U.S. OKs Phone Calls For Gitmo Detainees

New Defense Department Policy Will Allow Prisoners To Make Regular Phone Calls To Family

(AP)  The U.S. military said Tuesday that it will allow detainees to make regular phone calls to their families from Guantanamo Bay, where many have been confined in extreme isolation for as long as six years.

The new policy by the Defense Department, which previously said security concerns prevented such calls, is part of a strategy to ease conditions for frustrated prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said the telephone policy reflects a commitment to maintaining the health and well-being of Guantanamo detainees. No starting date has been set for the program.

Inmates' contact with the outside world generally has been limited to mail delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross and meetings with their lawyers. The military has allowed a small number of detainees to speak with their families, but typically only on "humanitarian" grounds such as following a death in the family.

Detainees' attorneys welcomed the phone calls but said reconnecting with family could make life more painful for those at Guantanamo, where the U.S. military holds about 275 men on suspicion of links to terrorism, al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Marc Falkoff, a Northern Illinois University law professor who represents 17 detainees, said one of his Yemeni clients has a 6-year-old daughter with whom he has never spoken.

"To be honest, I don't know whether speaking with her will lift him from his depression or simply shatter him," said Falkoff, who added that the man has grown so hopeless he has asked his lawyers to stop meeting with him.

A spokesman for the detention center, Army Lt. Col. Ed Bush, said it is working out procedures for the calls. He declined to provide details about which detainees would be eligible and how often calls would be permitted.

"I have no projected timeline for implementation but it is currently being developed," he said.

Chicago lawyer H. Candace Gorman, who represents a Guantanamo detainee, said she learned on a recent visit with her client that prisoners will be allowed to speak with their families for one hour every six months.

Some attorneys are skeptical the calls will ever happen.

"I will believe it when I see it," said Wells Dixon, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many Guantanamo detainees.

In an attempt to reduce hostility inside the detention center, military commanders have pursued plans for humanities courses and more open communal areas for men held in isolation 22 hours a day. Attorneys for detainees say the assaults against guards are partly triggered by frustration among men with no real chance to confront accusations that they are enemy combatants.

[quetzal0666]

Hey ma!!! can u hear me.?
oh yeah im ok, no? whats that?
oh no we havent been waterboarded today, the reporters are here and they even give us cake and milk,.. yes yes, ma, yes, i hope to call you back in 5 years when they give me onother phone call,
feed my kitty for me ma..

[lovegetpeace]

Soon, we will all know if this was another usual LIE from Bush.

[thaddiusesq]

How stupid can one be? Ok.......here''s how its going to go. First and last call,"hit them again" Big Brother wake up!!!!!!!!!

[extremophil]

* Rinnnnng Rinnnnng!
* Hello?
* Hi Mom, it''s me. They''re torturing me again.
* O.K. Hurry home so we can bomb somebody.
* I will. Take care, bye.

[ioweign]

wow!

How Humane!

After locking them up for six years without trial,

a phone call,

they should sue the USA, and Bush for his war crimes

Posted by joyous88 at 05:25 AM : Mar 12, 2008


What better way to test out some new wiretapping technique...

[joyous88]

wow!

How Humane!

After locking them up for six years without trial,

a phone call,

they should sue the USA, and Bush for his war crimes

[shingles1]

libsrweak, you seem to be confused. Trials are held AFTER the interrogation process. You interrogate FIRST, to find out information and whether or not there is cause to go to a trial. Seeing as how some of these guys have been there for more than six years, they''ve been interrogated up the wazoo and there is simply no more information to squeeze out of them. Besides, what kind of actionable intelligence does someone who''s been held in confinement for 6 years have? ontheleft is right, it''s high time to do something with them. Put them on trial to determine their guilt, and then if they are guilty of something punish them.

[lovegetpeace]

Finally, the true and nothing but the true will slowly but surely come out of this secret from Bush. It been 6 years but we can wait to tarnish the legacy of President Bush more than what it already is. 380 or so Enemy Combatants never been charged. Just Incredible.

[wogerwabbit]

To be kept in isolation so long with no family contact, with no charges read, no chance of a fair trial even if you knew why you were there, is probably the greatest act of torture George W. Bush has inflicted on these people. I have no sympathy for terrorist baby killers, but as we have seen with the majority of detainees at Guantanamo, they are for the most part, innocent saps who have swept up in the Bush inspired hysteria infecting you neocon toads. Wholesale "screw you" is the Bush legacy. "Kill them all, let God sort ''em out", is not the way you treat your neighbors in the country I grew up in. You cold blooded, fascist amphibians may argue that America has changed after 9/11, but I propose to you by God, that we haven''t into the cowardly monsters you would have us be... slapping down the innocent as well as the guilty so you can sleep better at night. Traitors! You sold your soul to Bush. God help you.

[libsrweak]

These people need to be given fair trials and then punished if they are guilty. Get it over with already. It''''s unbelievable that this has been going on for so long.

Posted by ontheleft at 09:46 PM : Mar 11, 2008
+ report abuse

*******

oh yeah it IS that easy! it take time to implement the liberal approved interrogation tactic..''pretty please'' is not that effective..

[ontheleft]

These people need to be given fair trials and then punished if they are guilty. Get it over with already. It''s unbelievable that this has been going on for so long.