Pentagon lists abuses at Guantánamo

By The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, formerly stationed at Guantánamo Bay, supervises American-run prisons in Iraq.

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Those responsible for the abuse have been demoted, reprimanded or sent for more training, according to an 800-word U.S. military response to a written query from The Associated Press.

The findings after a weekslong inquiry stand in stark contrast to abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and allegations by four Britons who sued the U.S. government for $40 million last week, claiming gross abuses while they were held at Guantánamo, where 550 suspects have been held for nearly three years.

CBS' "60 Minutes" on Wednesday aired a report featuring Army Spc. Sean Baker, a Kentucky National Guardsman, who alleges he suffered brain damage while being manhandled by fellow Guantánamo guards during a rehearsal for the forced removal of prisoners from cells. Baker describes confusion in the drill, during which he acted as a prisoner and wore an orange jumpsuit, over whether he was a real prisoner and argues that he escaped worse injury by persuading his guards that he was a fellow soldier.

"I've seen detainees come outta there with blood on 'em," Baker said. "If there wasn't someone to say, 'I'm a U.S. soldier,' if you were speaking Arabic or Pashto or Urdu or some other language in the camp, we may never know what would have happened to that individual."

Four prisoners have been formally charged at Guantánamo, where most are held without charge or access to lawyers. The military has reported 34 suicide attempts among detainees, although none has been reported since January.

Guantánamo's new commander says lessons have been learned and troops are treating detainees humanely with a rigorous system of checks and balances.

"In every respect, the standard of physical and medical care applied here is fully consistent with the Geneva Conventions," Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood said Wednesday. "They've not been mistreated; they've not been tortured in any respect."

Human-rights monitors are not convinced.

"We're confident that there's more information out there that hasn't been released," said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has obtained nearly 6,000 documents about procedures at U.S.-run prisons. He was at Guantánamo to observe pretrial hearings.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, now in charge of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, commanded the Guantánamo prison from November 2002 to March 2004 with a mandate to obtain better intelligence. Most abuses reported in August by James Schlesinger, who headed a U.S. congressional committee to investigate abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, occurred under Miller's watch.
 
The Department of Defense, responding to a query made nearly two months ago, provided details of the eight Guantánamo abuse cases cited by Schlesinger. No names were given.

• A female interrogator exposed her T-shirt to a detainee, ran her fingers through his hair and climbed on his lap in April 2003. A supervisor monitoring the session terminated it, and the woman was reprimanded and sent for more training, the military said.

• A prison barber gave two inmates "unusual haircuts," described as reverse Mohawks, in February, in an apparent attempt to humiliate them. The barber and his company were reprimanded.

• An interrogator in April 2003 told military police to repeatedly bring a detainee from a standing to kneeling position, so much that his knees were bruised. The interrogator received a written reprimand, and Miller reportedly stopped use of that technique.

• In reprisal for a prisoner throwing toilet water at his guard, the guard "attempted to spray the detainee with a hose" in September 2002. The guard was reduced in rank and reassigned.

• A guard punched a prisoner while holding a walkie-talkie in his fist after the prisoner was subdued in a struggle for biting his guard in April 2003. The guard was demoted.

• An interrogator stained a prisoner's shirt with a red magic marker and told him it was blood in early 2003. The interrogator received a verbal reprimand.

• A guard squirted water from a bottle on a prisoner in February, engaging in "inappropriate casual conversation."

• A guard used pepper spray on a prisoner who was poised to throw unidentified liquid on an officer in March 2003. The guard was acquitted by a court-martial.

Air Force Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, defense attorney for a prisoner, announced yesterday that she would file a petition in federal court challenging her client's detention and alleging systematic abuse at the prison. She represents Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi of Sudan, an alleged al-Qaida paymaster whose conspiracy trial is scheduled for February.

"The abuse allegations at Guantánamo are a matter of growing concern," Shaffer said. "He was constantly being told he would be sent to Egypt to be interrogated, where many of the detainees believed they would be killed. And he was forced to sit for hours in the freezing cold."

The incident purportedly was recorded, one of some 500 hours of tapes that the military has refused to release publicly.

Four British citizens who were held at Guantánamo until this year filed a lawsuit last week against the U.S. government, claiming they were tortured.