At least a third of the 35 prisoners for the war against terrorism who are confined to the Guantánamo naval base suffer from COVID-19, the newspaper revealed on Monday. The New York Times.
The military authorities were sparing in details. They barely confirmed the names of two of the prisoners captured by the CIA, initially held in secret jails that the agency maintained for years in other countries. Both were never charged.
One is the Palestinian prisoner known as Abu Zubaydah, 51, who tested positive for the virus last Wednesday, prompting the army to cancel all gatherings. Guled Hassan Duran, 48, of Somali, had also tested positive on Friday.
The two are in the maximum-security Camp 5 prison building, which houses men formerly held in the CIA’s network of foreign prisons, called black sites. They were brought to the base in 2006 and 2007.
The other inmates, ten or more, are among 20 general population prisoners at Camp 6, a medium-security facility where detainees share common spaces for meals, showers, prayer and recreation.
All the men detained there have been approved for repatriation or resettlement in another country, but US diplomacy has been unable to find one to take them in.
None of the sources for this story, the newspaper said, agreed to be identified due to the classified nature of Camp 5.
On Sunday the Pentagon declined to confirm that the number had risen to “more than a dozen” prisoners. The spokesmen also did not say how many of the 1,000 men and women, both US soldiers and civilians who work on prison staff, have contracted the virus.
The base has about 6,000 inhabitants. Authorities noted a spike in cases earlier this month as contractors, Army families, correctional staff members and others returned to base on flights from Jacksonville, Florida, after the holidays.
On Saturday, after meetings on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were canceled over the outbreak, most of the defense attorneys who had come to the base for consultations with the prisoners they represent flew back to Washington, DC, some without meeting. with your clients.
However, defense lawyers were able to meet with two of the men accused in the 9/11 attack case: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the man who planned the attacks, and his aide Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Contact tracing and testing showed that they had not been exposed to the virus in the previous days.
Pentagon officials also declined on Sunday to say whether any of the sick prisoners had received the antiviral drug Paxlovid or to specify the care that medical staff are providing at the prison.
The Pentagon said Sunday night that Southern Command, its Miami outpost that oversees prison operations, “has not requested additional medical support.”
