http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/04/29/2289691.aspx Shawna Thomas is an NBC News producer on assignment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to cover a pre-trial military commission hearing for Omar Khadr. Khadr is a Canadian citizen who is accused of murder and providing material support for terrorism along with other charges stemming from his alleged participation in a 2002 firefight with American troops in Afghanistan. Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in 2002 and is expected to stand trial at Guantanamo Bay in July of this year. His military trial would be the first governed by the 2009 Military Commissions Act that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009. GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – At the end of Recreation Road in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are at least three detention facilities known as Camps 4, 5 and 6. The media is prohibited from visiting Camp 7, a maximum-security facility, and Camps 1, 2 and 3 are not in use. Earlier this week, we were given a tour of Camp 4, where Omar Khadr is being held. We also got a tour of Camp 6.SMALL GLIMPSE INSIDE GUANTANAMO BAY
Posted: Thursday, April 29, 2010 2:09 PM
By Shawna Thomas, NBC News Producer
Filed Under: On Assignment
Thomas is one of 37 print and television journalists from across the world covering Khadr’s proceedings.
SLIDESHOW: Life goes on in Guantanamo
Camp placement depends on the detainees’ level of compliance. Detainees are neither bad nor good, but compliant and non-compliant. Camp 4 is for the most compliant detainees.
But no matter how compliant detainees are, the prevailing image is of the leg restraints, which are found in all of the empty classrooms and communal locations. A guard explained that the leg restraints are for the protection of the guards. Games of backgammon, checkers and the coveted Nintendo DS units are some of the comfort items offered to the detainees, along with copies of USA Today and Arabic-language newspapers. The games and newspapers were laid out in the classroom for the media to see and shoot, but all of the cameras kept drifting to the ground where the restraints lay waiting to be used inside classrooms surrounded by razor wire. But of course, the shot everybody wants is of the detainees. We inched our cameras as close as possible to a chain link fence that allowed us to view detainee comings and goings in the yard of Camp 4. We recorded men in white robes walking by, talking to each other and at times staring at our cameras. But, every time someone turned around and looked directly at us – it became another shot that was going to have to be removed from our tapes and media cards at the end of the day. The media are restricted from photographing faces or distinguishing features of detainees because it could be a violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War. In addition to requiring that prisoners of war “must at all times be treated humanely,” Article 13 states prisoners must be protected against acts of violence and intimidation, but also “against insults and public curiosity.”
