Red Cross: Torture at Gitmo

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Ramo
Jesus man, can't you read the frickin article (it's not "mine" in any way, BTW) before ranting about it?

The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture

While you dont claim authorship you are advertising (and promoting) it and presumably agree with what you've quoted above (which is true IMO). Do you then believe that we should not attempt to collect information from these potential sources? Perhaps we should only use hi-tech resources (as was done so succesfully prior to 9/11)? Reliance on hi-tech sources has been a growing weakness of US intel since the cold war. The move back to humint sources of various types is far from perfect but it is an important positive step from the perspective of protecting american and other innocent civilians from attacks by terrorist dogs.

[Ramo]

While you dont claim authorship you are advertising (and promoting) it and presumably agree with what you've quoted above (which is true IMO).

Agree with what? I found it interesting and credible, so I posted the most relevant parts of it. That doesn't make an expert on the article. And this is all irrelevent anyways since it's he who didn't bother to read the article or even the few paragraphs of it that I posted.

Do you then believe that we should not attempt to collect information from these potential sources? Perhaps we should only use hi-tech resources (as was done so succesfully prior to 9/11)? Reliance on hi-tech sources has been a growing weakness of US intel since the cold war. The move back to humint sources of various types is far from perfect but it is an important positive step from the perspective of protecting american and other innocent civilians from attacks by terrorist dogs.

How, exactly, does relying on human intelligence imply relying on torture? Not only is it totally immoral, it's a stupid policy in that one doesn't get reliable information from torture and it hurts our relations with other countries.

[Boris Godunov]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041207/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guantanamo_abuse

AP: FBI Letter Cites Guantanamo Abuse

2 hours, 55 minutes ago World - AP Latin America

By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - FBI (news - web sites) agents witnessed "highly aggressive" interrogations and mistreatment of terror suspects at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba starting in 2002 — more than a year before the prison abuse scandal broke in Iraq (news - web sites) — according to a letter a senior Justice Department (news - web sites) official sent to the Army's top criminal investigator.

In the letter obtained by The Associated Press, the FBI official suggested the Pentagon (news - web sites) didn't act on FBI complaints about the incidents, including a female interrogator grabbing a detainee's genitals and bending back his thumbs, another where a prisoner was gagged with duct tape and a third where a dog was used to intimidate a detainee who later was thrown into isolation and showed signs of "extreme psychological trauma."

One Marine told an FBI observer that some interrogations led to prisoners "curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying in pain," according to the letter dated July 14, 2004.

Thomas Harrington, an FBI counterterrorism expert who led a team of investigators at Guantanamo Bay, wrote the letter to Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the Army's chief law enforcement officer who's investigating abuses at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan (news - web sites), Iraq and at Guantanamo.

Harrington said FBI officials complained about the pattern of abusive techniques to top Defense Department attorneys in January 2003, and it appeared that nothing was done.


Although a senior FBI attorney "was assured that the general concerns expressed, and the debate between the FBI and DoD regarding the treatment of detainees was known to officials in the Pentagon, I have no record that our specific concerns regarding these three situations were communicated to the Department of Defense (news - web sites) for appropriate action," Harrington wrote.


Harrington told Ryder he was writing to follow up a meeting he had with the general the week before about detainee treatment, saying the three cases demonstrate the "highly aggressive interrogation techniques being used against detainees in Guantanamo."


"I refer them to you for appropriate action," Harrington wrote.


Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the current commander of the mission in Guantanamo, said allegations of mistreatment and abuse are taken seriously and investigated.

"The appropriate actions were taken. Some allegations are still under investigation," Hood told the AP. "Once investigations are completed, we report them immediately."

None of the people named in the letter are still at the base, a Guantanamo spokesman said, but it wasn't clear if any disciplinary action had been taken. The letter identified the military interrogators only by last name and rank, and mentioned a civilian contractor.

Lt. Col. Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman, confirmed the authenticity of the FBI letter, as did the FBI. Healy said the female interrogator — identified only as Sgt. Lacey in the letter — is being investigated, but the Army would not comment further or fully identify her.

The U.S. military says prisoners are treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment of combatants. Still, at least 10 incidents of abuse have been substantiated at Guantanamo, all but one from 2003 or this year. They range from a guard hitting a detainee to a female interrogator climbing on a prisoner's lap.

Those incidents pale in comparison to alleged abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a scandal that erupted when photographs surfaced of U.S. troops forcing Iraqi prisoners to strip and pose in sexually humiliating positions. Some prisoners were bound and hooded.

At Guantanamo, some detainees have been held without charge and without access to attorneys since the camp opened in January 2002 at the remote U.S. Naval base on Cuba's eastern tip. The United States has imprisoned some 550 men accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network; only four have been charged.

None of the four 2002 cases cited were detailed in any of 5,000 documents received by the New York-based American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) under two Freedom of Information Act requests, said Anthony Romero, the union's executive director.

"Despite the government's statements, there seems to be increasingly little doubt that torture is occurring at Guantanamo," said Romero.

He said the information in the FBI letter "raises questions about the government's willingness to be forthcoming in these legal proceedings and shows that even the FBI has been uncomfortable with some of the tactics used at Guantanamo."

One of the documents the ACLU received was a letter from an FBI agent to Harrington and dated May 10. It underscored the friction between the FBI and the military, mentioning conversations that were "somewhat heated" over interrogation methods.

"In my weekly meetings with the Department of Justice (news - web sites) we often discussed techniques and how they were not effective or producing intelligence that was reliable," according to the exchange, which was heavily redacted to remove references to dates and names.

"I finally voiced my opinion ...," the FBI agent says. "It still did not prevent them from continuing the ... methods."

Three of the four incidents mentioned in the letter obtained by the AP occurred under the watch of Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who ran the Guantanamo camp from October 2002 to March 2004, and left to run Abu Ghraib prison. Last month, Miller was reassigned to the Pentagon, with responsibility for housing and other support operations.

According to the letter, in late 2002 an FBI agent observed an interrogation where Sgt. Lacey whispered in the ear of a handcuffed and shackled detainee, caressed him and applied lotion to his arms. This occurred during Ramadan, Islam's holy month when contact with females is considered particularly offensive to a Muslim man.

Later, the detainee appeared to grimace in pain, and the FBI agent asked a Marine who was present why. "The Marine said (the interrogator) had grabbed the detainee's thumbs and bent them backward and indicated that she also grabbed his genitals. The Marine also implied that her treatment of that detainee was less harsh than her treatment of others by indicating that he had seen her treatment of other detainees result in detainees curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying in pain," Harrington wrote.

In September or October of 2002, FBI agents saw a dog used "in an aggressive manner to intimidate a detainee," the letter said.

About a month later, agents saw the same detainee "after he had been subjected to intense isolation for over three months ... totally isolated in a cell that was always flooded with light. By late November, the detainee was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma ... talking to nonexistent people, reported hearing voices (and) crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet," the letter said.

In October 2002, another FBI agent saw a detainee "gagged with duct tape that covered much of his head" because he would not stop chanting from the Quran.

___

Associated Press writers Curt Anderson and John J. Lumpkin in Washington contributed to this report.

[Boris Godunov]

Hmm, I guess the FBI as a source isn't as interesting as the Red Cross.

[Arrian]

Regardless of the applicability or inapplicability of the Geneva Convention to these prisoners, what's going on down there is unacceptable.

-Arrian, America-hating liberal traitor

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Hmm, I guess the FBI as a source isn't as interesting as the Red Cross.

We all know the FBI is against America!

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
We all know the FBI is against America!

Unlike, say, the CIA, which we all know is a font of complete and unquestionable veracity.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Speaking of which, did you hear Bush just gave Tenet the Medal of Freedom?

CIA

[Boris Godunov]

Well, he had to pay him back somehow for being the fall guy for the administration.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I thought they were going to make him CEO of Halliburton?

[Boris Godunov]

But anyhoo...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041208/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/prisoner_abuse

Memo: Workers Threatened Over Prison Abuse

41 minutes ago World - AP Latin America


By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - U.S. special forces accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq (news - web sites) threatened Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who saw the mistreatment, according to U.S. government memos released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites).

The special forces also monitored e-mails sent by defense personnel and ordered them "not to talk to anyone" in the United States about what they saw, said one memo written by the Defense Intelligence Agency chief, who complained to his Pentagon (news - web sites) bosses about the harassment.

In addition, the special forces confiscated photos of a prisoner who had been punched in the face.

Prisoners arriving at a detention center in Baghdad had "burn marks on their backs" as well as bruises and some complained of kidney pain, according to the June 25, 2004 memo.

FBI (news - web sites) agents also reported seeing detainees at Abu Ghraib subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation and forced nudity between October and December 2003 — when the most serious abuses allegedly took place in a scandal that's remains under investigation.

The release of the ACLU documents comes a day after The Associated Press reported that a senior FBI official wrote a letter to the Army's top criminal investigator complaining about "highly aggressive" interrogation techniques at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay dating back to 2002 — more than a year before the scandal broke at the Iraqi prison.

The memos reveal behind-the-scenes tensions between the FBI and U.S. military and intelligence task forces running prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo and in Iraq as the Bush administration sought better intelligence to fight terrorists and the deadly Iraq insurgency.

"These documents tell a damning story of sanctioned government abuse — a story that the government has tried to hide and may well come back to haunt our own troops captured in Iraq," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the New York-based ACLU.


The documents were released only after a federal court ordered the Pentagon and other government agencies to comply with a year-old request filed under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace.

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, which directs special military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites), declined to comment on specific allegations.

"We take all issues of detainee abuse very seriously and where there is the potential that these abuses could have taken place, we investigate them," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice.

Joe Navarro, a retired FBI agent who teaches interrogation techniques to the military and is familiar with interrogations at Guantanamo, said using threats during interrogations only stands to taint information gleaned from the sessions.

"The only thing that torture guarantees is pain," Navarro told AP Tuesday. "It never guarantees the truth."

Many memos refer to Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, whose mission as head of the Guantanamo prison from October 2002 was to improve the intelligence gleaned from terror suspects. In August 2003, Miller was sent to Iraq to make recommendations on interrogation techniques to get more information out of prisoners. He was posted to Abu Ghraib in March 2004.

One FBI e-mail released by the ACLU said Miller "continued to support interrogation strategies (the FBI) not only advised against, but questioned in terms of effectiveness."

Miller left Iraq on Tuesday for a new assignment in Washington, with responsibility for Army housing and other support operations, and could not be reached for comment.

According to the memo from the Defense Intelligence chief, Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, a special forces task force in Iraq threatened defense personnel who complained about abuses. Some had their car keys confiscated and were ordered not to leave the base "even to get a haircut."

Balice refused to describe the task force, which could include Army Rangers, Delta Force, Navy SEALs and other Special Forces' soldiers working with CIA (news - web sites) operatives.

Another June 25 memo describes how a task force officer punched a prisoner in the face "to the point he needed medical attention," failed to record the medical treatment, and confiscated photos of the injuries. The date of the incident wasn't clear as the memo — like others released by the ACLU — have been heavily redacted to remove dates and names.

An e-mail to Thomas Harrington, an FBI counterterrorism expert who led a team of investigators to Guantanamo, records "somewhat heated" conversations in which Pentagon officials admitted that harsh interrogations did not yield any information not obtained by the FBI.

Another December 2003 e-mail notes the FBI's Military Liaison and Detainee Unit, which "had a longstanding and documented position against use of some of DoDs interrogation practices," requested certain information "be documented to protect the FBI."

In the July 14 letter obtained by the AP, Harrington suggested that the Pentagon didn't act on FBI complaints about four incidents at Guantanamo, including a female interrogator grabbing a detainee's genitals and bending back his thumbs, another where most of a prisoner's head was covered with duct tape and a third where a dog was used to intimidate a detainee who later was thrown into isolation and showed signs of "extreme psychological trauma."

The Harrington letter was addressed to Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the Army's chief law enforcement officer who's investigating abuses at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo. He said FBI officials complained about the pattern of abusive techniques to top Defense Department attorneys in January 2003, and it appeared that nothing was done.

The U.S. military says prisoners are treated according to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment. Still, at least 10 incidents of abuse have been substantiated at Guantanamo, all but one from 2003 or this year.

Many detainees at Guantanamo have been held without charge and without access to attorneys since the camp opened in January 2002. The United States has imprisoned some 550 men accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or al-Qaida; only four have been charged.

Not that anyone cares anymore. I guess all the outrage was spent a while ago and it's just shoulder shrugging now.

[Imran Siddiqui]

ACLU

[Ramo]

Nothing to see here:

US accused of ‘torture flights’

Stephen Grey

AN executive jet is being used by the American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture in their prisons.

The movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the United States defence department and the CIA are detailed in confidential logs obtained by The Sunday Times which cover more than 300 flights.

Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such regimes to carry out “torture by proxy” — a charge denied by the American government.

Some of the information from the suspects is said to have been used by MI5 and MI6, the British intelligence services. The admissibility in court of evidence gained under torture is being considered in the House of Lords in an appeal by foreign-born prisoners at Belmarsh jail, south London, against their detention without trial on suspicion of terrorism.

Over the past two years the unmarked Gulfstream has visited British airports on many occasions, although it is not believed to have been carrying suspects at the time.

The Gulfstream and a similarly anonymous-looking Boeing 737 are hired by American agents from Premier Executive Transport Services, a private company in Massachusetts.

The white 737, registration number N313P, has 32 seats.

It is a frequent visitor to American military bases, although its exact role has not been revealed.

More is known about the Gulfstream, which has the registration number N379P and can carry 14 passengers. Movements detailed in the logs can be matched with several sightings of the Gulfstream at airports when terrorist suspects have been bundled away by US counterterrorist agents.

Analysis of the plane’s flight plans, covering more than two years, shows that it always departs from Washington DC. It has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other US military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.

Witnesses have claimed that the suspects are frequently bound, gagged and sedated before being put on board the planes, which do not have special facilities for prisoners but are kitted out with tables for meetings and screens for presentations and in-flight films.

The US plane is not used just for carrying prisoners but also appears to be at the disposal of defence and intelligence officials on assignments from Washington.

Its prisoner transfer missions were first reported in May by the Swedish television programme Cold Facts. It described how American agents had arrived in Stockholm in the Gulfstream in December 2001 to take two suspected terrorists from Sweden to Egypt.

At the time of what was presented as an “extradition” to Egypt, Swedish ministers made no public mention of American involvement in the detention of Ahmed Agiza, 42, and Muhammed Zery, 35, who was later cleared.

Witnesses described seeing the prisoners handed to US agents whose faces were masked by hoods. The clothes of the handcuffed prisoners were cut off and they were dressed in nappies covered by orange overalls before being forcibly given sedatives by suppository.

The Gulfstream flew them to Egypt, where both prisoners claimed they were beaten and tortured with electric shocks to their genitals. Despite liberal Swedish laws on freedom of information, diplomatic telegrams on the case released to the media were edited to conceal the complaints of torture.

Hamida Shalaby, Agiza’s mother, said: “The mattress had electricity . . . When they connected to the electricity, his body would rise up and then fall down and this up and down would go on until they unplugged electricity.”

A month before the Swedish extradition, the same Gulfstream was identified by Masood Anwar, a Pakistani newspaper reporter in Karachi. Airport staff told Anwar they had seen Jamil Gasim, a Yemeni student who was suspected of links to Al-Qaeda, being bundled aboard the jet by a group of white men wearing masks. The jet took Gasim to Jordan, since when he has disappeared.

“The entire operation was so mysterious that all persons involved in the operation, including US troops, were wearing masks,” a source at the airport told Anwar.

On another mission, in January 2002, a Gulfstream was seen at Jakarta airport to deport Muhammad Saad Iqbal, 24, an Al-Qaeda suspect who was said by US officials to be an acquaintance of Richard Reid, the British “shoe-bomber” jailed in America for trying to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami.

An Indonesian official told an American newspaper that Iqbal was “hustled aboard an unmarked, US-registered Gulfstream . . . and flown to Egypt”, where almost nothing has been heard of him since.

The CIA Gulfstream’s flight logs show it flew from Washington to Cairo, where it picked up Egyptian security agents, before apparently going on to Jakarta to take Iqbal to Egypt.

Another transfer involved a British citizen. On November 8, 2002, the Gulfstream took off for Banjul in Gambia. On the same day Wahab Al-Rawi, a 38-year-old Briton, was among four people arrested at the airport by local secret police and handed over to interrogators who said they were “from the US embassy”.

Wahab said he had previously been questioned by MI5 because his brother Basher, an Iraqi national, was an acquaintance of Abu Qatada, the radical London-based cleric.

When Wahab asked the CIA agents for access to the British consul, as required under the Vienna convention signed by America, the agents are said to have laughed. “Why do you think you’re here?” one agent said to Wahab. “It’s your government that tipped us off in the first place.” Wahab was later released but Basher was sent to Guantanamo and remains there and has yet to be accused of any specific crime.

Some former CIA operatives and human rights campaigners claim the agency and the Pentagon use a process called “rendition” to send suspects to countries such as Egypt and Jordan. They are then tortured largely to gain information for the Americans who, it is alleged, encourage these countries to use aggressive interrogation methods banned under US law.

Bob Baer, a former CIA operative in the Middle East, said: “If you want a serious interrogation you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear . . . you send them to Egypt.”

Among the countries where prisoners have been sent by America is Uzbekistan, a close ally and a dictatorship whose secret police are notorious for their interrogation methods, including the alleged boiling of prisoners. The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to the Uzbek capital.

The details bolster claims by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador, that America has sent terrorist suspects from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan to be interrogated by torture.

In a memo, whose disclosure last month contributed to Murray’s removal, he told Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, that the CIA station chief in Tashkent had “readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence”.

The CIA and Premier declined to discuss the allegations over the planes. The American government, however, denies it is in any way complicit in torture and says it is actively working to stamp out the practice.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1357699_1,00.html

[Dinner]

So people demand that we release people at Gitmo and we return them to the country which they are citizens of and people still aren't happy? Some of you people will never be happy and will whine about everything. All without any evidence that people are being systemitically mistreated.

Ramo, you can keep reprinting those crap Guardian articles but I think most people realize what baseless partisan junk they are.

[Ramo]

Which Guardian article are you referring to?