US Commander: Guantanamo more controlled

Guantanamo Bay has become a more tightly controlled prison holding a core group of terrorists and committed jihadists, while many detainees no longer seen as a threat have been released or transferred, the detention center's outgoing commander said.

In the past year, the U.S. has shed about a quarter of the detainees at Guantanamo and announced plans to transfer or release dozens more. It also brought in 15 "high-value" prisoners from secret CIA prisons _ including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Security also has been overhauled at the detention center at the U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

"It is clearly a different place," Navy Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris told The Associated Press late Monday in his final interview before handing over command of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo to another admiral on Tuesday.

Harris presided over the prison's transformation in a tumultuous year marked by three detainee suicides and the most violent uprising since the camp's 2002 opening.

Guantanamo has entered "a period of relative calm," with fewer assaults on guards and suicide attempts, Harris said in the telephone interview.

He attributed part of the improvement to security changes, including the opening of a modern jail where detainees are kept alone in solid-wall cells for all but about two hours a day. Previously, some lived in a communal unit or in cells with wire-meshed walls that allowed them to converse easily with each other.

Attorneys and human rights groups have denounced the new conditions, saying the men will suffer mental problems because they get so little human contact.

There has also been a subtle but significant makeover of the detainee population, marked by the transfer or release of more marginal prisoners and the arrival of men deemed most dangerous by the U.S. government.

Critics say the so-called high-value detainees were taken to Guantanamo to rebut allegations that many detainees there are low-level Taliban figures or even completely innocent men, either captured by mistake in Afghanistan and Pakistan or turned over to U.S. forces for bounties.

"In part, I think, they were tired of hearing us say 'All you got down there are shepherds and clerks and students,'" said Sabin Willett, a Boston attorney for several Guantanamo detainees who have been approved for release. "They wanted to be able to point to bad guys."

There are now some 380 detainees at Guantanamo, with about 80 of them slated for transfer or release following a military review. At its peak in the spring of 2003, Guantanamo held about 680.

But getting prisoners out of Guantanamo has not proven a simple task. "We just can't get countries to take them back right now," Harris said.

The military plans to retain about 300 detainees considered too dangerous to release or with possibly valuable intelligence. About 75 are expected to be prosecuted in military tribunals.

This shift means only the most dangerous detainees would remain at Guantanamo, Harris said.

"If you could map danger on a graph, then the average danger of the detainee population would increase simply because all of the less dangerous are gone," he said. "All you are left with are bad detainees."

Harris has been criticized in the past, particularly when he described the suicides last June as acts of "asymmetric warfare" meant to garner publicity and undermine the U.S.

Another criticism is that detainees slated for transfer or release _ rather than having their conditions eased _ live under harsher security measures adopted following the three suicides and the May 2006 clash between guards and detainees.

Tom Wilner, a Washington attorney who has represented Guantanamo detainees, says Harris should acknowledge some detainees were captured by mistake _ a fact he says has been proven by the military's decision to release or transfer nearly 400 prisoners since the camp opened.

"He assumed everybody was a bad guy down there and treated them that way," Wilner said.

But the admiral has never retreated from his belief that the detainees pose a grave threat.

"I think they are all dangerous men," he said.

Navy Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, who was deputy director of the Navy's expeditionary warfare division in Washington, takes over from Harris, who is being promoted to operations chief for the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command.