World

FBI tried to fight detainee abuse

by Dave Keating | May 21, 2008 at 02:58 am

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Some pretty shocking revelations have come out about FBI agents at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba voicing concerns about torture and possible war crimes being committed there. The report says the officials brought the forture and war crime allegations to the attention of officials in teh Bush Administration but they were ignored or told to stop colecting such information.

Many of the techniques described in the report which teh FBI agents complained about seem to serve little purpose except humiliating or harming the prisoners in a way that seems more consistent with enacting revenge than in extracting information.

The report is particularly troubling in light of the several proven incidents in which innocent people were kept in Guantanamo Bay for years before being released.

In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, FBI agents at the base created a "war crimes file" to document accusations against U.S. military personnel, but were ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report disclosed Tuesday.

The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the CIA.

In one of several previously undisclosed episodes, the report found that U.S. military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantánamo Bay to disrupt the sleep of Chinese Muslims held there, waking them up every 15 minutes the night before their interviews by the Chinese. In another incident, it said, a female interrogator bent back an inmate's thumbs and squeezed his genitals.

The report describes what one official called "trench warfare" between the FBI and the military over the rough methods being used on detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yesterday, a former Guantanamo detainee testified to congress about the abuse he suffered at the camp, but met with a distracted reception.

A handful of US lawmakers gave only half an ear to the testimony on
Tuesday of a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who spent nearly
five years in prison before being released without charge.
Murat
Kurnaz, a Turk who was born in Germany, was arrested during a trip to
Pakistan in autumn 2001 and delivered to US authorities in exchange for
a payment of 3,000 dollars.

Kurnaz spent several nightmarish
weeks at the US base in Kandahar, Afghanistan before being transferred
to the US "war on terror" camp at Guantanamo.

US authorities
determined in 2002 that Kurnaz had no terror links, but claimed that he
remained a danger because one of his friends had committed a suicide
attack -- even though the friend in question is alive, and has never
been found to have terror ties.

Kurnaz was not released until mid-2006, and only after pressure on Washington from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The
House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs invited Kurnaz to
testify via video conference as part of a hearing on Guantanamo
detainees who are being considered for release but cannot find a host
country to take them.