Guantanamo prisoner — cleared of war crimes — remains in solitary confinement

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/guantanamo-prisoner-cleared-of-war-crimes-remains-in-solitary-confinement/

Guantanamo prisoner — cleared of war crimes — remains in solitary confinement
Miami Herald
12 Jul 2015 at 19:41 ET
July 12, 2015
Carol Rosenberg
The Miami Herald
Posted with permission from MCT Information Services

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba—A month after a federal court set aside a 2008 tribunal's war-crimes conviction of a former Osama bin Laden aide, he remains isolated as a convict in a maximum-security prison at Guantanamo.

Army Col. David Heath, who runs the guard force, said in an interview last week that, absent a specific order to change the status of Ali Hamza al Bahlul, the Yemeni who for a time was bin Laden's public affairs officer, remains a convict. Bahlul was convicted of making al-Qaida recruiting videos.

Guantanamo's other 115 captives are considered "detainees," and kept in a variety of statuses and five different types of lockups — including the six former CIA captives who await death-penalty trials by military commission and two who have provisionally pleaded guilty but not been sentenced.

A nine-officer military jury convicted Bahlul in 2008 of conspiring with al-Qaida, solicitation and providing material support for terrorism, and sentenced him to life in prison after a four-day, no-contest trial.

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Gitmo is currently costing taxpayers around $550 million dollars a year.

$550 million / 116 = $4,741,379 per detainee per year.

Almost $5 million dollars per detainee per year.

[ladjf]

1. Why does our Government do this? nt