FBI agents saw Guantánamo abuse

By Richard A. Serrano
Los Angeles Times

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

WASHINGTON — FBI agents observed U.S. soldiers mistreating terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as early as 2002, but the Pentagon has done little to investigate, a letter from a senior agency counterterrorism official said.

Agents visiting the U.S. naval base prison said they saw military and civilian interrogators using "highly aggressive" techniques to exact information from detainees captured on battlefields in Afghanistan.

In one incident, a soldier reportedly bent a prisoner's thumbs back and "grabbed his genitals." In another, an FBI agent saw a detainee "gagged with duct tape" for refusing to stop chanting the Quran.

In a third episode, a prisoner allegedly was threatened with an aggressive dog and the man was placed for three months in "intense isolation," causing him to experience "extreme psychological trauma."

All three reported incidents were described in a letter this summer from T.J. Harrington, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, to Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, head of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command. Harrington said that the FBI had detailed its concerns to Pentagon officials after its agents witnessed the questionable treatment.

Harrington also told Ryder in the July 14 letter that an FBI agent reported one interrogator had treated detainees so harshly that they often ended up "curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying in pain."

In the letter, Harrington expressed frustration that the military did not appear to be taking the FBI's allegations seriously.

"I have no record that our specific concerns regarding these three situations were communicated to (the Department of Defense) for appropriate action," he wrote.

But the Pentagon said yesterday that the incidents were under investigation as part of a larger internal probe into allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo Bay. The overall investigation has substantiated at least 10 incidents of minor misconduct since 2003. They ranged from a female interrogator climbing onto a detainee's lap to a guard striking a detainee.
 
"We report all allegations of mistreatment to the chain of command," Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the Joint Task Force that oversees about 550 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, said yesterday. "We take all allegations seriously and investigate each one fully."

The FBI complaints represent some of the earliest allegations of prisoner abuse, coming a year before revelations of detainee mistreatment at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In other developments:

The Food and Drug Administration yesterday announced new rules that would make it easier to investigate a bioterror attack on the U.S. food supply. Companies that manufacture, process, pack, transport, distribute, receive, hold or import food will have to keep records showing where they received the food from and where they shipped it to.

The Supreme Court refused yesterday to speed up consideration of a challenge to the government's plans to try foreign terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay before military tribunals.

A jury in New York decided yesterday that the attacks on the World Trade Center were two separate events for insurance purposes, meaning leaseholder Larry Silverstein can collect up to $4.6 billion for rebuilding efforts.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.