Posted on 05/23/2004 12:22:08 PM PDT by dennisw
Prison Scrutiny May Spread to Guantanamo
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON - The storm of controversy over abuse at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) largely has escaped the detention facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, where terrorist suspects are held. That soon may change.
A senior Navy admiral who briefly visited Guantanamo Bay in early May at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's request has recommended a more in-depth look at the prisoners' treatment. He said conditions there are good now but may have been different earlier.
Also, the Pentagon (news - web sites) is facing allegations by former British detainees who say they were abused and videotaped. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is demanding the Pentagon release any such videos.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday that a delegation will return later this month for an inspection and meetings with prisoners. The Red Cross is the only independent organization allowed access to the approximately 600 prisoners at Guantanamo.
The Red Cross, whose reports are supposed to be confidential, has criticized the open-ended nature of the detentions at Guantanamo and the Bush administration's decision in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees there because the terrorist suspects are not prisoners of war.
The Pentagon itself is reconstructing events from the early months of detention and interrogations at Guantanamo, when the focus was on extracting as much information as possible — as quickly as possible — from prisoners thought to have knowledge of planned terrorist attacks.
The first prisoners arrived on Jan. 11, 2003, from battlefields in Afghanistan.
It is unclear whether the interrogation methods used in those circumstances may have evolved into the techniques reported in Iraq — and whether they in some way led to the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Pentagon officials assert that prisoners at Guantanamo have been treated humanely from the start, but they acknowledge that some pieces of the historical record remain missing or fuzzy.
"We're rediscovering a lot of this in the context of trying to make sure we fully understand all aspects of detainee operations," said Larry Di Rita, chief spokesman for Rumsfeld.
He confirmed last week that military lawyers in the Pentagon raised objections to some of the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo in 2002, particularly with respect to one prisoner believed to have information about planning for a terrorist attack. Di Rita said he could not specify any of the interrogation techniques because they are classified.
In testimony last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites), Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who recently was reassigned to Iraq after spending 17 months as commander of the Guantanamo operation, asserted there "was no systemic abuse" of prisoners in Cuba "at any time."
He alluded to three or four minor incidents in which standard operating procedures were violated.
Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, the Navy inspector general who visited Guantanamo on May 6-7, told reporters on May 12 that he had found conditions to be professional and humane. But he also said that his visit was too short to look farther into the past for possible abuses.
Church said he found eight "minor infractions." Four involved prison guards, three involved interrogators and one involved a barber who gave a prisoner an "unauthorized haircut" — a Mohawk-style cut.
Another of the eight cases went to a court-martial and the soldier was found innocent, Church said.
Church described one case that appeared similar in some respects to the allegations lodged by a British detainee who was later released.
A guard who was assigned to the prison's "immediate response force," which stood ready to respond to disturbances in prison cells, hit a prisoner with a walkie-talkie after the prisoner bit him.
That was judged to be an act of self-defense, but for subsequently punching the prisoner, the guard punished with a reduction in rank, Church said. He said that was the most serious case of the eight he reviewed.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Robert Mulac, a spokesman at Guantanamo, said Friday that the actions of the "immediate response force" are routinely videotaped and that Church had taken some tapes back to Washington with him after his visit.
"I can't get into the specifics of what the tapes have, other than I can assure you there are no beatings on the tapes," Mulac said.
Church said he found it remarkable that the prison guards and interrogators had managed to restrain themselves under the kinds of pressure they face daily.
He said he was told there are about 14 acts of abuse against the prison staff each week — from verbal harassment to the throwing of excrement and toilet water.
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Next stop: Diego Garcia.
After reading that article, I'm dismayed that they aren't being beaten nearly enough. For shame.
More oversight is inevitable; the administration has been saying 'trust us' and 'we're on top of it', when it now seems they didn't even know what was going on. Their credibility as a trusted agent is shot.
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