Guantanamo Bay Is Getting A New Top Secret Building Funded By The Pentagon

The Pentagon is building a new $4 million war court chamber at Guantanamo Bay which the public will not be allowed access to.

The new courtroom is scheduled to begin holding proceedings in 2023. The new chamber will allow two military judges to hold proceedings simultaneously and will hear smaller cases.

Although members of the public will not be allowed inside the courtroom, they will be able to watch the proceedings in a separate building via video, on a 40-second delay. This separate room is a “virtual gallery with multiple camera angles simultaneously displayed,” according to Office of Military Commissions spokesman Ron Flesvig.

The new chamber was designed prior to President Joe Biden taking office, with the Biden administration’s goal being to completely empty and close the Guantanamo prison.

The new courtroom demonstrates another example of a lack of transparency at Guantanamo Bay. In recent years, photography has been banned in areas that once allowed visitors, and places such as empty wartime prison facilities are now inaccessible to journalists.

Guantanamo Bay already has an existing courtroom that opened in 2008. Members of the public can watch proceedings live in this chamber, though they also hear audio on a 40-second delay, giving those in charge time to mute comments deemed classified.

Bigger cases, such as the five men accused of planning the September 11, 2001 attacks, will be held in the 2008 courtroom. Despite being accessible by Guantanamo Bay standards, there have been complaints about this court’s secrecy as well. A lawyer representing Encep Nurjaman, the lead defendant charged in two Indonesian terrorist bombings, has made complaints regarding how restrictive this court is.

“I’ve observed trials in Mongolia that were more transparent than this,” the lawyer James R. Hodes said.