[News] FBI Letter Details Guantanamo Prisoner Abuses

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From: "Walter Lippmann" <walterlx at earthlink.net>


FBI Letter Details Guantanamo Prisoner Abuses
Mon Dec 6, 2004 07:04 PM ET
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI agents saw military
interrogators use abusive tactics on prisoners at the naval
base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including a woman
interrogator who grabbed a detainee's genitals, officials
said on Monday.

The account of incidents in 2002 involving foreign
terrorism suspects held at the base was contained in a July
letter from FBI counterterrorism official Thomas
Harrington, to Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's provost
marshal, and was confirmed by Pentagon and Justice
Department officials.

Harrington, who headed a group of investigators which
visited the base, detailed incidents including one in which
a female Army interrogator grabbed a male prisoner's
genitals and bent his thumbs backward. Two other incidents
he described included a prisoner who was menaced by a dog
and placed into isolation and another detainee whose mouth
was covered with duct tape.

In his letter, Harrington referred to the incidents as
examples of "highly aggressive interrogation techniques"
and asked Ryder, the Army's senior criminal investigator,
to take "appropriate action." Harrington wrote that the FBI
told Pentagon lawyers in January 2003 about the abusive
treatment, but the matter had not been addressed.

"We take all allegations seriously and investigate each one
fully," Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the
Guantanamo prison, said in a statement provided by the U.S.
military.

"The appropriate actions were taken, and some allegations
are still under investigation. Immediate and appropriate
action is always taken upon all verified allegations. Once
investigations are completed, we report them immediately up
the chain of command," Hood added.

Lt. Col. Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon,
declined to identify the woman interrogator but said the
allegations about her conduct were being examined by Army
criminal investigators.

The Pentagon has denied that detainees have been tortured
at Guantanamo.

The U.S. military holds about 550 non-U.S. citizens at the
Guantanamo base, nearly all without charges or access to
lawyers. Most were caught in Afghanistan and many have been
held at the base for nearly three years.

Some men who have been released from the prison have stated
they were tortured there. The International Committee of
the Red Cross has accused the United States of using
tactics "tantamount to torture" on Guantanamo prisoners.

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