Some Gitmo detainees prefer to stay than go to SuperMax

Telegraph:

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At Florence, Colorado, prisoners would also spend 22 ½ hours a day in a 9ft by 9ft cell with the only natural light coming from a skylight outside.

Exercise would be limited to an hour and a half indoors five days a week and they would have minimal contact with others, including the 33 other international terrorists held there. An official study found that most inmates suffer psychological trauma from the severe isolation.

Since 2005 an Arab American cultural adviser, who for security reasons is identified only by the name of Zak, has been employed at Guantánamo to liaise with detainees.

He said that some detainees would rather stay put than go on trial in the US, where they would probably receive a life sentence or could wait years for a death sentence to be carried out.

"They know there will not be the same privileges as here," he said. "Given the choice of being sentenced forever in Guantánamo or moved to supermax, it is 'no, can I stay in Gitmo?'. Here they can be outside, they can smell the sea."

Camp guards and senior officers said similar feedback had been received from detainees fearing a tougher life in US jails or back home. The claims could not be independently verified as the Pentagon does not allow journalists to interview detainees, while lawyers for several prisoners did not return requests for comment.

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What this means is that the controversy over the detention facility has been overblown and politicized. Ordering the closing the facility was one of Obama's first screw ups. Failing to change that policy is a continuing screw up.