US to probe treatment of detainees
Military acts after release of FBI files on Guantanamo
WASHINGTON -- The military launched an investigation yesterday into charges of prisoner abuse at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp after months of assurances from the Bush administration and the Pentagon that detainees at the facility had been treated humanely.
The beginning of the probe, ordered by General Bantz J. Craddock, commander of the US Southern Command in Miami, was announced after documents released by a federal court order showed that FBI agents witnessed aggressive and potentially illegal interrogation techniques at Guantanamo beginning in 2002 -- two years before the photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib became public last year.
"Finally, the American military seems to be taking seriously the widespread nature of the torture and abuse," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that sued to force the release of the FBI memos.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has repeatedly said that the Guantanamo detainees have been treated "humanely." The investigation, to be conducted by Brigadier General John T. Furlow at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, marks the first formal military inquiry into allegations of abuse at the detention facility located on a US Navy base in Cuba.
"This investigation is consistent with standing policy of United States Southern Command and Joint Task Force Guantanamo to immediately investigate all credible allegations of detainee abuse," said Colonel David McWilliams, a SOUTHCOM spokesman. "The Command wants to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding all allegations, determine compliance with approved policies at the time of the incidents, and consider the opinions and recommendations of an independent investigating officer."
Abuse of detainees in the war on terrorism is expected to be a central issue when Alberto Gonzales goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today as President Bush's nominee for attorney general. As Bush's chief counsel at the White House, Gonzales helped develop legal memos that human rights activists say set the stage for such abuse.
While the military inquiry was welcome news to ACLU officials, who have waged a court battle to get access to documents related to treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, human rights advocates accused the government of covering up what they believe were widespread abuses.
Even as the military was announcing the inquiry, the civil rights lawyers were raising new questions about information contained in the trove of documents that the ACLU and other groups won access to last Aug. 18.
The latest documents, released yesterday, summarize "potentially relevant criminal statutes" pertaining to war crimes, torture, and sexual abuse, and also shed light on an internal FBI assessment of problems at Guantanamo.
Over the last several months, the Bush administration, under court order, has released documents in batches, many of them memos and e-mails from FBI agents at Guantanamo to Washington headquarters.
The documents obtained by the ACLU and other advocacy groups reveal widespread concern within the FBI about interrogation techniques used on suspected members of Al Qaeda and the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan who have been held at the base since early 2002.
The documents, which US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered released after the Bush administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that as early as 2002, FBI agents posted to Guantanamo reported to their superiors in Washington that coercive interrogation practices being used on the detainees went beyond what FBI procedures would allow. They also questioned whether the methods would produce reliable information.
Some of the previously released FBI memos and e-mails detail techniques including the use of growling dogs to frighten Guantanamo detainees -- something the military acknowledged happened in Iraq but denied doing in Cuba. One FBI e-mail described detainees chained in fetal positions with no food or water for a day or more.
An FBI agent reported in July 2004: "I saw another detainee sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played, and a strobe light flashing." The Geneva Convention bars physical and sensory assault for prolonged periods.
The documents unveiled by the ACLU yesterday suggest that the FBI's "special inquiry" into the allegations was short-circuited, according to ACLU lawyers.
On July 9 of last year, they show, the FBI's assistant director for intelligence, Steve McCraw, asked the more than 500 FBI agents who had been stationed at Guantanamo to report whether they had witnessed "aggressive treatment, interrogations, or interview techniques" that violated FBI guidelines.
According to the documents, 478 responded and 26 reported seeing mistreatment by personnel from other agencies, including the military and CIA. However, 17 of the reports were ruled out for further inquiry after they were reviewed by the FBI general counsel, Valerie Caproni, who determined those incidents did not violate Defense Department guidelines.
"These documents raise more questions than they answer," ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer said in a statement yesterday.
Meanwhile, a report in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine questioned whether Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping interrogators tailor techniques to the physical and mental conditions of detainees.
"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it," stated the report by M. Gregg Bloche, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and Jonathan H. Marks, a bioethics fellow at the law center. The
Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.
