GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- The U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, targeted for closure by Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidency, is instead quietly undergoing millions of dollars of upgrades that could allow it to remain open for years as a prison for suspected terrorists, NBC News has learned.

Among the recent improvements to the facility commonly known as “Gitmo”: a heavily guarded soccer field for detainees known as “Super Rec,” which cost nearly $750,000 and opened this week; cable television in a  communal living quarters and “enriching your life” classes for detainees, which include instruction on learning to paint, writing a resume  -- even handling personal finances.

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“Well, that's one class, but it’s not a popular (one),”  Army Col. Donnie Thomas, commander of the military guards at camp, said with a laugh. “But it’s a class. It’s just to keep these guys busy.”

Other improvements are more practical, such as a new headquarters for the guards and a new hospital, which is still in the planning stages.

Navy Adm. David B. “Woody” Woods, commander of the Guantanamo facility, told NBC News that the improvements have “made it safer for the detainees, safer for the guard force,” and have not adversely impacted security at the facility.

“We treat them all as a threat only because if you don't then you're gonna get surprised, and that's not our business,” he said.

Many of the improvements have been made at the most modern facility in the detention center, known as Camp VI, a communal living compound that houses about 80 percent of the 169 detainees currently held at Gitmo. There, detainees who are deemed to be compliant with the rules and therefore eligible for more privileges are able to watch 21 Cable TV channels, DVD movies, read newspapers and borrow books from a library.

The detention center, located within the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, was established in 2002 by President George W. Bush to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq. The base in Cuba was selected as part of a Bush administration strategy to prevent judicial review of the legal status of the prisoners, who were initially denied lawyers.

Obama made its closure a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, arguing that U.S. courts were capable of handling the cases. After taking office, he signed an executive order on Jan. 22, 2009, directing that Gitmo be shut down within a year. The order also called for an immediate case-by case review of detainees at the facility with an eye toward either repatriating them or bringing them to trial in U.S. civilian courts.

But the president’s efforts to shutter the camp were blocked by Congress out of concerns that transferring the detainees to U.S. jails would pose a security risk and invite escape attempts or terrorist attacks on the facilities.

A little more than two years after Obama’s first executive order, on March 7, 2011, he signed another executive order making a number of policy changes regarding Gitmo, including a reversal of his order seeking to bring detainees to trial in civilian courts. Instead, he said, suspects would face military tribunals that would decide their guilt or innocence.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., and four other Guantanamo detainees were the first to go before a military tribunal last month, when they were formally charged with crimes that include murder and terrorism. They face the death penalty if convicted for their roles in the attacks that claimed 2,976 lives in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa.

But for the remainder of the detainees – including some who are eligible for release but have no country willing to take them – there is little prospect of leaving Gitmo anytime soon.

And that means U.S. taxpayers will continue to foot the bill for their presence in a U.S. prison that costs $140 million a year to operate – or some $800,000 per detainee.

Woods, the commander of the Guantanamo detention center, said he doesn’t anticipate the closure of the facility any time soon.

“As far as being able to close down the operation, I could do that … in a couple of months, the buildings and the people,” he said. “We have removed these belligerents from the battlefield and our job is to detain them, and we do that very well.”

Michael Isikoff is NBC's national investigative correspondent; Mike Brunker of msnbc.com contributed to this report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A San Diego college student detained for several days in a county detention facility cell is seeking an attorney and may be considering filing a civil lawsuit, sources tell NBCSanDiego.

The 24-year old UCSD engineering student was left in the cell for five days without food or water, seemingly forgotten by the federal authorities who detained him.

He was one of seven people detained after a Drug Enforcement Administration ecstasy raid in University City on April 21, according to a DEA statement.

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See video, read the original report at NBCSanDiego.com

"The individual was at the house by his own admission," the DEA confirmed Monday.

During the raid, authorities said, they confiscated ecstasy, marijuana, prescription medication, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and a white powdery substance that was described as a synthetic hallucinogen. They said they also seized numerous weapons, including a Russian rifle, handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

"Seven suspects were brought back to county detention." One was released, but "accidentally left in one of the cells," a statement from the DEA read.

The defendants were brought back to the DEA office after the raid and processed. The suspects were moved around the five cells at the detention facility during the proceeding. None were strip or body cavity searched, the DEA stated. 

A law enforcement source told NBC 7 that the student was handcuffed and held in a room no larger than the average bathroom.

Sources say a worker at the DEA discovered the man by chance about five days later after hearing strange noises coming from the holding cells.

When authorities with the DEA discovered that the student was still in the cell, they immediately called emergency medical services. UTSanDiego.com reported that San Diego fire officials said paramedics were called April 25.

In the cell, the detainee told authorities he found a white powdery substance, which he took, the DEA statement said.

Later testing revealed the substance was methamphetamine.

Sources close to the student say he nearly died of kidney failure in Sharp hospital due to the dehydration he experienced. He was treated for several days and released.

He is not currently under arrest, authorities with the DEA said.

San Diego defense attorney Gretchen Von Helms says the victim could get millions if he files a lawsuit.

"In all my years of practice I've never heard of the DEA or any federal government employee simply forgetting about someone that they have in their care," she said.

"There has to be repercussions if people do not follow the safety and the care when they have a human being in their custody."

Former federal prosecutor John Kirby said he’s familiar with the holding cells at the DEA office. He told NBC 7 San Diego that the rooms have no bathrooms and the suspect likely went without food or water.

Given his familiarity with the DEA, Kirby said this incident is “inconceivable” because every detainee is processed, and it would be hard to get lost in the shuffle.

“You talk about whether they might have done it intentionally. No way, because somebody's career is done over this,” added Kirby.

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WASHINGTON - In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the heart of the capital city, is a secret the Romanian government has long tried to protect.

For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed "Bright Light" — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

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The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA's detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.  

 Unlike the CIA's facility in Lithuania's countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA's prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

• Excerpt: 'Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaida'

The building is used as the National Registry Office for Classified Information, which is also known as ORNISS. Classified information from NATO and the European Union is stored there. Former intelligence officials both described the location of the prison and identified pictures of the building.

In an interview at the building in November, senior ORNISS official Adrian Camarasan said the basement is one of the most secure rooms in all of Romania. But he said Americans never ran a prison there.

"No, no. Impossible, impossible," he said in an ARD interview for its "Panorama" news broadcast, as a security official monitored the interview.

The CIA prison opened for business in the fall of 2003, after the CIA decided to empty the black site in Poland, according to former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the detention program with reporters.

Shuttling detainees into the facility without being seen was relatively easy. After flying into Bucharest, the detainees were brought to the site in vans. CIA operatives then drove down a side road and entered the compound through a rear gate that led to the actual prison.

The detainees could then be unloaded and whisked into the ground floor of the prison and into the basement.

Imported Halal meat
The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees.

The CIA declined to comment on the prison.

During the first month of their detention, the detainees endured sleep deprivation and were doused with water, slapped or forced to stand in painful positions, several former officials said. Waterboarding, the notorious interrogation technique that simulates drowning, was not performed in Romania, they said.

• Video: Report: CIA spied on bin Laden for months

After the initial interrogations, the detainees were treated with care, the officials said. The prisoners received regular dental and medical checkups. The CIA shipped in Halal food to the site from Frankfurt, Germany, the agency's European center for operations. Halal meat is prepared under religious rules similar to kosher food.

Former U.S. officials said that because the building was a government installation, it provided excellent cover. The prison didn't need heavy security because area residents knew it was owned by the government. People wouldn't be inclined to snoop in post-communist Romania, with its extensive security apparatus known for spying on the country's own citizens.

Human rights activists have urged the Eastern European countries to investigate the roles their governments played in hosting the prisons in which interrogation techniques such as waterboarding were used. Officials from these countries continue to deny these prisons ever existed.

"We know of the criticism, but we have no knowledge of this subject," Romanian President Traian Basescu said in a September interview with AP.

The CIA has tried to close the book on the detention program, which President Barack Obama ended shortly after taking office.

"That controversy has largely subsided," the CIA's top lawyer, Stephen Preston, said at a conference this month.

'Years of official denials'
But details of the prison network continue to trickle out through investigations by international bodies, reporters and human rights groups. "There have been years of official denials," said Dick Marty, a Swiss lawmaker who led an investigation into the CIA secret prisons for the Council of Europe. "We are at last beginning to learn what really happened in Bucharest."

During the Council of Europe's investigation, Romania's foreign affairs minister assured investigators in a written report that, "No public official or other person acting in an official capacity has been involved in the unacknowledged deprivation of any individual, or transport of any individual while so deprived of their liberty." That report also described several other government investigations into reports of a secret CIA prison in Romania and said: "No such activities took place on Romanian territory."

Reporters and human rights investigators have previously used flight records to tie Romania to the secret prison program. Flight records for a Boeing 737 known to be used by the CIA showed a flight from Poland to Bucharest in September 2003. Among the prisoners on board, according to former CIA officials, were Mohammed and Walid bin Attash, who has been implicated in the bombing of the USS Cole.

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Later, other detainees — Ramzi Binalshibh, Abd al-Nashiri and Abu Faraj al-Libi — were also moved to Romania. A deceptive al-Libi, who was taken to the prison in June 2005, provided information that would later help the CIA identify Osama bin Laden's trusted courier, a man who unwittingly led them the CIA to bin Laden himself.

 Court documents recently discovered in a lawsuit have also added to the body of evidence pointing to a CIA prison in Romania. The files show CIA contractor Richmor Aviation Inc., a New York-based charter company, operated flights to and from Romania along with other locations including Morocco and the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

For the CIA officers working at the secret prison, the assignment wasn't glamorous. The officers served 90-day tours, slept on the compound and ate their meals there, too. Officers were prevented from the leaving the base after their presence in the neighborhood stoked suspicion. One former officer complained that the CIA spent most of its time baby-sitting detainees like Binalshibh and Mohammed whose intelligence value diminished as the years passed.

The Romanian and Lithuanian sites were eventually closed in the first half of 2006 before CIA Director Porter Goss left the job. Some of the detainees were taken to Kabul, where the CIA could legally hold them before they were sent to Guantanamo. Others were sent back to their native countries.

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