Videotapes show detainees being punched, stripped

Secret report questions some Guantanamo tactics

Associated Press

February 3, 2005

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the former head of the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, leaves a military court at Fort Meade Tuesday after day two of his Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury investigation. (AP photo / October 17, 2006)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Videotapes of riot squads subduing troublesome terror suspects at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, show the guards punching some detainees, tying one to a gurney for questioning and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down, according to a secret report. One squad was all-female, traumatizing some Muslim prisoners.

Investigators from the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the camp, wrote the report after reviewing 20 hours of videotapes involving "Immediate Reaction Forces."

The camp's layout prevented videotaping in all the cells where the five-person teams - also known as "Immediate Response Forces" - operated, said the report, which was obtained by the Associated Press. Reviewers said they did not look at all of the videotapes.

Although the report noted several cases of physical force, reviewers said they found no evidence of systemic detainee abuse, according to the six-page summary dated June 19. An official familiar with the report authenticated it, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But the tapes raised questions about mistreatment and misconduct, said the investigators, who suggested that some clips needed more scrutiny to rule out abuse. The military has cited 10 substantiated cases of abuse at Guantanamo and announced Tuesday that the investigation would be extended to interview witnesses in the United States and abroad.

One such clip the investigators flagged was from Feb. 17. It showed "one or more" team members punching a detainee "on an area of his body that seemingly would be inconsistent with striking a pressure point," which is a sanctioned tactic for subduing prisoners.

In five other clips showing detainees who appeared to have been punched by team members, the investigators said: "The punching was in line with accepted law enforcement practice of striking the pressure point on the back of the thigh to temporarily distract the detainee."

In other "questionable" cases, reviewers said a video showed a guard kneeing a detainee in the head, while another showed a team securing a detainee to a gurney for an interrogation.

A separate clip captured a platoon leader taunting a detainee with pepper spray and repeatedly spraying him before letting the reaction team enter the cell, reviewers wrote.

Investigators noted about a dozen cases in which detainees were stripped from the waist down and taken to the camp's "Romeo block." No female guards were involved, they said.

Romeo block is a camp section where prisoners were often left naked for days, according to two former British detainees.

Although no female guards were videotaped in any of the stripping cases, investigators cautioned the U.S. government about using the all-female team to handle disruptive detainees, citing religious and cultural issues. Many of the prisoners are Muslim men and under strict interpretation of Islam view contact with women other than their wives as taboo.

"Several detainees express displeasure about female MPs either escorting them, or touching them as members of an IRF team," the report states. "Because some have questioned our sensitivity to the detainees' religion and culture, we believe that talking points are appropriate to address incorporation of female soldiers into the guard force."

Prisoners released from Guantanamo have accused the extraction teams of abuse, and one former National Guardsman suffered brain damage after posing undercover as a rowdy detainee and being beaten by teammates.

"The obvious problem with our armed forces is their inability to comply with international law," said Arsalan T. Iftikhar, national legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Many of us thought that the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq was going to shake us into awakening, but it seems like the things we keep learning about Guantanamo indicate there was, in fact, systematic abuse."