Ex-Guantanamo UK prisoners claim abuse
Hardly surprising to know that torutre on prisoners is also being practised at Guantanamo Bay.
Ex-Guantanamo UK prisoners claim abuse](Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands.)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two British citizens who were held for more than two years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say they were abused by U.S. military interrogators, which they say contradicts American officials’ statements.
Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal accused U.S. military officials of deliberately misleading the public about interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo.
“From the moment of our arrival in Guantanamo Bay (and indeed from long before) we were deliberately humiliated and degraded by the use of methods that we now read U.S. officials denying,” the two wrote in an open letter to President George W. Bush and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Their attorney, Barbara Olshansky of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, said on Thursday the two were referring to statements by Army Colonel David McWilliams, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, in a May 9 Washington Post article. They also disputed statements made in a May 4 U.S. military briefing, Olshansky said.
In the Post story, McWilliams was quoted as saying, “We have no protocol that allows us to disrobe a detainee whatsoever,” a statement the two ex-prisoners said was untrue.
They also disputed statements that said rules at Guantanamo forbid the kind of torture coming to light in Iraq.
U.S. interrogation techniques have come under fire amid revelations of abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad, in which prisoners were kept naked, piled in pyramids, forced to engage in sex acts and photographed in humiliating poses.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a U.S. Senate panel that any instructions on what is allowed in military interrogations were approved by Defence Department lawyers and “deemed to be consistent with the Geneva Convention.”
Critics contend tactics such as depriving prisoners of sleep and forcing them to hold stressful body positions breach international standards.
The Pentagon has denied prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention to foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay facility.
Rasul and Iqbal wrote that during their detention, they were “short-shackled,” that is, forced to squat with their hands chained between their legs and fastened to the floor for hours while they were questioned.
Other interrogation techniques included the use of dogs to frighten prisoners, strobe lights, loud music and freezing air to add to their discomfort, the two British citizens said.
Sometimes detainees were left naked in the interrogation room and “women (were) brought into the room who would inappropriately provoke and indeed molest them,” the two wrote. “It was completely clear to all the detainees that this was happening to particularly vulnerable prisoners, especially those who had come from the strictest of Islamic backgrounds.”
The two men described beatings by guards known as the ERF – Extreme Reaction Force – and a particular kind of beating and kicking known as “ERFing.”
Rasul and Iqbal said they were driven to falsely confess they were two figures in an August 2000 videotape that also showed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, a suicide pilot in the September 11, 2001, attacks. The two British citizens said they had documentation showing they were in England at the time.