The Pentagon Wants To Build A New Prison At Guantanamo Bay

JTF GitmoIf the shutdown of the office tasked with closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility didn't convince everyone the infamous prison will remain for years to come, then plans for constructing a new prison building might.

Charlie Savage at the New York Times reports that U.S. Southern Command has requested $49 million to construct a new building for "special" detainees, which comes on top of other facility upgrades at a total cost of over $195 million.

From The New York Times 'At War' Blog:

The project appears to be a proposed replacement for Camp 7, where so-called high-value detainees who were formerly held by the Central Intelligence Agency – like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – are housed. While the existence of Camp 7 is widely known, the military generally refuses to discuss it.

There are approximately 166 detainees currently being held at the facility, which was created in 2002 shortly after the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. Nearly all inmates have been held without charge — some as long as 11 years, according to The Guardian.

"Most of the buildings and infrastructure were built for a short-term mission," Lt. Cmdr. Ron Flanders, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command told The Huffington Post. "We got down there in 2002, but never thought in a million years we would still have this in 2013 with no end in sight."