|
|
|
|
Horror
stories escape from
Guantanamo
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - A leading civil-rights group
says that government records pertaining to an
investigation of prisoner abuses at the Guantanamo
Bay detention center in Cuba are still being
withheld, and those it has received under a court
order are so heavily censored that they "raise
more questions than they answer". Still,
correspondence handed over to the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) recounts what one observer
calls "treatment that was not only aggressive, but
personally very upsetting", including leaving
prisoners shackled in the fetal position and
covered in urine and feces.
Under pressure
from the US Congress, the Department of Defense
(DOD) announced late last week that it would open
its own probe into all reports of abuse contained
in documents newly released by the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI). Army Brigadier-General
John T Furlow will lead the investigation, which
could begin this week.
Guantanamo's
commanding general, Jay Hood, said a military team
independent of the Guantanamo mission was needed
to find and interview people who had left the post
and were no longer under his command. Meanwhile,
the ACLU says it "will return to court both to
challenge the adequacy of the agencies' searches
and to challenge particular redactions".
"Why did the FBI narrow its investigation?
Did the FBI ever conduct follow-up interviews? Did
the FBI provide a formal summary of its findings
to the Defense Department?" asked ACLU lawyer
Jameel Jaffer. "If so, why hasn't the FBI released
a copy of this report?"
The release of the
documents followed a Federal Court order that
directed the Defense Department and other
government agencies to comply with a year-old
request under the Freedom of Information Act filed
by advocacy groups including the ACLU, the Center
for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human
Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for
Peace.
Among the FBI documents turned over
to the ACLU is an e-mail dated December 9, 2002,
referring to the "military's interview plan" along
with the comment, "You won't believe it!" Other
papers obtained by the ACLU include a heavily
edited document referring to an investigation
captioned "Corruption Federal Public Official -
Executive Branch", which appears to have been
referred to the FBI because of a "conflict of
interest".
Accompanying this document is
an FBI summary of "potentially relevant criminal
statutes". The statutes pertain to war crimes,
torture, aggravated sexual abuse, and sexual abuse
of a minor or ward.
The new documents also
reveal that many of the FBI's earlier descriptions
of abuses came in response to an e-mail from Steve
McCraw, the assistant director of the FBI's Office
for Intelligence, to more than 500 agents who had
been stationed at Guantanamo, asking them to
report whether they had observed "aggressive
treatment, interrogations or interview techniques"
that violated FBI guidelines.
According to
subsequent e-mails noting the status of the
"special inquiry", 478 responded and 26 reported
observations of detainee mistreatment by personnel
of other agencies. The 26 summaries were reviewed
by FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni, who
determined that 17 pertain to "approved DOD
techniques". As a result, says Jaffer, "some 17
reports of abuse were not investigated".
For unknown reasons, the ACLU says,
Caproni declined further investigation of the
abuses she considered to follow approved DOD
interrogation techniques. The ACLU says "she
focused only on those abuses that were not
approved by even the DOD's permissive rules. As a
result, only nine reported incidents were tagged
for follow-up investigation."
The ACLU's
review of the documents also shows that other
critical records have not been released. For
instance, the FBI has withheld a copy of a May 30,
2003, "electronic communication" in which the FBI
formally complained to the Defense Department
about the treatment of detainees.
These
most recent FBI documents were released on the eve
of the confirmation hearings of attorney
general-nominee Alberto Gonzales, who is widely
thought to be responsible for a memorandum to
President George W Bush providing legal
justifications for the use of torture.
Thousands of pages of other FBI documents
were received by the ACLU as the result of an
earlier request, and a federal court recently
ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to
turn over all documents relating to its internal
investigation of prisoner abuse.
The new
documents obtained by the ACLU indicate that
prisoner abuse at Guantanamo went beyond anything
the government acknowledged. For example, in one
e-mail, dated July 16, 2004, an FBI agent, whose
name is deleted, reports seeing a detainee at
Guantanamo "sitting on the floor of the interview
room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud
music being played and a strobe light flashing".
In another, dated August 2, 2004, an
unidentified FBI agent reports "on a couple of
occasions" entering interview rooms at Guantanamo
and finding one of the detainees "chained hand and
foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no
chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated
or defecated on themselves and had been left there
for 18, 24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air
conditioning had been turned down so far and the
temperature was so cold in the room that the
barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I
asked the MPs [military police] what was going on,
I was told that interrogators from the day prior
had ordered this treatment."
Another
document reports that a female US military
interrogator stroked and applied lotion to a
shackled male prisoner, yanked his thumbs back,
causing him to grimace in pain, and then "grabbed
his genitals".
A broad review of US
military interrogation practices conducted by Navy
inspector general Vice Admiral Albert Church is
now in its final stages, and the FBI has prepared
a 300-page response to follow-up questions from
the Senate Judiciary Committee about Mueller's
earlier testimony. But that response has been
"under review" at the Justice Department since
last October. Neither it nor the Church report is
likely to be released publicly soon.
Meanwhile, a court martial is under way in
Germany for a British soldier accused of
mistreating Iraqi civilian detainees near Basra,
Iraq. Three other soldiers from the same regiment
who allegedly mistreated prisoners are also
expected to face trial this week.
According to Britain's attorney general,
some of the abuse "apparently involves making the
victims engage in sexual activity between
themselves". Charges against the four soldiers
include assault and indecent assault.
(Inter Press
Service) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2004 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Sex and Religion News
|
|
|
