WASHINGTON: Six years after the first prisoners arrived at the “war on terror” prison camp dubbed Gitmo, on Jan 11, 2002, the US government’s stated intention of shutting it seems far from materialising.

Calls for closure of the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention center have increased in the lead-up to the anniversary. Amnesty International plans demonstrations on Friday from Britain to Bahrain, Paraguay to the Philippines, and of course in Washington.

Two years ago President George Bush said he wanted to close the detention center on the US naval base on Cuba. But due to “legal concerns ... there has not been much progress,” US Defence Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged in late December.

The camp has changed a lot in six years. The original open-air cages, images of which shocked the world, have gone to weeds and iguanas. Most of the inmates now live in modern cells built in 2006 and modeled on US maximum security prisons.

While the nightmarish interrogations of the early years have ceased, the prisoners today suffer from isolation and total uncertainty over their future. Four have committed suicide, and hunger strikes are ongoing.

After years of preliminaries, the first trial before a special military tribunal is scheduled for May.

Meanwhile, the US government has begun to send home detainees it does not intend to try. In 2006, 63 were repatriated to Saudi Arabia alone.

While some 800 men and boys have been incarcerated at Guantanamo, only about 275 remain. A Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity said they come from over 20 different countries, but mostly from Yemen, Afghanistan and Algeria.

Bush said in August it was “not easy” to send home Guantanamo inmates. “A lot of people don’t want killers in their midst, and a lot of these people are killers,” Bush said.

In some cases, detainees themselves do not want to be sent back to their countries, where they fear persecution. Some 50 inmates, from China, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Uzbekistan, have expressed such concerns, according to Human Rights Watch.

Thus, the US government is seeking alternatives. The Pentagon says more than 90 countries have been contacted to take in some 20 Chinese inmates. Albania agreed to take five of them in 2006.

Guantanamo’s “significance is being eroded,” said Eugene Fidell, an expert on military justice, citing the gradual releases of inmates and “the growing population of a detention facility in Afghanistan.”

A US military prison at Bagram, near Kabul, today houses more than 600 inmates, according to Pentagon figures.

The fate of Guantanamo will be decided by the US presidential election in November, or when Republican and Democratic candidates are chosen, in early February, Fidell said.—AFP