Military Commission hearings in the case against Mr. My last blog post described my travel from Indiana to the Washington, DC area yesterday, and arriving at the hotel last night across the street from Joint Base Andrews, where the flight departs for Guantanamo.
This blog picks up at Joint Base Andrews and describes the flight to Guantanamo. My next post discusses my arrival at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay and my first night there. This is her first time to Guantanamo Bay and mine as well.
I will talk more about escorts in future blogs. When our escort arrived, we learned that a third observer was driving himself on to base and would meet us at the Andrews airfield, and a fourth scheduled observer had cancelled their trip and would not be joining us. We showed ID, and we carried on to the air terminal. We met Tom, the third observer, in the parking lot at the air terminal and we all walked into a smallish nondescript building that turned out to be the air terminal.
Most buildings that I saw on base at Andrews and at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay were rectangular, covered in beige or grey toned siding of possibly corrugated steel, and did not have features that would help distinguish one building from the next except for the presence of small signs labeling certain buildings.
Immediately upon entering and turning a corner we were stopped by a simple security checkpoint with a conveyor belt and x-ray machine for our luggage, and a walk-through metal detector. We were all checked in by approximately AM and were shown to a small room off of the main room. The smaller room β which appeared to be like a private airport lounge β had couches and chairs, a television and DVD collection. Each of the three of us represents a different, specific NGO.
