the Guantanamo Bay detention centre is the best way to deal with terror suspects and will close it one day, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Wednesday.

“We have been thinking about and continue to think about whether or not this is the right approach; is this the right place, is this the right manner in which to deal with unlawful combatants,” he told reporters in Brussels.

“We understand that people have concerns, that our friends and allies have concerns about what’s going on at Guantanamo, so we want to listen,” he said.” —AFP