Guantanamo jail to host most expensive trial in US history
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Dec 24: The US government plans to build a $100 million courthouse in Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba, spending $1.6 million on each of the 60 prisoners it plans to try there, media reports said.
The reports noted that if the money spent on the existing court and what the government may spend on the trial are added up, it would make Guantanamo trials one of the most expensive court proceedings in US history.
The proposed building would house up to 1,200 people with a dining facility for 800 and a garage big enough for 100 vehicles.
Most of these facilities would be used by guards, government, and defence lawyers and other people associated with the court proceedings.
Guantanamo, in Cuba that the US government has acquired on lease, is used for keeping prisoners captured in the US-led war against terror.
Although some of the prisoners have been there for almost five years, most of them have not yet been formally charged.
The plan to build a new facility has irked US lawmakers who see this as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
"This is very expensive for the number of cases, 60, which they anticipate trying," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat.
“This amounts to $1.6 million per defendant ... just for the building. The trials will cost many millions more,” says CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.
The government, however, argues that these aren't run-of-the-mill trial as defendants include major al-Qaeda leaders such as the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad.
Still, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are balking at the idea — and the cost — in private meetings with Defence Department officials, CBS reported.
"I asked them if they had looked at alternatives in the United States, looked at them, and the answer was no," Senator Feinstein said. "I was surprised that they hadn't looked at Fort Leavenworth, at other places to build a courthouse, to bring these people over, to keep them in secure custody, to try them."
