GUANTANAMO BAY.
IT’S shortly after noon at Camp X-Ray and it’s time for the midday call to Muslim prayer.
As the melodious voice of Navy Lt. Abuhela Saiful-Islam, the military Muslim chaplain, chants over the loudspeakers, the American flag flaps in the trade winds right next to the qibla – a sign that shows the 300 Taliban and al Qaeda captives here the direction toward Mecca.
Marine snipers hover in wooden towers as the “detainees,” as they are called here, bow to the east and begin their five-times-daily ritual, about the only thing they’re allowed to do here.
It’s high holy season this week, a time when hundreds of thousands of Muslims throughout the world partake in the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and Task Force 160, the military unit in charge of the accused terrorists, is pulling out all the stops.
Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert, the chief military officer here, says not only are the camp guards making special arrangements so the detainees can fast Friday, but they are also shipping in special lambs, dates and baklava for the traditional Eid-al-Adha feast that begins at sundown that day.
Lehnert tells a visiting group of reporters this to prove that the people captured on the mean battlefields of Afghanistan are being treated humanely and in the spirit, if not the letter, of the Geneva Convention.
But an afternoon spent on the dusty, sweltering outer perimeter of this unusual military prison – with a Marine external reaction force whose members are armed with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers and 50 caliber cannons mounted on Humvees patrolling around the clock – made clear that while the U.S. military may be meeting the legal requirements of humane treatment, Camp X-Ray is no Club Med.
The place looks like a dog kennel.
The 6-by-8-foot “units” holding the Taliban and al Qaeda captives are stacked in rows. They have tin roofs and cement floors and a chain link fence serves as walls separating each of the cells.
“We don’t ask them how their day is going,” said Col. Terry Carrilio, commander of Camp X-Ray. They look like pathetic wretches – not stone-cold killers as they hobble in their chains with their bald heads bowed toward the ground as a security precaution so they don’t get too good a look at all the arrangements being made to keep them penned in and out of trouble.
Some of the captives, accepting their fate, are talking, military officials said.
Marines and Army military police assigned to Camp X-Ray sleep in small tents, not a lot bigger than the prisoners’ cells, right next to the camp.
Only the guard dogs at the camp get air-conditioned quarters.
So worried are the authorities about the possibility of an uprising that the guards assigned to interact with the detainees don’t carry weapons and the entire camp is designated as a no-saluting zone so the terrorist captives can’t tell who are officers and who are enlisted men.
Is it pleasant here? No. I wouldn’t last 10 minutes in one of those cages.
Do the people here deserve this form of rushed justice?
That’s for the lawyers to decide.
But it’s too bad that Osama bin Laden isn’t here to lead his misguided minions in their daily call to prayer.