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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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December 16th,
2006 - Military Taking a Tougher Line With Detainees |
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Military Taking a Tougher
Line With Detainees By Tim Golden New York Times December 16, 2006 Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Dec.
10 - As the first detainees began moving last week into Guantánamo’s modern,
new detention facility, Camp 6, the military guard commander stood beneath
the high, concrete walls of the compound, looking out on a fenced-in athletic
yard. The yard, where the
detainees were to have played soccer and other sports, had been part of a
plan to ease the conditions under which more than 400 men are imprisoned
here, nearly all of them without having been charged. But that plan has
changed. “At this point, I just don’t
see using that,” the guard commander, Col. Wade F. Dennis, said. After two years in which the
military sought to manage terrorism suspects at Guantánamo with incentives
for good behavior, steady improvements in their living conditions and even
dialogue with prison leaders, the authorities here have clamped down decisively
in recent months. Security procedures have
been tightened. Group activities have been scaled back. With the retrofitting
of Camp 6 and the near-emptying of another showcase camp for compliant
prisoners, military officials said about three-fourths of the detainees would
eventually be held in maximum-security cells. That is a stark departure from
earlier plans to hold a similar number in medium-security units. Officials said the shift reflected
the military’s analysis - after a series of hunger strikes, a riot last May
and three suicides by detainees in June - that earlier efforts to ease
restrictions on the detainees had gone too far. The commander of the
Guantánamo task force, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., said the tougher
approach also reflected the changing nature of the prison population, and his
conviction that all of those now held here are dangerous men. “They’re all
terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants,” Admiral Harris said in an
interview. He added, “I don’t think
there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist.” Admiral Harris, who took
command on March 31, referred in part to the recent departure from Guantánamo
of the last of 38 men whom the military had classified since early 2005 as
“no longer enemy combatants.” Still, about 100 others who had been cleared by
the military for transfer or release remained here while the State Department
tried to arrange their repatriation. [Shortly after Admiral
Harris’s remarks, another 15 detainees were sent home to Saudi Arabia, where
they were promptly returned to their families.] The detainee population here
has also been reshaped by the arrival in September of 14 terror suspects,
including the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who had been held
by the Central Intelligence Agency in secret prisons overseas. United States officials said
these so-called high-value suspects were being held apart from the rest of
the Guantánamo prisoners, at a secret detention facility supervised by C.I.A.
officers. The 14 have been visited twice by representatives of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, but have not yet been interrogated
by military intelligence officials, these officials said. Next year, after the Defense
Department finishes rewriting rules for the military tribunals that the Bush
administration first established in November 2001, the intelligence agency’s
prisoners are to be charged with war crimes. The timetable for their
prosecutions remains uncertain. Military officials said they
would continue to try to improve conditions at the prison to the extent that
security considerations allowed. They said they have abandoned special cell
blocks for discipline and segregation, so that prisoners who violate rules
are now punished simply by the withdrawal of various privileges in their
regular cells. The authorities have also standardized rules for exercise,
allowing each detainee at least two hours a day, they said. Nonetheless, the tightening
of security at the detention center represents a significant shift in
Guantánamo’s operations. Since spring 2004, the
military’s handling of the detainees had been heavily influenced by the
political and diplomatic pressures that grew out of the Abu Ghraib scandal
and other cases of prisoner abuse. At the same time, Guantánamo’s focus was
shifting from interrogations to the long-term detention of men who, for the
most part, would never be charged with any crime. With little guidance from
Washington, senior officers here began in 2005 to edge back toward the
traditional Geneva Convention rules for prisoner treatment that President
Bush had disavowed after 9/11 for the fight against terrorism, military
officials said. Military officers began listening more attentively to the
prisoners’ complaints, and eventually met a few times with a council of detainee
leaders. Those talks were quickly
aborted in August 2005. The hunger strikes were effectively broken last
January, when the military began strapping detainees into padded “restraint
chairs” to force-feed them through stomach tubes. But those protests gave way
to several drug overdoses in May and the hangings in June of three prisoners
- all of whom had previously been hunger strikers. The current Guantánamo
commanders eschewed any criticism of their predecessors. But they were blunt
in laying out a different approach. Asked about his discussions
with prisoners, Colonel Dennis said he basically had none. As for the handful
of detainees who have continued to wage hunger strikes, including three who
were being force-fed last week, he said they would get no “special attention”
from him. “If they want to do that,
hook it up,” he said, apparently referring to the restraint chair system for
force-feeding. “If that’s what you want to do, that’s your choice.” Admiral Harris said he had
ordered a hardening of the security posture on the basis of new insights into
the threat that the detainees pose. “We have learned how committed they are,
just how serious they are, and how dangerous they are,” he said. Several military officials
said Admiral Harris took over the Guantánamo task force with a greater
concern about security, and soon ordered his aides to draw up plans to deal
with hostage-takings and other emergencies. He and Colonel Dennis both
asserted that Camp 4 - where dozens of detainees rioted during an aggressive
search of their quarters last May - represented a particular danger. Admiral Harris said
detainees there had used the freedom of the camp to train one another in
terrorist tactics, and in 2004 plotted unsuccessfully to seize a food truck
and use it to run over guards. “Camp 4 is an ideal planning
ground for nefarious activity,” he said. But according to several
recent interviews with military personnel who served here at the time, the
riot in May did not transpire precisely as military officials had described
it. The disturbance culminated with what the military had said was an attack
by detainees on members of a Quick Reaction Force that burst into one
barracks to stop a detainee who appeared to be hanging himself. But officers familiar with
the event said the force stormed in after a guard saw a detainee merely
holding up a sheet and that his intentions were ambiguous. A guard also
mistakenly broadcast the radio code for multiple suicide attempts,
heightening the alarm, the officers said. Admiral Harris conceded that
an error “could have been” made, but said “it was certainly no accident” that
the prisoners had slicked the floor of their quarters with soapy water and
excrement, and fought the guards with makeshift weapons. He said he believed
the guards acted properly. The May 18 search took place
after at least two prisoners were found unconscious from overdoses of hoarded
drugs. The detainees who attacked the guards were known as especially
religious, and had been angered in the past by searches of their Korans. After the three suicides in
June, Camp 6 was substantially reconfigured. Staircases and catwalks were
fenced in so that detainees could not jump from them to attack guards or try
to kill themselves. Shower stalls were built higher so they could not be used
for hangings. Exercise yards were divided up into a series of one-man pens. The detainees will still
look out the small windows of their computer-controlled cell doors to see the
stainless steel picnic tables where they were once supposed to have shared
their meals; they just will not be able to sit at those tables with other detainees. Military officials confirmed
that since the suicides in June, three detainees who were part of the council
that negotiated with military commanders had been kept isolated from nearly
all other prisoners in Camp Echo, a collection of bungalows where detainees
often see their lawyers. Those detainees include
Shaker Aamer, a Saudi resident of Britain who is accused of having ties to Al
Qaeda; Ghassan al-Sharbi, a Saudi electrical engineer who was charged earlier
with plotting to make bombs for Qaeda forces in Afghanistan; and Saber
Lahmar, an Algerian religious scholar seized in Bosnia. Lawyers for Mr. Aamer and
Mr. Lahmar said that they had been alone for most of that time, and that the
isolation was causing them psychological damage. “They have thrown away the
key and forgotten him even though he is spiraling down physically and
psychologically,” Mr. Lahmar’s lawyer, Stephen H. Olesky, said. Noting that a petition for
relief on behalf of Mr. Lahmar has been before a federal appeals court for
nearly two years, he added, “They know we do not have a judge to take this
case to, so they can pile on the detainee.” Colonel Dennis, the
commander of the detention group, said Mr. Lahmar was being allowed to
exercise and had access to any medical attention he required. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/washington/16gitmo.html |