Gitmo Gears Up For More Prisoners

The Bush administration is preparing to expand the high-security prison in Cuba where it is holding and interrogating hundreds of suspects from the war on terrorism, officials said Thursday.

The Pentagon has accepted bids and expects to award a contract in the next several days for construction of some 200 more cells at the facility it calls Camp Delta, two officials said on condition of anonymity.

The permanent jail at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station is nearly filled, with 564 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners from the campaign in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The facility, along with the administration's justification for holding prisoners without charges nor access to lawyers, has drawn criticism from human and civil rights groups. The government declines to categorize them as prisoners of war with attending rights, saying they're legitimate combatants as defined under international treaty.

Camp Delta has space for a little over 600, so the new construction would mean a capacity of over 800. Officials said previously that they could eventually expand the prison to hold 2,000.

But there also was some hope the United States might not have to take long-term responsibility for large numbers of prisoners. Officials have said some might be sent home for prosecution by their own governments, others put before newly set up U.S. military tribunals and some held indefinitely.

There's been no word on planned prosecutions and interrogations have gone more slowly than hoped for. Officials have said Americans want to continue to hold and question the detainees for information that would help prevent further attacks by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda members or help find them and other terrorists.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld talked about the quandary at a late June Pentagon press conference, where he was asked whether the United States might release detainees who've been determined to have little intelligence value.

On one hand, Guantanamo prison was nearing capacity, he said, and he was "not enamored of the idea of taking the taxpayer's money and building a lot more jail cells."

On the other hand, prisoners who don't seem of value now could turn out to be later, he said, adding many have lied and changed their stories repeatedly but may decide to cooperate after time.

Though they are believed to come from some three-dozen nations, prisoner stonewalling and deception has left interrogators uncertain of the true identities and nationalities of dozens, officials say.

The money spent on detentions in Cuba through April 20 included $19 million for operations and $34 million for construction, said Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen.

The cost of the additional cells couldn't be learned Thursday.

When U.S. forces began transferring prisoners to Cuba from Afghanistan in January they were held in Camp X-Ray, a makeshift jail of open-air cells that human rights groups derided as "cages."

Since April, the prisoners have been housed in Camp Delta, the permanent facility built later of concrete cells.

At least a dozen governments say they'd like to prosecute their citizens. Several say they're unsure how that would be done because Americans haven't shared information about possible charges or evidence. Some say they're happy to let the United States keep the men because they're unsure if they have national laws under which to successfully try the suspects.

Foreign delegations have visited Guantanamo to identify their citizens, help interrogate them and check their welfare.

U.S. forces also hold several dozen prisoners in Afghanistan. And there are high-level al Qaeda figures held in undisclosed locations, including operations chief Abu Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in March, and operational planner Abu Zubair al-Haili, arrested in Morocco in June.

Among lawsuits on the U.S. detentions is one for 11 Kuwaiti prisoners and another in which a coalition of clergy, lawyers and professors wants the government to allow the prisoners lawyers, bring them before a U.S. court, acknowledge their identity and define the charges against them.

By Pauline Jelinek