Military asserts treatment at Guantanamo is humane
MIAMI -- Days after the disclosure of FBI agents' memos reporting humiliating, sordid mistreatment of captives at Guantanamo Bay, the military there issued a carefully worded denial yesterday that characterized the tactics used there as humane.
"We do not harass, intimidate, harm, or abuse the detainees under our watch," Army Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter said yesterday in response to questions posed Tuesday by The Miami Herald to the Pentagon's Joint Task Force holding and interrogating about 550 prisoners in Cuba.
On Monday, internal FBI e-mails obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union described a sadistic brew of military interrogation techniques -- chaining prisoners in the fetal position for hours, leaving them in their own feces and urine, at times wrapped in an Israeli flag.
No dates were included in the most vivid federal government accounts of alleged detainee abuse so far, which dovetail with prisoners' complaints in lawsuits. Government officials censored sections of the e-mails, including the names of prisoners and the agents who allegedly witnessed and reported the activities.
But in reply to the litany of interrogation tactics described, Sumpter issued a terse reply in an e-mail: "No usage of any flag is used during an interrogation. Our Commanding General, the constant observance/supervision on what occurs within the camps at Guantanamo, unannounced spot checks, highly professional troopers, and humane techniques preclude the tactics" described by the FBI.
US soldiers assigned to the prison, he added, "will not tolerate such techniques." FBI agents have rotated through the prison camp for Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects for nearly three years. After the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal became public, the FBI sought firsthand descriptions of detainee abuse at Guantanamo in secret internal e-mail exchanges.
The FBI agents made clear in their memos that they did not take part in military interrogations, which operated under separate Defense Department guidelines, and instead did their own law enforcement-style interviews. At times, however, they were able to observe military interrogations, and some agents were alarmed by what they saw.
In August, a Boston-based agent described tactics that were "not only aggressive but personally very upsetting."
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor, with no chair, food, or water.
"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more."
The agent also described military police manipulating the temperatures in detainees' cells. One was kept in air conditioning so frigid "the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold."
A Military Police soldier told the agent "that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment."
The Guantanamo spokesman's statements have been consistent with nearly three years of denials of abusive tactics.
