GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — Despite President-elect Barack Obama's call to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and end its war crimes tribunals, it could take years to shut the facility.
Like a mammoth ocean liner, the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba cannot easily be turned from its original course as an interrogation site for suspected terrorists -- as Obama conceded Sunday.
Even now, in the waning days of the Bush administration, Guantanamo's perpetual motion is propelling it forward with new trials and 11th-hour changes to detention policies. The Pentagon recently issued an edict that prisoners boycotting a court session would be forcibly extracted from their cells and trussed -- using a stretcher and head vise -- for delivery to a courtroom.
Still, there is a growing consensus that Guantanamo's days are numbered.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who will retain his post in the new administration, has ordered Pentagon staff to draft plans for closing it. Legal scholars inundated the Obama transition team with proposals on how to do so.
Federal judges in Washington have ordered the release of at least 23 prisoners, ruling there were no grounds to detain them. Three were sent home to Bosnia last month.
About 200 other habeas corpus challenges are working their way through the courts.
However, experts say, political and legal will is not enough to surmount the complex diplomatic and security issues that must be resolved before the prison is closed: where to send those facing prosecution, whether a new court should be created to try them and what to do with those against whom the U.S. has little evidence but deep suspicions.
"The easy part is putting the detainees on a plane and flying them away. The hard part, and the part that is so important to get right, is the policy decisions," said Rear Adm. David Thomas, commander of the prison and interrogation network.
Guantanamo already is a shadow of what it once was. In 2004, more than 700 prisoners crowded into metal-mesh cells erected in rows along a Caribbean shore. The prisoners couldn't see beyond two-story fences topped with concertina wire. Over the years, more than 500 men -- rounded up mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Sept. 11 attacks -- have been released. Fewer than 250 prisoners remain.
The facility costs $60 million a year and requires the attention of 2,200 soldiers and sailors. That works out to about nine guards per prisoner.
