USNS Watkins (T-AKR-315) is one of Military Sealift Command's nineteen Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off Ships and is part of the 33 ships in the Prepositioning Program. She is a Watson-class vehicle cargo ship.
She was named for Master Sergeant Travis E. Watkins, a Medal of Honor recipient.
Laid down on 24 August 1999 and launched on 28 July 2000, Watkins was put into service in the Pacific Ocean on 2 March 2001.
According to The Guardian the human rights group Reprieve identified the Watkins and sixteen other USN vessels as having held "ghost prisoners" in clandestine extrajudicial detention.[1]
References
- ^ Duncan Campbell, Richard Norton-Taylor (2 June 2008). "Prison ships, torture claims, and missing detainees". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-06-01. mirror
- This article includes information collected from the Naval Vessel Register, which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain. The entry can be found here.
External links
- Photo gallery at navsource.org