FOCUS | Halliburton to Build $30 Million Gitmo Prison

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FOCUS | Halliburton to Build $30 Million Gitmo Prison

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 12:24:34 -0700

 

 

 

 

FOCUS | Halliburton to Build $30 Million Gitmo Prison

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061705X.shtml

 

 

Halliburton to Build New $30 Million Guantánamo Jail

Reuters

 

Thursday 16 June 2005

 

Washington - A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million

detention facility and security fence at the US naval base at

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is holding about 520

foreign terrorism suspects, the Defense Department announced on Thursday.

 

The announcement comes the same week that Vice President Dick

Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the jail after

US lawmakers said it had created an image problem for the United States.

 

Critics have decried the indefinite detention of Guantánamo

detainees, whom the United States has denied rights accorded under the

Geneva Conventions to prisoners of war. The prison was called " the

gulag of our times " in a recent Amnesty International report.

 

An air-conditioned two-story prison, known as Detention Camp #6,

will be built at Guantánamo to house 220 men. It will include exercise

areas, medical and dental spaces as well as a security control room,

the contract announcement said.

 

The contract announcement did not specify whether the new prison

would also hold foreign terror suspects.

 

Under the deal with the Norfolk, Virginia-based US Naval

Facilities Engineering Command, Atlantic, the work is to be wrapped up

by July 2006. It is part of a larger contract that could be worth up

to $500 million if all options are exercised, the Defense Department said.

 

The project is to be carried out by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg

Brown & Root Services of Arlington, Virginia. It includes site work,

heating ventilation and air conditioning, plumbing and electrical

work, the Pentagon said.

 

The first prisoners arrived at the prison camp in January 2002

after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks on New York and

the Pentagon.

 

The Pentagon has said about 520 detainees from more than 40

countries are being held at the prison, without giving a precise figure.

 

Rumsfeld said on Tuesday US taxpayers had spend more than $100

million on construction costs and no other facility could replace it.

 

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