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| Guantanamo Bay soccer field pricey addition to prison |
| 2012-02-29 |
| The military unveiled a $744,000 soccer field yesterday, a dusty enclosure with two-toned gravel and fences topped by barbed wire — all designed as a quality-of-life improvement for cooperative captives. The goals were missing, but the military had erected two guard towers, lights and surveillance cameras at the site outside a building called Camp 6, where the Pentagon imprisons about 120 of the 171 detainees. Prison officers brought about a dozen visiting journalists to the 28,000-square-foot field yesterday, a day before the arraignment of Majid Khan. The former Baltimore resident has agreed to plead guilty to war crimes and testify against other captives in future military commissions. While the tour was under way, the Pentagon unsealed part of a secret deal with Khan that postpones his sentencing until 2016. Khan, who turned 32 yesterday, is accused of acting as a courier to carry $50,000 from Pakistan to Thailand for use in the 2003 suicide bombing of a Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia. Eleven people were killed, and dozens more were wounded. Khan also is accused of researching U.S. gas stations as targets for an al-Qaida leader, and at one point, donning a fake bomb vest in a test of his willingness to kill himself and then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. |
| Posted by:tipper |