Pending Thomson sale, upgrades will take a year

[December 24, 2009]  WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) -- The Guantanamo Bay prison may not close until 2011 because it will take months for the federal government to buy an Illinois prison and upgrade it to hold suspected terrorists.

Congress must first appropriate money for the takeover of the Thomson Correctional Center and the necessary construction. Lawmakers wary of moving detainees from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military base into the United States could balk at approving the funds. In the Senate, there's always the chance of delaying tactics that could hold up the money for months.

Congress also needs to change a law prohibiting detention in the U.S. of detainees who are not awaiting trial.

The prison in rural western Illinois may not be purchased from the state until March and will need up to 10 months of construction said Joe Shoemaker, spokesman for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

President Barack Obama originally said Guantanamo would close next Jan. 22. While that date proved unrealistic, the president has directed administration officials to move quickly to acquire the maximum-security prison in Illinois.

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt would not say when Guantanamo would close.

"The president remains as committed today to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo as he was when he entered office, and substantial progress has been made in recent weeks," LaBolt told The Associated Press. "The detainee population at Guantanamo is now smaller than it has been at any time since 2002.

"We will work with Congress to ensure that we secure the necessary funds to purchase and upgrade the Thomson prison -- which will operate at a substantially lower cost to taxpayers -- next year," he said.

Shoemaker said, "The end of 2010 or the start of 2011 has always been the mark the administration talked to us about."

In addition to any appropriations struggles, current federal law requires that detainees can only be housed in the United States while their trials are pending. That law would have to be changed to cover detainees who have not yet been charged and will not be sent abroad. The change would have to specify that detainees could be kept on U.S. soil for any purpose.

The Justice Department said last weekend that since 2002, more than 560 detainees have departed the military prison in Cuba and 198 remain.

"We're hitting the anticipated bumps" in the timetable for using the Illinois facility, Shoemaker said.

He added that many lawmakers would not vote to change the law or provide the funds until the administration submits a comprehensive plan on the handling of the remaining prisoners.

On Tuesday, federal officials tried to allay fears that moving terror suspects from Guantanamo to Illinois could make the state a terrorist target.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Harley Lappin, told a state legislative panel that a new perimeter fence and other measures would make Thomson Correctional Center "the most secure of all federal prisons in the country."

The 12-member Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability could vote on a recommendation to sell the prison that skirts the Mississippi River, but Gov. Pat Quinn does not have to follow the recommendation.

The commission said it would not vote on the proposal before Jan. 14.

[Associated Press; LARRY MARGASAK]

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