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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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October 22nd,
2009 - US Bands Blast Use of Music in Guantanamo Interrogations |
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US Bands Blast Use of Music
in Guantanamo Interrogations From Agence France Presse October 22, 2009 Washington - A group of top
US acts including REM and Pearl Jam on Thursday expressed outrage that loud
music was being blasted at Guantanamo detainees as part of "terror"
interrogations. They said they were filing a
lawsuit in a bid to declassify documents on the use of the music, and joining
the "National Campaign to Close Guantanamo" which was launched by
former US military generals and lawmakers hoping to shut the prison at the US
Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The musicians launched
"a formal protest of the use of music used in conjunction with torture
that took place at the prison and other facilities and announced they were
supporting an effort seeking the declassification of all secret government
records pertaining to how music was utilized as an interrogation
device," the group said. The musicians include Trent
Reznor and Tom Morello, whose music with the bands Nine Inch Nails and Rage
Against the Machine have already been linked to interrogations at the prison,
according to previously released government records. "Guantanamo is known
around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured -
from waterboarding to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into
humiliating sexual acts - playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just
below that to shatter the eardrums," said Morello. "Guantanamo may be Dick
Cheney's idea of America, but it's not mine. The fact that music I helped
create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me," he added. Retired general Robert Gard
said he sympathized with the musicians "whose music was used without
their knowledge as part of the Bush administration's misguided
policies." A 2004 Defense Department
report cited by the group detailed an interrogation method known as the
"futility" technique, which included playing the music of Metallica
and Britney Spears to detainees. President Barack Obama vowed
on his second day in office to shutter the facility, a magnet for global
criticism of US tactics in the Bush administration's "war on terror,"
by January 22, though White House aides say they face an uphill fight to keep
that promise. Copyright © 2009 AFP. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g-d1_02n_TwiZfmrbG30zawRqzmA |