| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 11:55 am Post subject: Iraq Jail Chief Says Prisoner Abuse Covered Up |
| Iraq Jail Chief Says Prisoner Abuse Covered Up
24 minutes ago
LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. general formerly in charge of Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison said on Tuesday abuse of Iraqi captives was hidden from her in a cover-up that may reach all the way to the Pentagon (news - web sites) or White House.
Reuters Photo
Speaking on the same day a U.S. soldier at the center of the prisoner abuse scandal is due to face a military court, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski said she was deliberately kept in the dark about abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners.
"A very reliable witness has made a statement indicating that, not only was I not included in any of the meetings discussing interrogation operations, but specific measures were taken to ensure I would not have access to those facilities, that information or any of the details of interrogation at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else," Karpinski told Britain's BBC radio.
Karpinski, responsible for the military police who ran prisons in Iraq (news - web sites) when pictures were taken showing prisoners being abused, has been suspended from her post but not charged with any crime.
She said that those with "full knowledge" of what was going on in Abu Ghraib worked to keep her from discovering the truth.
Asked if a cover-up meant involvement of the White House or Pentagon, she said: "I have not seen the statement but the indication is it may have."
Photographs of U.S. military police abusing hooded prisoners in Abu Ghraib and accusations of abuse by British and other troops have fueled Arab and international anger, shaking President Bush (news - web sites)'s efforts to stabilize Iraq.
In Britain, an Iraqi witness alleged at a court hearing last week that UK soldiers had tortured detainees by beating and kicking them and pouring freezing water over them.
U.S. Private First Class Lynndie England, the 21-year-old military police officer who became the public face of inmate abuse at Abu Ghraib, faces a hearing on Tuesday to determine whether she will be tried on charges of abuse and committing indecent acts.
Karpinski told the BBC she never personally witnessed abuse at Abu Ghraib or at any of the prisons she commanded.
She has also said she was told by a military intelligence commander that detainees should be "treated like dogs." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:02 pm Post subject: Karpinski claims conspiracy kept her in dark over prison abu |
| Karpinski claims conspiracy kept her in dark over prison abuses
By Associated Press
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
LONDON - The general who headed the U.S. military prison at Abu Ghraib said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that there had been a conspiracy to prevent her knowing about prisoner abuse there.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was suspended by the Pentagon in May, has denied knowing about any abuse at the prison until photographs surfaced at the end of April. U.S. investigators have not implicated Karpinski directly in any of the abuses.
Karpinski told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that she had information suggesting officials took action to keep her in the dark about the mistreatment.
``I have been told there's a reliable witness who's made a statement ... indicating that not only was I not included in any of the meetings discussing interrogation operations, but specific measures were taken to ensure I would not have access to those facilities, that information or any of the details of interrogations at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else,'' Karpinski said. She didn't identify the witness.
Asked whether she believed there had been a conspiracy at senior level to stop her knowing what was going on, Karpinski said: ``Correct.''
``From what I understand ... it was people that had full knowledge of what was going on out at Abu Ghraib who knew that they had to keep Janis Karpinski from discovering any of those activities,'' she added.
Asked whether she thought the conspiracy reached up to the Pentagon or the White House, she said: ``The indication is that it may have.''
A military hearing was set to start in the United States on Tuesday to begin gathering evidence to see if one of the soldiers in the photographs, Pfc. Lynndie England, should be court-martialed. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:16 pm Post subject: Rolling Stone Investigation: Sodomy and Rape at Abu Ghraib |
| From Rolling Stone Magazine
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6388256
The Secret File of Abu Ghraib
New classified documents implicate U.S. forces in rape and sodomy of
Iraqi prisoners
By OSHA GRAY DAVIDSON
It has been months since the now-infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib
revealed that American soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners -- yet the Bush
administration has failed to get to the bottom of the abuses."There are
some serious unanswered questions," says Sen. Susan Collins, a
Republican on the Armed Services Committee. The Pentagon is stalling on several
investigations, and congressional inquiries have ground to a halt. The
foot-dragging is astonishing, given that Congress has access to
classified documents detailing the abuses outlined by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba
in his report on Abu Ghraib. Rolling Stone obtained those files in June
and offers this report on their contents. -The Editors
The new classified military documents offer a chilling picture of what
happened at Abu Ghraib -- including detailed reports that U.S. troops
and translators sodomized and raped Iraqi prisoners. The secret files --
106 "annexes" that the Defense Department withheld from the Taguba
report last spring -- include nearly 6,000 pages of internal Army memos and
e-mails, reports on prison riots and escapes, and sworn statements by
soldiers, officers, private contractors and detainees. The files depict
a prison in complete chaos. Prisoners were fed bug-infested food and
forced to live in squalid conditions; detainees and U.S. soldiers alike
were killed and wounded in nightly mortar attacks; and loyalists of
Saddam Hussein served as guards in the facility, apparently smuggling
weapons to prisoners inside.
The files make clear that responsibility for what Taguba called
"sadistic, blatant and wanton" abuses extends to several high-ranking officers
still serving in command positions. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who is
now in charge of all military prisons in Iraq, was dispatched to Abu
Ghraib by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last August. In a report
marked secret, Miller recommended that military police at the prison be
"actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of
the internees." After his plan was adopted, guards began depriving
prisoners of sleep and food, subjecting them to painful "stress positions"
and terrorizing them with dogs. A former Army intelligence officer
tells Rolling Stone that the intent of Miller's report was clear to
everyone involved: "It means treat the detainees like shit until they will
sell their mother for a blanket, some food without bugs in it and some
sleep." In the files, prisoner after prisoner at Abu Ghraib describes acts
of
torture that Taguba found "credible based on the clarity of their
statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses." The abuses
took place at the Hard Site, a two-story cinder-block unit at the
sprawling prison that housed Iraqi criminals and insurgents, not members of
Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. In one sworn statement,
Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee number 151108, said he witnessed a translator
referred to only as Abu Hamid raping a teenage boy. "I saw Abu Hamid,
who was wearing the military uniform, putting his dick in the little
kid's ass," Hilas testified. "The kid was hurting very bad." A female
soldier took pictures of the rape, Hilas said.
During the Muslim holy period of Ramadan, Hilas saw Spc. Charles Graner
Jr. and an unnamed "helper" tie a detainee to a bed around midnight.
"They . . . inserted the phosphoric light in his ass, and he was yelling
for God's help," the prisoner testified. Again, the same female soldier
photographed the torture.
Another prisoner, Abd Alwhab Youss, was punished after guards accused
him of plotting to attack an MP with a broken toothbrush. Guards took
Youss into a closed room, poured cold water on him, pushed his head into
urine and beat him with a broom. Then the guards "pressed my ass with a
broom and spit on it," Youss said.
Mohanded Juma, detainee number 152307, testified that on his first day
at Tier 1A, the west wing of the Hard Site where prisoners were brought
for interrogation, he was stripped and left naked in his cell for six
days. Graner, the guard in charge of the tier, entered Juma's cell at 2
a.m., cuffed his hands and feet, and took him to the shower room, where
a female interrogator questioned him. After she left, Graner and
another man threw pepper in Juma's face, beat him with a chair until it broke
and choked him until he thought he was going to die. The assault lasted
for half an hour. "They got tired from beating me," Juma told
investigators. "They took a little break, and then they started kicking me very
hard with their feet until I passed out." In another instance, Graner
and a fellow guard reportedly beat a detainee until his nose split open.
Torin Nelson, one of thirty-two private contractors who worked as
interrogators at Abu Ghraib, told investigators that he spoke with an
interpreter who witnessed an interrogator toss a handcuffed prisoner from a
car. "The interrogator then yells at him for falling on the ground and
starts dragging or pulling the detainee by the cuffs," Nelson testified.
He believed the story, Nelson added, "based on the stuff that I have
heard and seen."
The sworn statement of Amjed Isail Waleed, detainee number 151365, is
especially graphic. On his first day at the Hard Site, he told
investigators, guards "put me in a dark room and started hitting me in the head
and stomach and legs." Then, one day in November, five soldiers took
him into a room, put a bag over his head and started beating him. "I
could see their feet, only, from under the bag. . . . Some of the things
they did was make me sit down like a dog, and they would hold the string
from the bag, and they made me bark like a dog, and they were laughing
at me." A soldier slammed Waleed's head against the wall, causing the
bag to fall off. "One of the police was telling me to crawl, in Arabic,"
he testified, "so I crawled on my stomach, and the police were spitting
on me when I was crawling and hitting me on my back, my head and my
feet. It kept going on until their shift ended at four o'clock in the
morning. The same thing would happen in the following days."
Finally, after several beatings so severe that he lost consciousness,
Waleed was forced to lay on the ground. "One of the police was pissing
on me and laughing at me," the prisoner said. He was placed in a dark
room and beaten with a broom. "And one of the police, he put a part of
his stick that he always carries inside my ass, and I felt it going
inside me about two centimeters, approximately. And I started screaming, and
he pulled it out and he washed it with water inside the room. And the
two American girls that were there when they were beating me, they were
hitting me with a ball made of sponge on my dick. And when I was tied
up in my room, one of the girls, with blond hair, she is white, she was
playing with my dick. I saw inside this facility a lot of punishment
just like what they did to me and more. And they were taking pictures of
me during all these instances."
In the classified files, some of the photographed soldiers also provide
firsthand accounts of the abuses. Pvt. Lynndie England testified that
on November 8th -- the evening of her twenty-first birthday -- she went
to the Hard Site to visit Spc. Graner, her boyfriend. Just after
midnight, seven Iraqi detainees accused of taking part in a fight at one of
the many tent compounds used to house prisoners at Abu Ghraib were
brought to Tier 1A. For England, the evening was a break from the tedium of
her job processing prisoners. For Nori Al-Yasseri, detainee number
7787, it quickly became a "night which we felt like 1,000 nights."
Al-Yasseri and the other prisoners arrived at the Hard Site with empty
sandbags over their heads to prevent them from seeing where they were
and their hands bound behind their backs with plastic handcuffs. The
guards threw the men against the walls until they collapsed on the floor
in what England called a "dog pile." Some of the MPs took turns running
across the room and leaping on top of the men. "A couple of the
detainees kind of made an 'ah' sound, as if this hurt them or caused them some
type of pain," Spc. Jeremy Sivits testified in a sworn statement. While
the Iraqis were on the floor, England and Sgt. Javal Davis stomped on
their fingers and feet. Sivits was certain that the men felt pain this
time because he heard them scream.
So did Sgt. Shannon Snider, who was working in an office on the top
tier. Drawn by the cries of pain, Snider leaned over the railing and in a
fury yelled down to Davis to stop abusing the prisoners. Davis stepped
away from the men, and Snider left.
"I believe that Sgt. Snider thought it was an isolated incident,"
Sivits testified, "and that when he ordered Sgt. Davis to stop, it was
over." But it was just getting started.
After Snider had gone, the MPs pulled the prisoners to their feet one
by one and removed their handcuffs. Graner, who had learned a few key
phrases in Arabic, ordered the detainees to strip. As one prisoner took
off his clothes, Graner cradled the man's head in one arm and smashed
his fist into the naked and hooded man's temple. "Damn, that hurt!"
Graner complained, waving his hand in the air. The prisoner went limp, and
someone removed his hood. "I walked over to see if the detainee was
still alive," Sivits testified. "I could tell that the detainee was
unconscious, because his eyes were closed and he was not moving, but I could
see his chest rise and fall, so I knew he was still alive."
According to England, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick made an X on another
prisoner's chest with his finger and said, "Watch this." Then the
six-foot-tall Fredericks punched the man in the chest. The hooded prisoner
lurched backward and fell to his knees. He gasped for air. "Frederick said
he thought he put the detainee in cardiac arrest," Sivits later told
investigators. England was asked why she thought Frederick assaulted the
man. "I guess just because he wanted to hit him," she said.
Eventually, all seven Iraqis were standing naked and hooded, and the
MPs got out their cameras. A few pictures had been taken earlier in the
evening, but now the abuse turned into a photo-op. Men taught to be
ashamed of appearing naked in front of other men were forced to assume a
series of humiliating and bizarre poses. Graner had them climb on top of
each other to form a human pyramid, and the MPs took turns taking each
other's picture standing behind the men. In one photo, Graner and
England smile and give the thumbs-up sign behind the men, who are naked
except for the green sandbags covering their heads. The Iraqis were made to
crawl across the floor on their hands and knees while the guards rode
on their backs. Two were posed as if performing oral sex on each other,
and others were lined up against the wall and forced to masturbate
while England pointed at their genitals and leered. And all the while, the
Americans were laughing, cracking jokes and taking pictures.
An Army investigator later asked one of the seven Iraqis how he felt
that night. "I was trying to kill myself," replied Hussein Al-Zayiadi,
detainee number 19446, "but I didn't have any way of doing it."
The secret files make clear that day-to-day living conditions at Abu
Ghraib were "deplorable" for soldiers as well as prisoners. The facility
was under constant attack from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
The files make no reference to the number of attacks, but a partial list
obtained by Rolling Stone indicates that there were more than two dozen
explosions between July and September alone. Six detainees and two
soldiers were killed, and seventy-one were injured. But officers at Abu
Ghraib told Taguba that their repeated requests for combat troops and
armored vehicles to protect the facility were ignored by top brass. "I
feel, and my soldiers feel, that we're just sitting out there, waiting to
die," said Cpt. James Jones of the 229th MP Company. "As a commander,
I'm charged with bringing my soldiers home, but how do I control that?
It's frustrating. It's frightening."
The prison was filled far beyond capacity. Some 7,000 prisoners were
jammed into Abu Ghraib, a complex erected to hold no more than 4,000
detainees. Prisoners were held in canvas tents that became ovens in the
summer heat and filled with rain in the cold winter. One report found that
the compound "is covered with mud and many prisoner tents are close to
being under water." Another report described the conditions in one
compound: "The area is littered with trash, has pools of water standing
around latrines, and the bottles of water carried by detainees for water
consumption are filthy. The tents lack floors and are inadequate to
provide protection from the elements." Detainees wore soiled clothes
because laundry facilities were inadequate; mentally ill detainees were
"receiving no treatment."
In a series of increasingly desperate e-mails sent to his higher-ups,
Maj. David DiNenna of the 320th MP Battalion reported that food
delivered by private contractors was often inedible. "At least three to four
times a week, the food cannot be served because it has bugs," DiNenna
reported. "Today an entire compound of 500 prisoners could not be fed due
to bugs and dirt in the food." Four days later, DiNenna sent another
e-mail marked "URGENT URGENT URGENT!!!!!!!!" He reported that "for the
past two days prisoners have been vomiting after they eat."
Officers reported that their repeated pleas for adequate food and
supplies went unheeded, even though prisoners were attacking soldiers. "I
don't know how they're not rioting every day," Jones told Taguba. The
worst riot occurred on November 24th. According to an internal
investigation, prisoners in one compound "were marching and yelling, 'Down with
Bush,' and 'Bush is bad' and other slogans to that effect." The detainees
threw rocks at guard towers and at soldiers on the other side of the
concertina wire. One guard said that "the sky was black with rocks";
another added that he "feared for his life." The riot quickly spread to
other compounds, where several guards were injured by flying debris. The
soldiers fired nonlethal ammunition at the mob but quickly exhausted
their meager supplies. Fearing they were on the verge of a mass prison
break, the guards were given the go-ahead to use deadly force, and they
opened fire with live ammunition. Three detainees were killed and nine
were
wounded. Nine soldiers were also injured in the riot.
That same evening, a detainee in Tier 1A told an MP that a prisoner had
a gun and several knives. The informant even knew where he was: Cell
35. The guards instructed every prisoner on the tier to put their hands
through the cell bars to be handcuffed, a standard precaution before
searching a cell or moving a prisoner. But when the MPs came to Cell 35,
the man inside refused to put his hands out. Instead, he told the guards
he "had no gun."
No one had used the word gun around the prisoner. Sgt. William
Cathcart, one of the MPs on duty that night, immediately made a grab for the
man's wrists. The prisoner pulled away and fell to his knees to say a
prayer. "At that point," Cathcart told investigators, "I knew it would be
a gun battle." He was right. The detainee suddenly turned, withdrew a 9
mm pistol from under his pillow and opened fire on Cathcart from close
range. A bullet struck the MP in the chest. Fortunately, before
beginning the search, Cathcart had put on his "full battle rattle" - a Kevlar
vest with pockets holding ceramic plates - and wasn't injured. Another
MP shot the inmate with two nonlethal rounds, knocking the man down.
But the prisoner jumped back up and continued to fire. An MP finally
ended the incident by firing a load of buckshot into the man's legs.
How did a detainee in the Army's toughest prison in Iraq get his hands
on a gun?
According to an internal Army investigation contained in the secret
files, the civilian-run Coalition Provisional Authority had hired at least
five members of Fedayeen Saddam -- a paramilitary organization of
fanatical Saddam loyalists -- to work as guards at the prison. An Iraqi
guard, probably one of "Saddam's martyrs," had smuggled the gun and two
knives into the prison in an inner tube, placed them in a sheet and tossed
them up to the second-story window of Cell 35. In May, when Taguba
testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen.Wayne Allard
asked him a direct question: "Did we have terrorists in the population at
this prison?" Taguba answered, "Sir, none that we were made aware of."
His own files make clear, however, that a more accurate response would
have been: "Yes, sir -- but only among the guards."
Taguba was only authorized to investigate the role of military police
in the torture at Abu Ghraib -- even though the Hard Site was controlled
by military intelligence when the worst abuses occurred. Nevertheless,
the classified annexes indicate that responsibility for the torture
extends at least as high as several top-ranking officers in Iraq who have
yet to be disciplined or removed from command. Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast,
who remains director of military intelligence in Iraq, was aware of the
conditions at Abu Ghraib and received regular reports from officers at
the prison. Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, who directed intelligence at the
prison, admitted to Taguba that he did not actually report to the British
colonel who was supposedly his supervisor. "On paper, I work directly
for him," Jordan told Taguba. "But between you, me and the fence post, I
work directly for General Fast." Fast is currently under investigation,
but unlike lower-ranking officers and soldiers, she has not been
reprimanded or charged in the abuses.
Miller, who was sent by Rumsfeld to speed up interrogations at Abu
Ghraib, spent ten days in Iraq touring prisons and meeting with
intelligence officials. The two-star general was commander of the military prison
at Guantenamo Bay, Cuba -- known as Gitmo -- where "enemy combatants"
were already being subjected to harsh interrogation techniques,
including the use of military dogs to frighten prisoners. According to Col.
Thomas Pappas, who commanded the military intelligence brigade at Abu
Ghraib, Miller spoke with him about using dogs on prisoners: "He said that
they used military working dogs, and that they were effective in
setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information." Brig.
Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of all military prisons in
Iraq, told Rolling Stone that Miller described his plan to "Gitmo-ize
interrogation operations" in Iraq and boasted that prisoners at Guantenamo
"were treated like dogs, because you can never let them be in charge."
Miller has denied making either statement. But whatever he said, his
plan to "rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence" was
quickly adopted at Abu Ghraib. A slide presentation in the classified files
spells out the new "Interrogation Rules of Engagement," specifying that
soldiers, with proper approval, may subject prisoners to dietary
manipulation, sleep deprivation, stress positions and the "presence of mil
working dogs." In at least one instance documented by Taguba and
photographed by soldiers, a prisoner at Abu Ghraib was bitten by a dog. Most of
the MPs who have been charged with crimes say they were told by
military intelligence officers to "soften up" prisoners prior to
interrogations. "MI wanted to get them to talk," Spc. Sabrina Harman told
investigators, saying she was told to keep detainees awake. Sgt. Davis, who
jumped on the pile of seven detainees on November 8th, said intelligence
officers would tell guards to "loosen this guy up for us" and "make sure
he
has a bad night."
The classified files also show that intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib
felt pressured to produce results. "Sir," Lt. Col. Jordan told Taguba,
"I was told a couple of times . . . that some of the reporting was
getting read by Rumsfeld, folks out at Langley [the Central Intelligence
Agency], some very senior folks."
In May, after photos of the torture were published, Rumsfeld declared
that he would take "all measures necessary" to ensure that such abuse
"does not happen again." But the defense secretary had already sent a
clear signal to commanders in Iraq about his position on the proper way to
interrogate prisoners. In April, Rumsfeld transferred Gen. Miller from
Guant?namo to Baghdad, putting him in charge of all military prisons in
Iraq. Instead of court-martialing the man who authored the plan to
subject prisoners at Abu Ghraib to harsh abuses, Rumsfeld has left him in
charge of the facility.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have changed this," Miller told reporters in
May. "Trust us. We are doing this right."
The 'Implausible Denial' and 'Implausible Denial 2' articles via the following URL convey that the JINSA/CSP/PNAC neoconservative cabal at the Pentagon (via arch neoconservative Stephen Cambone) ordered for the torture/abuse to take place at Abu Ghraib:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
You might want to access the General Karpinski interview via the following URL:
http://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/iraq/
You might want to read the Jane's article which is included near the bottom of the following URL as the hooding and sexual abuse tactics at Abu Ghraib have been used by the Israeli Shin Bet against the Palestinians:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/07/03/breaking-news-bbc-airs-israeli-torture-connection-to-iraq.php
Also access page 3 of the following URL (via the page link at the bottom right):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/06/13/interrogation-abuses-were-approved-at-highest-levels.php | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 10:06 pm Post subject: Shocking prisoner abuses are revealed |
| http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=547708
Shocking prisoner abuses are revealed
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Nigel Morris
04 August 2004
Private England called to explain her 'bit of fun' on the Abu Ghraib night shift
Police seize 13 men in terror raids across UK
Leading article: The terrorist threat must never be politicised - even in a close presidential race
Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to Abu Ghraib-style torture and sexual humiliation in which they were stripped naked, forced to sodomise one another and taunted by naked female American soldiers, according to a new report.
Some of the abuse has been captured on videotape.
Based on the testimony of three former British prisoners who spoke with other detainees, the report details a brutal yet carefully choreographed regime at the US prison camp in which abuse was meted out in a manner judged to have the "maximum impact". Those prisoners with the most conservative Muslim backgrounds were the most likely to be subjected to sexual humiliation and abuse while those from westernised backgrounds were more likely to suffer solitary confinement and physical mistreatment.
In addition to the sexual and physical humiliation, the report based on testimony provided by Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Safiq Rasul the so-called Tipton Three also details how prisoners had their religion mocked. "There was a clear policy to try to force people to abandon their religious faith," says one extract of the report, obtained by The Independent. The report also details how prisoners were injected with unknown drugs during interrogation sessions and were told they would only receive medicine if they co-operated with interrogators.
It was also reported that elsewhere in the report, Mr Ahmed claims he was questioned for three hours by a British interrogator claiming to be from the SAS while an American colleague held a gun to his head.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said last night: "These allegations make profoundly unpleasant reading. If they are true, they demonstrate a level of behaviour far short of what is acceptable. The American authorities said that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in Guantanamo Bay, but nevertheless they abide by their terms. It seems they have signally failed to do so and one can't help drawing a parallel with what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad."
Five British prisoners were released without charge from Guantanamo Bay, on a US naval base on the south-east coast of Cuba, last March and freed within a day by the British authorities. Another four remain: Feroz Abbasi, Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar. Three UK residents, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna and Jamal Abdullah, are also there. It is understood that Mr Begg and Mr Abbasi, have been held in total isolation for more than a year.
The abuse detailed in the report, compiled by British and American lawyers and being released today in New York by the Centre for Constitutional Rights, is likely to trigger fresh outrage about the way the US military treats prisoners. Investigators are examining allegations of widespread abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prisoner west of Baghdad. Male prisoners were abused, tortured and sexually humiliated by their US guards. They are also investigating the deaths of several prisoners in US military custody.
One factor which links Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib is Gen Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the Cuban prison who left to take charge of Abu Ghraib in August last year. Mr Miller reportedly told his staff in Iraq that his intention was to turn the prison into an intelligence hub and "Gitmoize" the operation (Guantanamo is known in the US as Gitmo).
The allegations in the report match those made by other released prisoners. This week the French newspaper Libération detailed claims by two French men who said they had been physically and sexually abused, urinated on and refused medical treatment. And in a sworn statement yesterday, Tarek Dergoul, another Briton, said he had been beaten, tied up "like a beast", sprayed with pepper gun and had his head forced down the toilet. He claimed the brutality was recorded on video. The Foreign Office said yesterday no allegations of ill-treatment had been passed to British officials when they visited inmates.
'I was tied up like a beast and beaten'
A British prisoner at Guantanamo Bay said yesterday that he was interrogated for up to 10 hours at a time while chained like a dog to a metal ring in the floor.
During his incarceration, Tareq Dergoul said that he had endured similar abuse and humiliation to that meted out to the Iraqi inmates of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail.
In a sworn statement, he said he had been beaten, tied up "like a beast", sprayed with a pepper gun and had his head forced down the lavatory. He said the brutality was recorded on video camera.
Mr Dergoul, from Mile End, east London, was picked up by US forces in Afghanistan where he says he had travelled to buy property. He was held in Guantanamo Bay for 22 months - including more than a year in the isolation block - before being released without charge.
He also said that he was stripped, subjected to a full body search and photographed while naked, given forcible injections, forced to lie on a metal bunk without bedding in freezing conditions, and refused medical treatment when suffering frostbite. He later had to have a big toe amputated. Mr Dergoul, 26, said he was put in solitary confinement for translating from English for other prisoners and that soldiers mocked the Koran, played loud music and forced him to look at pornographic magazines during interrogation. "If I refused a cell search, military police would call the extreme reaction force, who came in riot gear with plastic shields and pepper spray. The ERF entered the cell, ran in and pinned me down after spraying me and attacked me."
He said he had been told to sign a form admitting he was a member of al-Qa'ida, but had refused. His lawyer, Louise Christian, said he had been a victim of a systematic regime of abuse "directed and ordered by the top command".
BRITONS HELD AT CAMP DELTA
DETAINED
Feroz Abbasi, 23: Moved to Britain from Uganda aged eight. May have attended Finsbury Park mosque. Arrested in Afghanistan.
Moazzam Begg, 36: Ran a religious bookshop in Birmingham. Was arrested in Islamabad in February 2002, then moved to Cuba in February 2003.
Richard Belmar, 23: Held in Pakistan before being moved to Cuba. Worshipped at Regent's Park mosque, close to his home in Maida Vale, north London.
Martin Mubanga, 29: Has joint Zambian and British nationality. Lived in London. Was arrested in Zambia after reportedly arriving there from Afghanistan.
RELEASED
Asif Iqbal, 22: Parcel depot worker from Tipton. Picked up in Afghanistan. Family had suggested he go to Pakistan to meet a bride.
Shafiq Rasul, 24: Captured in Afghanistan. From Tipton. Travelled to Pakistan in 2001 for a computer course.
Rhuhel Ahmed, 21: Left for Pakistan in 2001 with Rasul and Iqbal to attend wedding. Held in Kandahar before being sent to Cuba.
Jamal al-Harith or Jamal Udeen 37: Web designer. Believed to have been captured in a Kandahar jail.
Tarek Dergoul, 24: Former east London care worker. Believed to have been sent to Cuba in May 2002.
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Tories promise to remove 'failing' speed cameras | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
