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<tt><font face="Courier, Courier" size=4><br>
</font>David Rose<br><br>
Sunday May 16, 2004<br><br>
The Observer<br><br>
<a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4925269-102275,00.html">http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4925269-102275,00.html</a><br><br>
'I was in extreme pain and so weak that I could barely stand. It was
freezing cold and I was shaking like a washing machine. They questioned
me at gunpoint and told me that if I confessed I could go home.
<br><br>
'They had already searched me and my cell twice that day, gone through my
stuff, touched my Koran, felt my body around my private parts. And now
they wanted to do it again, just to provoke me, but I said no, because if
you submit to everything you turn into a zombie. <br><br>
'I heard a guard talking into his radio, "ERF, ERF, ERF," and I
knew what was coming - the Extreme Reaction Force. The five cowards, I
called them - five guys running in with riot gear. They pepper-sprayed me
in the face and I started vomiting; in all I must have brought up five
cupfuls. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my
eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed. They tied me up
like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching.
Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec yard, and
shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.' <br><br>
Tarek Dergoul, a British citizen born and brought up in east London and
released without charge after almost two years at Guantanamo Bay, was
describing one of many alleged assaults he says he suffered in American
custody. With the world still reeling from the photographs of prisoner
abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, Dergoul's testimony
suggests that Guantanamo hides another terrible secret - proof, in the
shape of hundreds of videos shot by US guards, that here, too, America's
war against terror has led to wanton brutality against helpless
detainees. <br><br>
<br>
Dergoul, 26, was released at the same time as four other Britons in
March, but was too traumatised by his experiences to tell his story until
now. While it is shocking, it is also credible: his description of his
interrogations and the 'ERF' squad's violent reprisals closely matches
that from other released prisoners, including his fellow Britons, while
possibly his most important claim, that the ERF was always filmed, has
been confirmed by the US military. <br><br>
'Much of his story is consistent with other accounts of detention
conditions in both Afghanistan and Guantanamo,' said John Sifton, a New
York-based official from Human Rights Watch who has interviewed numerous
former Guantanamo prisoners in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 'It is now clear
that there is a systemic problem of abuse throughout the US military's
detention facilities - not merely misbehaviour by a few bad apples.'
<br><br>
Dergoul also disclosed personal experience of the techniques pioneered by
the former Guantanamo commandant, General Geoffrey Miller, to 'set the
conditions' for detainees' interrogation, which Miller then took to Iraq.
<br><br>
He said they included humiliation, prolonged exposure to intense heat and
cold, sleep deprivation, being kept chained in painful positions, and the
threat of 'rendition' to an Arab country where, his interrogators said,
he would be subjected to full-blown torture. <br><br>
On Friday Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, from Tipton in the West Midlands,
who told their stories to The Observer when they were released, wrote an
open letter to President George Bush, alleging they suffered very similar
abusive treatment at Guantanamo. Within hours US military spokesmen
denied their allegations, saying they were 'simply false'. <br><br>
Now, however, Dergoul has revealed a means of proving the claims of
violence at Guantanamo, potentially as dramatic as the Abu Ghraib
photographs. Every time an ERF squad was deployed, he said, the entire
process was recorded on digital video: 'There was always this guy behind
the squad, filming everything that happened.' <br><br>
Last night Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task
Force spokesman, confirmed the videos existed, saying that all ERF
actions were filmed so that they could 'be reviewed by the camp commander
and the commanding general'. <br><br>
All of them, he said , were kept in an archive at Guantanamo. He refused
to say how many times the ERF squads had been used and would not discuss
their training or composition, saying: 'We do not discuss operational
aspects of the Joint Task Force mission.' <br><br>
Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said the government
must demand 'that these videos be delivered up and the truth of these
very serious allegations properly determined once and for all. The videos
provide an unequalled opportunity to check the veracity of what Mr
Dergoul and the other former detainees are saying.' <br><br>
In Washington, Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, demanded that the videos be shown to Congress. 'If
evidence exists that can establish whether there has been mistreatment of
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it should be provided without delay,' he
said. 'That must include any tapes or photos of the activities of the
Extreme Reaction Force.' <br><br>
The effects on Dergoul of his ordeal in Afghanistan and Guantanamo are
very visible. A slight, slim man, he has difficulty walking: for weeks
his American captors failed to treat his frostbitten feet, until a big
toe turned gangrenous and had to be amputated. He has also lost most of
his left arm, the result of a shrapnel wound. Two months after regaining
his freedom he has nightmares and flashbacks, especially of his many
beatings, and is about to begin treatment at the Medical Foundation for
the Care of Victims of Torture. <br><br>
'I get migraines, I'm depressed and I suffer from memory loss. There's
stuff that happened, embedded in my head, that I can't remember.'
<br><br>
He has nothing to live on because the Benefits Agency, wrongly believing
he is not a British citizen, says he has lost his entitlement because he
was out of the country, though a prisoner, for more than two years.
<br><br>
Born to Moroccan parents in Mile End in December 1977, Dergoul was once
in trouble for stealing a computer chip, for which he was sentenced to
community service. After leaving school at 15 he worked in a succession
of jobs: selling double glazing, office cleaning, driving a minicab and
as a carer at an old people's home in Suffolk. Living in east London,
many of his friends were from Pakistan and he decided to visit the
country for an extended holiday in July 2001. <br><br>
'Before I went I'd never even heard of Osama bin Laden or the Taliban and
I didn't know where Afghanistan was,' he said. 'I was not political and I
didn't read the papers. My parents are religious but I never went to the
mosque.' <br><br>
After the 11 September attacks, he and two Pakistani friends had an idea
for what, in hindsight, was one of the worst-judged business ventures of
all time. With war looming, they thought many Afghans would want to flee
their homes. Dergoul had £5,000 in cash, which he pooled with his
friends' savings. 'The plan was to buy some property away from where the
bombing was. We thought we could buy it very cheap, then sell it at a
profit after the war.' <br><br>
They travelled to Jalalabad and looked at several empty homes. On the
verge of signing a deal, Dergoul and his friends spent the night in a
villa. While they were asleep, he said, a bomb landed on it - killing his
friends. He went outside and was hit by another bomb, sustaining shrapnel
wounds. <br><br>
For at least a week, unable to walk, he lay among the ruins, drinking
from a tap that still worked, and living on biscuits and raisins he had
in his pocket. Exposed to the freezing weather, his toes turned black
from frostbite. At last he was found by troops loyal to the Northern
Alliance. They treated him well, taking him to a hospital where he was
given food and three operations. However, after five weeks he was driven
to an airfield and handed over to Americans, who arrived by helicopter.
Dergoul said the Americans paid $5,000 for him - according to Human
Rights Watch, this was the standard fee for a 'terrorist' suspect. They
flew him to the US detention camp at Bagram airbase, near Kabul.
<br><br>
As at Abu Ghraib, Dergoul said, violence and sexual humiliation appeared
to be routine. 'When I arrived, with a bag over my head, I was stripped
naked and taken to a big room with 15 or 20 MPs [military police]. They
started taking photos and then they did a full cavity search. As they
were doing that they were taking close-ups, concentrating on my private
parts.' <br><br>
Possibly because he was British, Dergoul said he was spared the beatings
he saw being administered to others in neighbouring cages. 'Guards with
guns and baseball bats would make the detainees squat for hours, and if
they fell over from exhaustion, they'd beat them until they lost
consciousness. They called it "beat down".' <br><br>
His interrogators accused him of fighting with al-Qaeda in the Tora Bora
mountains towards the end of the main Afghan war. At the time, he
insisted, he had no idea of Tora Bora's significance and never went
there. But in the course of 20 to 25 interrogations at Bagram - including
one session with a British team from MI5 - he was told his family's
assets would be seized. <br><br>
'I was in extreme pain from the frostbite and other injuries and I was so
weak I could barely stand. It was freezing cold and I was shaking and
shivering like a washing machine. The interrogators - who questioned me
at gunpoint - said if I confessed I'd be going home. Finally I agreed I'd
been at Tora Bora - though I still wouldn't admit I'd ever met bin
Laden.' <br><br>
After about a month, in February 2002, Dergoul was taken south to another
camp at Kandahar. His memories of this time are hazy: it was there that
his feet, left untreated, went septic and, as the infection spread, he
underwent a further amputation. <br><br>
In three months there, he said, he had only two showers. Finally, on 1
May, he was dressed in goggles and an orange jump suit, injected with a
sedative and flown to Guantanamo Bay. <br><br>
<br><br>
For more than a year of the 22 months Dergoul spent at Camp Delta, he
said, he was held in the isolation block, on the worst 'level four'
regime - deprived of all stimulation or 'comfort items,' and sometimes
allowed only a blanket between 11.30pm and 5.30am. <br><br>
<br><br>
For the first time, he was becoming religious 'and my faith in Allah was
giving me the strength to resist them'. One way in which he infuriated
the guards was by translating their conversations into Arabic for the
benefit of other detainees, and he also helped organise a series of
hunger and non-co-operation strikes when the prisoners would refuse to go
to interrogation or their twice-weekly shower and 15-minute exercise
period. <br><br>
<br><br>
No doubt, he agreed, this made him more of a target for the ERF. But he
was never violent, he said, and unlike other prisoners he never tried to
use his own excrement as a missile. <br><br>
<br><br>
The report by General Antonio Taguba into Abu Ghraib states that abuse
there began when Miller arrived there with 30 colleagues for a visit last
September and instituted the system he had already created at Camp Delta
- turning the guards into an interrogation tool by using them to 'set the
conditions' or soften up prisoners before they were questioned.
<br><br>
<br><br>
Last week, General Lance Smith, deputy chief of the US Central Command,
told a Senate hearing that some of the 20 techniques Miller authorised
were banned in Iraq, because there, unlike Guantanamo, prisoners were
supposedly protected by the Geneva Conventions. <br><br>
<br><br>
So what are these 20 techniques? A US military spokeswoman said: 'They
come from a classified document and we don't discuss its contents.' But
the Senate has heard they include sleep deprivation, binding in
uncomfortable positions and the use of excessive cold or heat. Dergoul
said he experienced and witnessed all of them. <br><br>
<br><br>
For one period of about a month last year, he said, guards would take him
every day to an interrogation room in chains, seat him, chain him to a
ring in the floor and then leave him alone for eight hours at a time.
<br><br>
<br><br>
'The air conditioning would really be blowing - it was freezing, which
was incredibly painful on my amputation stumps. Eventually I'd need to
urinate and in the end I would try to tilt my chair and go on the floor.
They were watching through a one-way mirror. As soon as I wet myself, a
woman MP would come in yelling, "Look what you've done! You're
disgusting." ' <br><br>
<br><br>
Afterwards he would be taken back to his cell for about three hours. Then
the guards would reappear and in Guantanamo slang tell him he was
returning to the interrogation room: 'You have a reservation.' The
process would begin again. <br><br>
<br><br>
Dergoul also described the use of what was known as the 'short shackle' -
steel bonds pulled tight to keep the subject bunched up, while chained to
the floor. 'After a while, it was agony. You could hear the guards behind
the mirror, making jokes, eating and drinking, knocking on the walls. It
was not about trying to get information. It was just about trying to
break you.' In their letter to Bush, Rasul and Iqbal also said they
endured this procedure. <br><br>
<br><br>
Another technique, applied in periods when Dergoul was being heavily
interrogated, was to deny him clean clothes or bedding for up to three
weeks, or to provide clothes which were several sizes too small.
<br><br>
<br><br>
Sometimes, Dergoul said, as with the 'attacks' by the ERF squads,
interrogation sessions were videoed. Sumpter, the Guantanamo spokesman,
said he could not confirm this claim. <br><br>
<br><br>
Every four or five months, Dergoul said, he was visited by British
diplomats and officials from MI5. Each time he complained bitterly about
his treatment: 'I told them everything: about the stress positions, the
interrogations, the ERF.' <br><br>
<br><br>
Less than a month after he arrived, the Foreign Office sent a letter to
his brother, Halid, which suggested they knew a lot about conditions at
Guantanamo: although written in careful language, it described how he had
been denied 'comfort items' and reported he felt as if he was 'living in
the twilight zone'. <br><br>
<br><br>
It also said he had lost a toe because he had not been treated with
antibiotics. In public, however, the British government continued to
defend the Americans' right to hold Dergoul and others at Guantanamo - as
it still continues to do. <br><br>
<br><br>
Dergoul's experiences have changed him forever, turning him into a devout
and intensely political Muslim. 'I now look on America as a terrorist
state because that's what they have done - terrorised us - and I condemn
Britain as well for contributing to it. Half the people I met in Cuba had
been purchased. If they really had been captured on the battlefield, as
the Americans are always saying, maybe I could understand it. <br><br>
<br><br>
'But maybe now they'll get their comeuppance. After what's happened at
Abu Ghraib, if I'd been the Americans I would have destroyed those
videos. Let them be shown. Then the world will know I'm telling the
truth.' <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp <br><br>
Senator urges action as Briton reveals Guantanamo abuse <br><br>
</font>David Rose and Gaby Hinsliff<br><br>
Sunday May 16, 2004<br><br>
<a href="http://www.observer.co.uk/">The Observer</a> <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
<a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1217973,00.html" eudora="autourl">http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1217973,00.html<br><br>
</a> <br><br>
</font>Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in
brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and
catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed.
<br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the
fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to
speak until now, prompted demands last night by senior politicians on
both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately.
<br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>They say that if the contents are as shocking as Dergoul claims,
they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees has become
an institutionalised feature of America's war on terror. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>In the wake of the furore over the abuses photographed at Abu
Ghraib jail in Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has continued
to insist they were the work of a few rogue soldiers, and not a systemic
problem. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>The disclosures come as the top American commander in Iraq,
Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, announced he has barred all coercive
interrogation practices, including forcing prisoners into stress
positions for long periods and disrupting their sleep, except in very
rare circumstances. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>British military police made four arrests over allegations that
British troops abused Iraqi prisoners. All four men were later released
without charge, pending fur ther interviews. It is the case of Dergoul,
however, that is likely to be the most damaging. The 26-year-old, from
Mile End in east London, spent 22 months at Guantanamo Bay from May 2002.
Today he tells The Observer of repeated assaults by Camp Delta's
punishment squad, known as the Extreme Reaction Force or ERF. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>Their attacks, he says, would be prompted by minor disciplinary
infractions, such as refusing to agree to the third cell search in a day
- which he describes as an act of deliberate provocation. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>Dergoul tells of one assault by a five-man ERF in shocking terms:
'They pepper-sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting. They pinned
me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my
head into the toilet pan and flushed. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>'They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me,
kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains,
into the rec[reation] yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.'
<br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>After their release last March, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal
Ahmed, the so-called Tipton Three from Staffordshire, told of similar ERF
attacks. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>Rasul said they led to a new verb being coined by detainees: 'to
be ERFed'. That, he said, meant being slammed against a floor by a
soldier wielding a riot shield, pinned to the ground and beaten up by
five armed men. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>However, it is Dergoul who now reveals that every time the ERFs
were deployed, a sixth team member recorded on digital video everything
that happened. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force
spokesman, confirmed this last night, saying all ERF actions were filmed
so they could be 'reviewed' by senior officers. All the tapes are kept in
an archive there, he said. He refused to say how many times the ERF
squads had been used and would not discuss their training or rules of
engagement, saying: 'We do not discuss operational aspects of the Joint
Task Force mission.' <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>The Observer can also now disclose that a British military
interrogator posted to the now notorious Abu Ghraib abuse jail raised the
alarm about maltreatment of detainees by US troops as long ago as last
March. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>While ministers insisted last week that the three Britons working
in the jail did not see any of the systematic and sadistic abuse, an
unnamed lieutenant - a debriefer trained to deal only with co-operative
witnesses - made an official complaint to US authorities after seeing
what he considered to be 'rough handling' of prisoners. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>But it is the revelations about Guantanamo Bay that are the most
damaging for a White House desperately trying to draw a line under the
Iraq abuse allegations. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, who has been an outspoken critic of the Abu Ghraib abuse, said
he would demand that Rumsfeld must produce the videos this week.
<br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>'Congressional oversight of this administration has been lax in
many areas, including detention policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Guantanamo,' Leahy said. 'It is past time for that to change. If photos,
videotapes or any other evidence exists that can help establish whether
or not there has been mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it
should be provided without delay to Congress. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>'I have asked the Pentagon for sufficient information to allow
Congress to evaluate the effectiveness and propriety of the treatment of
those in our custody. Pentagon officials owe the Congress a comprehensive
response. I have made clear that compliance must include any tapes or
photos of the activities of the ERF or any other military or intelligence
units there.' <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>In London, Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader,
said: 'The Government must demand that these videos be delivered up, and
the truth of these very serious allegations properly determined once and
for all. <br><br>
<font face="Courier, Courier" size=4> <br><br>
</font>'The videos provide an unequalled opportunity to check the
veracity of what Mr Dergoul and the other former detainees are saying.'
<br><br>
<br><br>
</b><font face="Courier, Courier" size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom
Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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