WP: Further Detainee Abuse Alleged

[kskiska]

Guantanamo Prison Cited in FBI Memos

Sunday, December 26, 2004; Page A01

At least 10 current and former detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have lodged allegations of abuse similar to the incidents described by FBI agents in newly released documents, claims that were denied by the government but gained credibility with the reports from the agents, their attorneys say.

In public statements after their release and in documents filed with federal courts, the detainees have said they were beaten before and during interrogations, "short-shackled" to the floor and otherwise mistreated as part of the effort to get them to confess to being members of al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Even some of the detainees' attorneys acknowledged that they were initially skeptical, mainly because there has been little evidence that captors at Guantanamo Bay engaged in the kind of abuse discovered at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. But last Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union released FBI memos, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, in which agents described witnessing or learning of serious mistreatment of detainees.

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water," an unidentified agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004, for example. "Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25962-2004Dec25.html

[NYC]

1. Some prisoners claim they were guinea pigs.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1097915

After Australian David Hicks’ horrific revelations concerning the torture he suffered in the Guantánamo concentration camp, including mysterious injections with substances of unknown origin, the lawyer for two of the French detainees: Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, released in July, recently announced in Paris that his clients suspect that they were also the victims of experiments in one of the most sinister interrogation centers at the US military base.

Original French article:

http://archquo.nouvelobs.com/cgi/idxlist2?a=art&aaaammjj=200412&aaaammjj2=20041225&amjg=200412&num=000000733&m1=Debray&m2=&m3=&rubrique=&rubrique_sci=&amj1=&amj2=&host=http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/&debut=20041210

...sur les conditions de détention dans la base américaine de Cuba, et affirme que ses clients, qui étaient contraints de prendre des médicaments suspects, se demandent s'ils n'ont pas été victimes d'expérimentations...

... ils ont décrit des scènes proches de ce qui s'est passé à Abou Ghraib...

...Ils ont aussi eu des injections, surtout au début de leur détention à Guantanamo. Ils ne savaient pas quel genre de médicaments on leur donnait, mais tous deux ont affirmé qu'un de leur co-détenus avait été couvert de boutons après avoir pris un de ces médicaments, et plus largement ils se demandaient s'ils n'étaient pas victimes d'expérimentations.

Les fioles qui contenaient les médicaments portaient des numéros, et un médecin passait les voir pour leur demander quels effets avaient les médicaments...

I picked out some highlights from the "7 questions" answered by lawyer, Debray, but no, I can't translate.

Translation of parts of French article:

Prisoners Guinea Pigs in Guantanamo?

... After the declaration under oath of an Australian prisoner making state of ill treatments, it reconsiders the conditions of detention in the American base of Cuba, and affirms that its customers, who were constrained to take suspect drugs, wonder whether they were not victims of experiments...

...Yes, they described scenes close to what occurred to Abou Ghraib...

...This sentence had indeed escaped with the censure, and Nizar assure me the catch of these drugs. Once, following the catch of one of these drugs, it lost consciousness and had the impression to have remained one or two days unconscious.

They also had injections, especially at the beginning of their detention with Guantanamo. They did not know which kind of drugs one gave them, but both affirmed that one of their fellows-prisoner had been covered with buttons* after having taken one of these drugs, and more largely they wondered whether they were not victims of experiments.

The flasks which contained the drugs carried numbers, and a doctor passed to see them to ask them which effects had the drugs...

*Button = bouton =
Bud, pimple, button, stud, knob, and a few others. In this translation, I vote for "pimple".

[leftchick]

2. but saddam was worse....

I am sure of it! :puke: