Red Cross finds cruel treatment at Guantánamo

By The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times

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WASHINGTON — The International Committee of the Red Cross found "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment of detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, during inspections there last summer, and issued a formal report in July that said some interrogation tactics come close to torture, a source who has seen portions of the report said yesterday.

The human-rights group decried tactics used on some detainees — including severe temperatures, loud music and other sounds, the sharing of medical information with interrogators and forced nudity — that it said violate international rules against torture adopted by the United States and other countries.

The report marked the first time that the ICRC formally noted potentially serious violations of international law, including physical torture, at the U.S. Navy base where the administration has held captives in connection with the war on terrorism since early 2002, the source said.

ICRC reports are confidential. While Red Cross officials would not confirm that their July inspection of the facility found instances of torture, an official at the organization's Geneva headquarters did say that "there are significant problems" at the prison "that have not yet been addressed."

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that defense officials "vehemently deny any allegations of torture at Guantánamo, and reject categorically allegations that the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo is improper."

The spokesman said numerous investigations of operations at the prison have found no "credible instances of detainee abuse."

The Guantánamo Bay base holds about 550 detainees who have been classified as "enemy combatants" and thus do not fall under the Geneva Conventions protections for prisoners of war. Many were captured during the 2001 operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In the ICRC report, officials at the Pentagon were criticized for allowing abusive interrogation tactics, including psychological and physical abuse, to occur. According to a military source, a psychological operations commander told a conference in Raleigh, N.C., in November that psychological operations were being used against detainees at Guantánamo.

The physical tactics noted by the Red Cross included placing detainees in extremely cold rooms with loud music blaring, and forcing them to kneel for long periods of time, the source familiar with the report said.

Among the alleged tactics designed to humiliate the detainees were having them strip off their clothes. At other times, female personnel were allowed to interrogate them, which could be demeaning to some Muslim men.
 
The Washington Post reported in June that military interrogators at Guantánamo Bay were given access to the medical records of individual prisoners despite repeated objections from the Red Cross, a breach of patient confidentiality that ethicists said violated international medical standards designed to protect captives.

In its final report, the ICRC said that some doctors used patient records to help military interrogators gather information, which the ICRC called a "flagrant violation of medical ethics."

"DOD personnel have not denied medical care to a detainee to obtain information during an interrogation," said a statement released by the Pentagon. "There have been investigations to review procedures at (the prison) and there has been no credible information that DOD personnel improperly used detainee medical information to physically or mentally harm a detainee during detention or interrogation operations.

"The Department would take such allegations seriously and would investigate all credible reports."

The statement added, "The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances."