Scandal of the Camp X-ray trials P.O.W. KILLER

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Jul 6, 2003 | by BARRY WIGMORE

IN a stark, sterile room in a windowless concrete block is a padded chair, with straps for arms, legs and waist.

Next to it is the equipment that will control the drugs used to kill the person on it.

This is the fate that awaits the two Britons held at Camp Delta, formerly X-ray, Cuba, if found guilty of being al-Qaeda terrorists after a secret trial before a military tribunal.

Work is under way already to build the Death Chamber.

The US government has decided it will be an exact copy of the one pictured here in which Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh was put to death last year at Terre Haute Federal Prison in Indiana.

In the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the method of death will be lethal injection.

Prosecutors, defence lawyers, judge, jury, and executioner will all be from the US military.

And the condemned men will have no right of appeal to any other court.

As the storm grew yesterday over the revelation that Britons Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi are on a list of six alleged al-Qaeda members picked by President Bush to be the first to stand trial before military tribunals, a Sunday Mirror investigation revealed that plans have been finalised for Guantanamo to be turned into a top- security death camp.

The island base - known as GITMO - has been chosen because it is a virtually impenetrable fortress, and it is outside the reach of American civil courts.

The only other military Death Row is at the new Fort Leavenworth jail in Kansas, which was built last year. Leavenworth is also a copy of the Terre Haute facility, which was built 10 years ago when the US government - as opposed to individual states - resumed executions.

But terrorist suspects, called "unlawful combatants", will not be taken to Leavenworth because it is on the US mainland and puts them within reach of civil courts and the long appeals process.

In fact, even their defence lawyer will be from the US military, and it is likely to be US Air Force Colonel Will Gunn, 44.

He said yesterday: "The job is not a position that I relish, from the standpoint of being perceived as the bad guy, but I'd rather look at it as an opportunity to both serve my country and also to serve human beings."

So Guantanamo Bay would seem to be the perfect choice. The building contract was awarded last month to the US company Kellog, Brown & Root, a Houston-based subsidiary of oil and construction giant Haliburton - which was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney before he became President Bush's right-hand man in the White House.

Work is due to be completed by June next year.

The pounds 7.8million contract, called Task Order 0038, is part of a huge GITMO expansion scheme. As well as the execution chamber, and a death row cell-block, it will include an adjoining building for a new custom-built jail for long-term prisoners convicted of terrorism by American military tribunals. US military records stipulate only that the total building bill must not exceed $300million.

President Bush last year praised Brown & Root's team of 199 Filipino workers for the fast and efficient way they built GITMO's Camp Delta, a range of cells in concrete buildings that took over from the wire cages of Camp X-ray.

Today Delta houses nearly 680 prisoners. Begg, a 35-year-old father of four, from Birmingham, and Abbasi, 23, a computer operator, from South London, are among them.

The pair have been held for more than a year in what have been described as "inhuman" conditions in caged camps, first in Afghanistan and then in Cuba.

Seven other Britons are also detained at GITMO. No decision has yet been made on whether they will face military trials.

But for Begg and Abbasi, time could be running out.

They will be "tried" in "courts" which are nothing more than spruced up old offices on another part of the 45 square mile outpost. It has been leased from Cuba since 1903, to Fidel Castro's frustration.

Most civilian legal observers believe the result is a foregone conclusion - Begg and Abbasi will be found guilty. If they are condemned to die, President Bush, as joint forces commander-in- chief, must approve their death sentence under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

There is little doubt that he will. As Texas governor he signed 151 death warrants, and reprieved only one man.

For the Britons, the end is likely to come quickly after that. There will be no protracted legal battle with 10 or 15 years of appeals as there is in civilian courts on the US mainland. Those avenues are blocked to Guantanamo prisoners.

Next stop will be "Old Sleepy" as the execution gurney has been nicknamed. Begg, arrested 17 months ago, has written to his wife Sally that he wishes he could end it all.

Mrs Begg, who was pregnant at the time of the arrest and has given birth to a son her husband has never seen, said: "He's such a loving, family man and knowing his children had no father was tearing him apart.

"He told me he wished he could end it all there and then."

And his father Azmat added: "We know Moazzam is innocent and we want him back home here with his family where he belongs. We have prayed for that for almost a year now, and we will continue to pray for it every day."