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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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July 3rd,
2009 - Documents Describe Chaos of Gitmo’s Early Months |
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Documents Describe
Chaos of Gitmo’s Early Months By Pamela Hess & Nedra Pickler Associated Press July 3, 2009 Washington - Newly released
Defense Department documents and memos about the first years of operation of
the jail at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, portray a chaotic and
sometimes violent operation that its own commanders described as dysfunctional. President Barack Obama has
ordered the detention facility closed next year. It holds more than 200
terror suspects whose cases are undergoing review for their potential
release, prosecution or continued confinement. The documents and memos were
turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has sued for release of all materials
related to the government's interrogation program after the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001. "These documents
provide further evidence of the widespread and systemic abuse of prisoners
conducted at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas locations," said Amrit
Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "They further underscore the need
for a congressional select committee to examine the roots of the torture
program as well as an independent prosecutor to investigate issues of
criminal responsibility." One of the newly released
documents, from 2005, is the statement of one of the first commanders of
Guantanamo to another general who was investigating allegations of prisoner
abuse lodged by the FBI. The now-retired Maj. Gen. Michael Dunleavy commanded
the Guantanamo interrogation operation in 2002. Dunleavy described the chaos
he found when he arrived: a lack of security and control over detainees who
would riot and throw food and turned items like spoons, magnets and welding
rods into weapons. He said his interrogators were virtually inexperienced and
that the military linguists "were worthless." Dunleavy said he was brought
in to bring "a commonsense way on how to do business." He had
experience with more than 3,000 interrogations going back 35 years. Dunleavy said he was
initially told that he would be reporting to U.S. Southern Command, but that
quickly changed. "I got my marching
orders from the president of the United States," he said. He also wrote, "The
mission was to get intelligence to prevent another 9/11." Dunleavy said physical
torture would not produce intelligence, but instead they needed to build
rapport and create a "dependency relationship" with prayer beads
and the Quran. He said he treated detainees "as human beings, but not
like soldiers" and denied there was any torture. One interrogator had to be
removed, Dunleavy said, after the interrogator "physically
mishandled" a detainee, belting and handcuffing him to an eyebolt on the
floor. An FBI agent was removed after "he went across the desk at a
detainee" after the detainee threatened to kill his family, Dunleavy
said. Dunleavy said his "best
interrogator" was prosecuted and that another officer was removed after
it became apparent he was an alcoholic who secretly drank in his room every
night. Loud music and yelling were
used to disrupt detainees' thought process, Dunleavy said. Chaining a
detainee in a fetal position was "not a normal procedure," he said,
but may have been used to secure a prisoner who leapt at an interrogator. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller,
who commanded Guantanamo from late 2002 to March 2004, said in another newly
released document that he had rejected a proposal to use the harsh techniques
employed by survival trainers to prepare American troops for combat. He said
some of the techniques "went beyond what I felt comfortable with." Some of the same harsh
techniques had already been secretly adopted by the CIA with White House
approval. Another set of memos, dated
2004, described how a detainee was knocked unconscious for several minutes by
guards while he was being forcibly removed from his cell. The memos were apparently
written in response to State Department inquiries about a prisoner's
treatment at the military run jail. "Please assure
(redacted) that their detainees have never been subjected to torture or
systematic abuse," wrote Matthew Waxman, then the director of detainee
affairs for the Pentagon, in an October 2004 memo to an undisclosed
recipient. "Additionally, while he has some mental health issues, these
are not the result of any physical abuse at Guantanamo." Waxman did not mention in
that letter that the detainee had been knocked unconscious. The detainee's
identity was redacted from the memo. In another memo, a Marine
officer recommended an investigation into a report by "one of the most,
if not the most, cooperative and influential detainees" at Guantanamo,
who alleged he was tortured at the facility between August and October 2003
by methods involving women, sleep deprivation and exposure to cold. Most of the details of the
detainee's account were blacked out. But he said he once was forced to stay
awake for 70 days, that interrogators put ice all over his body directly
against his skin inside his clothes, and that there was a room that the detainees
called the "freezer." He said he made a false confession while
being tortured. Another document detailed
"troubling" interrogation techniques used against the detainee
during that period, including a threat that if he didn't talk he would
"soon disappear down a very dark hole" and that his "very
existence would be erased." The same document, undated,
noted that at the time 40 percent of the abuse allegations in Iraq were being
substantiated by investigations. Copyright © 2009 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hx5fqUp2KXQA0blawiJZMtcYZzYAD996LOGG0 |