NEW YORK, 18 October 2004 — Uncooperative Guantanamo Bay detainees were regularly subjected to highly abusive treatment over a long period of time, unidentified guards at the US military base, intelligence agents and others who worked in the prison told The New York Times.
US military officials have long maintained such treatment had occurred in isolated cases and was not common.
Prisoners at the Cuban base include those captured in Afghanistan and Iraq and suspected of association with or membership in extremist organizations.
Earlier this year, photographs of US personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad generated outrage around the world.
The Times reported in its Sunday editions that prisoners at Guantanamo deemed uncooperative were stripped to their underwear, shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor and forced to endure strobe lights and loud music played from close loudspeakers, while the air conditioning was turned up to maximum levels for periods as long as 14 hours.
The treatment was described to the newspaper by a military official who said he witnessed the procedure and others who said they participated in the techniques, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“It fried them,” the newspaper quoted the official as saying. The unidentified official told the newspaper he spoke because of anger over the treatment of the prisoners.
Pentagon officials would not comment on the details of the allegations, which have made public for the first time detailed descriptions of interrogation methods directly from people working in Guantanamo Bay.
The Defense Department said in a statement quoted by the Times that the military was providing a “safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantanamo.”
Former Guantanamo detainees and human rights organizations have repeatedly criticized conditions at the detention center and the interrogation techniques used there.
The United States has been detaining suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in the Guantanamo Bay base on Cuba since January 2002. There are currently almost 600 detainees from more than 40 countries being held there — some for almost two years — without any charges brought against them or access to legal representation.
Washington has denied the detainees the right to be called prisoners of war and has labeled them instead “enemy combatants”. The US has granted Taleban militants at the base protection under the Geneva Convention, but has not yet extended this to members of Al-Qaeda.
