1/3/07: In 2004, the FBI surveyed close to 500 of its employees who had worked at Guantanamo Bay to find out about any torture or mistreatment they witnessed. 26 incidents were reported through the internal survey, but the FBI never pursued further investigation or did anything to stop what goes on behind the barbed wire at Guantanamo.
An ongoing lawsuit by the ACLU, however, has made this secret FBI report public.
The Washington Post reported on some of the incidents witnessed by FBI employees:
In
October 2002, a Marine captain allegedly squatted over a copy of the
Koran during intensive questioning of a Muslim prisoner, who was
“incensed” by the tactic, according to an FBI agent. A second agent
described similar events, but it is unclear from the documents whether
it was a separate case.In another incident that month,
interrogators wrapped a bearded prisoner’s head in duct tape “because
he would not stop quoting the Koran,” according to an FBI agent, the
documents show. The agent, whose account was corroborated by a
colleague, said that a civilian contractor laughed about the treatment
and was eager to show it off.
…one FBI agent who visited
Guantanamo Bay in the fall of 2003 described a tactic called the
“frequent flyer program,” in which detainees who were deemed
uncooperative were placed on a list to be subjected to special
sleep-deprivation tactics. The prisoners were moved frequently from
cellblock to cellblock at intervals of two to four hours to interrupt
their sleep, the agent said.
(“FBI Reports Duct-Taping, ‘Baptizing’ at Guantanamo”, Washington Post, 1/3/07)
And while the Pentagon
continues to insist that these incidents were aberrations rather than
official policy, what happened and continues to go on at Guantanamo
tells a different story. As the Washington Post article reported:
Some
previously reported tactics mentioned in the new documents include
wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag, subjecting others to extreme
heat and cold, and aggressively using strobe lights on others.Such
approaches were allowed under aggressive Pentagon detention policies in
place at the time, and the new documents include several instances in
which interrogators appear to cite such approval as justification for
their actions.
Furthermore, the Military Commissions
Act passed this past fall made what Bush calls “alternative
interrogation techniques” legal, and Cheney said in a radio interview
that water-boarding (a torture technique used by CIA interrogators) is
a “no-brainer”.
Even the FBI has now been forced to admit that the US government tortures detainees. So what are you going to do to stop it?
