GEORGETOWN, Ky. — Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Sean Baker reenlisted in the Kentucky National Guard. He considered himself a patriot, he says, and felt a strong call to serve his country.
Baker, 37, a Persian Gulf War veteran, was disappointed when his unit wasn't activated. So he volunteered for another Kentucky National Guard unit assigned to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where as a military policeman he guarded detainees accused of being Talibs and Al Qaeda members.
There, early on the morning of Jan. 24, 2003, Spc. Baker says, he was choked and beaten by fellow MPs on the steel floor of a 6-by-8 prison cell during a botched training exercise. Since then, he claims, the military has abandoned him.
Baker says he volunteered to put on an orange prison jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee in a training drill. But the five-man MP "immediate response force" sent in to extract him was not told of the exercise. According to Baker's lawyer, the soldiers were told that Baker was an unruly detainee who had been doused with pepper spray after assaulting a sergeant.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-baker16jun16.story
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