Navy to go after rats, mold in Gitmo legal offices

[unhappycamper]

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/crime/article/Navy-to-go-after-rats-mold-in-Gitmo-legal-offices-3960637.php



In this photo reviewed by the U.S. Department of Defense, towers overlooking a U.S. detention facility are silhouetted against a morning sunrise at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012. Pre-trial hearings continue for five Guantanamo prisoners facing charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, that include terrorism, conspiracy and murder. Photo: Toronto Star, Michelle Shephard, Pool / AP


Navy to go after rats, mold in Gitmo legal offices
BEN FOX, Associated Press
Updated 11:37 p.m., Thursday, October 18, 2012

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Legal offices that are so contaminated with mold and rat droppings that lawyers in the Sept. 11 terrorism trial have been getting sick will get a full clean-up and be evaluated by safety experts, a military official said Thursday.

A "comprehensive" cleaning of the offices, which are primarily used by defense teams in the Guantanamo Bay tribunals, will begin by the end of the month and be finished in time for a hearing scheduled in December, said Army Capt. Michael Lebowitz, one of the prosecutors in the case of five prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It's almost like a fresh start," Lebowitz told the case judge, who has been fielding complaints about the offices this week while presiding over a pretrial hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba.

The issue of the contaminated offices has repeatedly interrupted progress on more than two dozen pretrial motions this week. Defense lawyers had sought to postpone the hearing outright, which would have further delayed a case that has been plagued by delays.