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Guards describe Guantanamo prisoner abuse

Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2006-10-20 14:09.

By Will Dunham, Reuters

Guantanamo guards described physically and mentally abusing detainees, including slamming one's head into a cell door and denying them privileges merely to anger them, a U.S. Marine said in a document made public on Friday.

"Examples of this abuse included hitting detainees, denying them water, and removal of privileges for no reason," the Marine Corps sergeant stated in a sworn affidavit sent to the Pentagon's inspector general's office for investigation.

The affidavit, signed on Wednesday, was provided by lawyers representing some of the approximately 455 foreign terrorism suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It represents the latest in a series of allegations of abuse of Guantanamo detainees by U.S. personnel.

The name of the sergeant, a female paralegal in a detainee criminal case, was blacked out. The sergeant described an hourlong conversation with guards at a bar at the base on September 23, but the affidavit mentioned only the first names of those accused of taking part in the abuse.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the military task force running the Guantanamo facility, said: "The mission of the Joint Task Force is the safe and humane care and custody of detained enemy combatants. Abuse or harassment of detainees in any form is not condoned or tolerated."

"The Joint Task Force will cooperate fully with the inspector general to learn the facts of the matter and will take action where misconduct is discovered," Durand added by e-mail.

A Navy sailor named Bo told of beating detainees. "One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee's head into the cell door," the sergeant wrote, adding that Bo stated that others at Guantanamo knew of his actions and did not punish him.

A guard named Steven said that even when the conduct of detainees was good, guards would take away personal items. "He said they do this to anger the detainees so they can punish them when they object or complain," she stated.

'A COMMON PRACTICE'

The affidavit said about five other guards talking at the bar admitted to hitting detainees, including punching them in the face. "From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice. Everyone in the group laughed at the others' stories of beating detainees," she wrote.

Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, a Marine lawyer assigned to defend a Canadian detainee, Omar Ahmed Khadr, charged with murder, said in a memo to the inspector general's office that the abuse described violated U.S. and international law.

The United States has faced international criticism over its indefinite detention of Guantanamo detainees, many held more than four years without charges. The Pentagon contends the facility is vital to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects who might otherwise return to the battlefield.

Wells Dixon, a lawyer representing four current Guantanamo detainees, said the latest account of abuse reflected a complete breakdown in the chain of command at Guantanamo and a lack of accountability by senior military officials there.

"The fact that members of the U.S. Navy can sit around at a bar and laugh about beating detainees for no reason is outrageous. We're one step away from Abu Ghraib (Iraq prison abuse scandal) or possibly worse," Dixon said.

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