Detainees attempted to hang selves

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Nearly two dozen detainees at the interrogation prison here tried to hang or strangle themselves during an eight-day period in 2003, including 10 attempts on a single day, the US military has disclosed.

The extraordinary events of Aug. 18-26, 2003, add to sensational stories about the prison contained in FBI memos describing abusive interrogations that were recently made public through a lawsuit.

The sequence began as several prisoners tried to hang themselves in their 6-by-8-foot cells, and widened as word of the attempted hangings was shouted between open cellblocks. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Marshall, a spokesman for the US Southern Command, said yesterday the attempts were "a coordinated effort to disrupt camp operations and challenge a new group of security guards" at the base.

None of the 23 attempts was successful, although two detainees sustained "minor injuries" that were treated at the detention hospital, he said. The medical staff at the base classified those two as suicide attempts, but categorized the other 21 as "manipulative, self- injurious behavior."

The recent disclosures of past turmoil at the government's prison for Afghan war detainees are shadowing attempts by a new team of managers to make the once-ad-hoc prison operation a more professional, long-term holding place for alleged enemy combatants.

When asked about the memos, Brigadier General Jay Hood, who took command 10 months ago, said, "I can't, frankly, really speak to the period before I arrived here with any authority."

"I don't think it would be proper or appropriate for me to speculate on actions before my assumption of command," he added. "But the allegations of abuse were taken seriously and are being investigated."

Steve Rodriguez, the civilian who has run the interrogation operation since June 2003, said he has never used any of the techniques described in the FBI memos, such as shackling a detainee to the floor and leaving him there amid his excrement, and he condemns them. "Most everything that is referred to in these memos occurred around 2002 and some in early 2003, maybe," Rodriguez said. "I can tell you unequivocably that none of the things I saw in the memos . . . have happened since I have been here."

Hood and his 2,000-soldier task force are moving to build permanent housing for detainees with more communal living areas for those who may be kept for decades in the oceanfront compound. And new guards are coming in: An Army battalion specifically trained to oversee detainees will soon be stationed here, replacing 10-month deployments of National Guard and Reserve units.

Even as the government presses forward with its plans, the legal basis for continuing to hold the prisoners without trial may be unraveling. And continuing allegations of mistreatment of prisoners are adding urgency and weight to the legal challenges, according to lawyers disputing the government's right to hold prisoners indefinitely.

Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled that detainees could challenge their detentions in civilian courts, opening a floodgate of litigation. Meanwhile, a federal judge has halted the Bush administration's attempt to put several detainees on trial before a military commission here, ruling that the United States has violated the Geneva Conventions.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human rights group that has been a leader in the legal assault on the operation, said the lawsuits filed after the Supreme Court decision and the negative publicity from the FBI memos eventually will cause the Guantanamo operation to collapse.

"I think the whole thing is cracking -- it's just a matter of time," Ratner said. "Guantanamo is under such scrutiny. And as soon as we get 40 attorneys down there, this place is over."

He also questioned whether officials' accounts that no abusive interrogations are taking place can be believed. "We still don't have the beginning of a clue about what is happening in those interrogation rooms," he said.

For Hood, the wave of negative publicity and speculation of rampant wrongdoing at Guantanamo, which began in earnest after photographs of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were made public last spring, is frustrating. He said he runs a tight operation, with an officer always inside the prison to ensure that soldiers are acting professionally.

He argued that, regardless of the controversial legal origins of the operation, many detainees are such imminent threats to US safety that they cannot be released.

"There are a great number of men here who are very dangerous and who, I believe, would strike out against the United States or our allies at their first opportunity," Hood said.

A senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Guantanamo is in a crucial transition stage. Only about a quarter of the 558 detainees regularly meet with interrogators. Of the rest, some portion will be returned to their home countries. But a hard-core group is too dangerous to risk being let go, even if the intelligence value is exhausted, the official said.

The military is seeking money for a new wing of the prison. A senior engineer at the base said it will house about 220 detainees and have communal cells and large recreation areas to provide "a better quality of life in the spirit of the Geneva Conventions."

The military also wants to build a greatly improved facility to house detainees with serious mental illnesses -- said to be about 8 percent -- and a high-tech fence around the perimeter of the complex, reducing the need for guards.

And it plans to move Hood's offices and the high-security intelligence headquarters to new buildings next to the prison. The result will be to consolidate the prison operation away from the rest of the naval base, which polices the Caribbean waters around Florida.

The building boom has not come cheap. Construction projects in the past two years cost $35.4 million, many of them awarded to Halliburton. But Hood rejected any suggestion that, given the uncertain legal standing of the Guantanamo operation, it might not be wise to continue putting money into its infrastructure.

"If these men are dangerous and if we must remove them from the battlefield and if we are to keep them in a safe and humane manner, then we need to invest the resources to see that it is done properly," Hood said.

Nevertheless, even while officials here work on projects to complete that mission, they are dogged by new allegations of mistreatment of prisoners.

Earlier this month, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine questioned the ethics of doctors at the base following reports that the Red Cross complained doctors were providing detainees' medical files to interrogators.

Navy Captain John S. Edmondson, the chief medical officer, said he has never given interrogators access to such files. After the Red Cross complaints, which were made about a year ago, he tightened rules on medical file access.

Rodriguez, the intelligence chief, also said he has no access to medical files, although he sometimes makes requests for information, such as whether a detainee is allergic to peanuts before providing peanut butter sandwiches as an inducement to talk.

During a combatant status-review hearing observed by the Globe last week, an Afghan detainee accused of helping ambush a Red Cross convoy said he had been mistreated during interrogations.

"It was harsh on me," an interpreter translated the detainee as saying. "For example, in the case of some questions, like, 'You are related to bin Laden or Mullah Omar,' they were very harsh and bothered me very badly."

He denied being a fighter, saying he was a farmer and suspected he had been falsely sold to US forces by an enemy in his village who wanted the $5,000 bounty for reporting Taliban members.

The officer presiding over the hearing said she had forwarded his allegations for investigation. The status hearings for the detainees, which started after the Supreme Court decision, are nearly complete. Three were found not to have been enemy fighters and were ordered released.

In an interrogation trailer nearby, Rodriguez discussed the allegations in the FBI memos, such as one in which an agent recounted seeing a detainee wrapped in an Israeli flag while under sensory assault from loud music. "What I have angst over is the fact that -- and I'm not condoning any of this -- there are many, many things that go on all over the world in many countries. And there are all kinds of true torture, abuse, even people's heads being cut off on television," he said. "And you and I are talking about an Israeli flag. I'll end it with that."