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GUANTÁNAMO BAY IS the most expensive prison to hold captive in the world – with each inmate costing $800,000 (€588,000) to keep annually.
The cost of holding a captive at notorious detention centre is more than 30 times the cost of imprisoning a person in the United States mainland, the Miami Herald reports.
Several factors contribute to the staggering bills at Guantánamo – staff numbers are huge, for example: as well as guards being employed at the site there are also lawyers, interrogators, linguists, intelligence analysts, federal agents and contract laborers working at the facility.
With so many employees living on site comes the need for a range of amenities, namely: housing quarters, dining rooms, a chapel, mental health services, transportation and security services, a mini-mart, a movie theatre and a newsletter facility.
The Bellingham Herald notes that guards serving at the facility are paid the same wage as combatants in war zones, and that 171 prisoners detained there receive $38.45 worth of food each day.
Added to the cost of housing, feeding and caring for both staff and prisoners are the practical problems of sourcing supplies. Former commander at the centre, Greg Zanetti, told journalists that everything ”from paper clips to bulldozers” – has to be shipped in to Guantánamo.
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Cant believe they hold people indefinately without trial in that place.
…..but they have year round sunshine….happy days!
The only real cost of this hell hole is to that of human rights. To talk of its financial burden is to willfully ignore a vastly more important issue.
The empires revenge is an expensive business.
Torture is expensive.
i wish i could spend 38.45 a day on food
Waffles are expensive
They should close the place down and give the internees a fair trial or release them. The USA should put an end to this barbarism.
why no comparrison with the cost of putting a lag up in the ‘Joy’. I thought obamha was closing that place down and how come the US army has a prison in Cuba where it can do as it likes with you. sounds like staff, suppliers are having a field day
Obama has proven to be far more of a centrist than his election rhetoric had promised. Apart from the second amendment on their Bill of Rights, America has a fantastic constitution, it’s just a shame that they choose to circumvent it in the name of “security”. In truth Barry Obama has adopted much of the Bush administrations tactics on the “War on Terror” which include human rights abominations. I can’t see Mitt Mormon Romney being any more liberal so GitMo is here to stay.
have your say