Senators criticize prison camp

KEY WEST, Fla. — Sen. Mel Martinez, who served in President Bush's first Cabinet, yesterday became the first high-profile Republican to say the Bush administration should consider closing the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp for suspected terrorists.

Speaking to a meeting of the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors in Key West, Martinez called the camp "an icon for bad news."

"At some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio: How much do you get out of having that facility there?" Martinez said.

Meanwhile, another Republican senator, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, is urging Congress to establish new rules and laws for handling prisoners captured in the war on terrorism.

Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, intends to hold hearings on prisoners' rights at Guantánamo on Wednesday.

The high-security prison camp has been surrounded by controversy since it opened in January 2002, three months after the invasion of Afghanistan.

Inmates have accused U.S. captors of abuse and of violating their Muslim beliefs as a method of interrogation. The International Red Cross and internal FBI documents have corroborated some of those allegations.

This week, former President Carter and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, both Democrats, called for closure of the camp.

Martinez's comments give a rare bipartisan push to an issue that has been mired in partisan rancor.

Martinez, a Cuban American, was secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Bush's first term and is close to the president and his brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Bush said in a Fox News interview Wednesday that his administration has been "looking at all alternatives" to keeping captives at the base in Cuba. But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said no consideration was being given to closing the camp.

Martinez said he supported Biden's idea that the United States debate its enemy-combatant policy and ultimately close the prison. Martinez and Biden serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The discussion of the camp's future has intensified in the wake of an Amnesty International report that described the camp "the gulag of our times."

Specter said he was holding his hearing next week because Congress must become more involved in the issue. "The Constitution is explicit — this is congressional responsibility," Specter said.

The hearing is designed to assess how prisoner cases have been handled in the courts and military commissions, and to review the detention of several hundred immigrants immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Whether Guantánamo is open or closed, Specter said, prisoners in the war on terrorism will be held around the world, and the legal issues relating to them will continue.

He is working on a plan that would give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court complete authority over all prisoner cases, removing them from federal courts and military tribunals.