Pentagon Hands Lucrative Guantanamo Bay Deal to Notorious Private Security Company
"It would be much better if the U.S. did not award contracts to companies with horrendous track records and itself stopped human rights abuses at Guantanamo."
British private security company that has been accused of numerous human rights violations has been handed a $118 million deal by the Pentagon to provide "operating support services" for the Guantanamo Bay naval base that houses the U.S. military's notorious prison.
The Department of Defense announced earlier this week that G4S has been granted the contract to provide services that include "family housing, facility management, facility investment, other (swimming pools), custodial, pest control, integrated solid waste management, grounds maintenance and landscaping, base support vehicles and equipment, electrical, wastewater, water, and limited facilities support functions." The statement did not mention any duties relating to the Guantanamo Bay prison, which currently holds 149 men without charge or trial.
But Kat Craig, legal director for UK-based legal charity Reprieve, told the Independent that "G4S must make clear exactly what the nature of its work at Guantanamo is."
"Any company which associates itself with the legal black hole which is Guantanamo Bay has serious questions to answer," she added. "Guantanamo has been the site of detention without trial and brutal mistreatment for over a decade—even now, Reprieve's clients are being subjected to torturous force-feedings in response to their peaceful protests."
British authorities are currently investigating G4S for fraud, following evidence that the company over-charged for the electronic monitoring of incarcerated people, including alleged prisoners who were actually dead.
The largest "private security" company in the world, G4S became the target of a global boycott campaign following revelations of its role in Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people. G4S signed a deal with the Israeli Prison Authority in 2007 to provide "security" for five prisons that hold large numbers of Palestinians—many of them children—who are denied due process. These facilities have proven track records of at times deadly torture and abuse. Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat was tortured to death at Israel's Megiddo prison in February 2013—where G4S provides security and surveillance systems.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/14/pentagon-hands-lucrative-guantanamo-bay-deal-notorious-private-security-company
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for the links. Thinking about the militarization of the police in Ferguson and other Towns/Cities...could private G4S or other large Private Security Companies (Blackwater or whatver it's new name is) take over the processing roles of our Own Police Departments? We already have these huge Private Prison companies so it's not a step too far to decide processing/paperwork our law enforcement does needs to be "standardized" to be more efficient and done in private "custody suites." 
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G4S: the inside story--Public Private Agreements with Local Police
By Andrew Hill and Gill Plimmer
Damaging scandals are raising questions on how the third-largest listed private sector employer runs its empire
On an overcast Friday evening on a rundown suburban street in Boston, Lincolnshire, a part-time plumber and a retired policeman are sitting in a large white van outside a cell-block, waiting to hear from the police. In black bulletproof vests, smart black trousers and white shirts, they look like police officers. But their van is emblazoned with the words “G4S – working with local policing” and the epaulettes on their uniforms carry the red, white and black logo of the private security company above that of Lincolnshire Police.
This is the frontline of part-privatised policing, where police officers still make the arrests but G4S staff go to the scene, drive offenders away, and later process them for fingerprints and other paperwork in the company’s own “custody suites”. “We tell offenders we are just a taxi service,” says Julian Davis, the ex-policeman on duty for G4S. “It helps defuse the tension.”
To critics, the police authority’s 10-year contract with G4S looks more like a time bomb that could destroy an increasingly fragile consensus about where the limits of private security lie. For G4S, however, such potentially explosive deals with the public sector – in Britain and abroad – are a treasure-chest, which it wants to prise open further.
On an overcast Friday evening on a rundown suburban street in Boston, Lincolnshire, a part-time plumber and a retired policeman are sitting in a large white van outside a cell-block, waiting to hear from the police. In black bulletproof vests, smart black trousers and white shirts, they look like police officers. But their van is emblazoned with the words “G4S – working with local policing” and the epaulettes on their uniforms carry the red, white and black logo of the private security company above that of Lincolnshire Police.
This is the frontline of part-privatised policing, where police officers still make the arrests but G4S staff go to the scene, drive offenders away, and later process them for fingerprints and other paperwork in the company’s own “custody suites”. “We tell offenders we are just a taxi service,” says Julian Davis, the ex-policeman on duty for G4S. “It helps defuse the tension.”
To critics, the police authority’s 10-year contract with G4S looks more like a time bomb that could destroy an increasingly fragile consensus about where the limits of private security lie. For G4S, however, such potentially explosive deals with the public sector – in Britain and abroad – are a treasure-chest, which it wants to prise open further.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a6b46fc0-4cc0-11e3-958f-00144feabdc0.html
