Red Cross Finds Torture in Guantanamo Prison

Submitted by Editor on Wed, 2004/12/01 - 1:00am

Neil A Lewis in NY Times, 12/1/2004

The New York Time
November 30, 2004

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The International Committee of the Red Cross ha
charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the
American military has intentionally used psychological and sometime
physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at
Guantnamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection
team that spent most of last June in Guantnamo.

The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical
personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at
Guantnamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the
report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental
health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometime
directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science
Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, i
composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the
interrogators, the report said.

The United States government, which received the report in July, sharply
rejected its charges, administration and military officials said.

The report was distributed to lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and
State Department and to the commander of the detention facility at
Guantnamo, Gen. Jay W. Hood. The New York Times recently obtained a
memorandum, based on the report, that quotes from it in detail and list
its major findings.

It was the first time that the Red Cross, which has been conducting visit
to Guantnamo since January 2002, asserted in such strong terms that the
treatment of detainees, both physical and psychological, amounted to
torture. The report said that another confidential report in January 2003,
which has never been disclosed, raised questions of whether "psychological
torture" was taking place.

The Red Cross said publicly 13 months ago that the system of keeping
detainees indefinitely without allowing them to know their fates wa
unacceptable and would lead to mental health problems.

The report of the June visit said investigators had found a system devised
to break the will of the prisoners at Guantnamo, who now number about 550,
and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through "humiliating
acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions."
Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly "more refined
and repressive" than learned about on previous visits.

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production
of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of
cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the report
said. It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise
and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to "some
beatings." The report did not say how many of the detainees were subjected
to such treatment.

Asked about the accusations in the report, a Pentagon spokesman provided a
statement saying, "The United States operates a safe, humane and
professional detention operation at Guantnamo that is providing valuable
information in the war on terrorism."

It continued that personnel assigned to Guantnamo "go through extensive
professional and sensitivity training to ensure they understand the
procedures for protecting the rights and dignity of detainees."

The conclusions by the inspection team, especially the findings involving
alleged complicity in mistreatment by medical professionals, have provoked
a stormy debate within the Red Cross committee. Some officials have argued
that it should make its concerns public or at least aggressively confront
the Bush administration.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is based in Geneva and
is separate from the American Red Cross, was founded in 1863 as an
independent, neutral organization intended to provide humanitarian
protection and assistance for victims of war.

Its officials are able to visit prisoners at Guantnamo under the kind of
arrangement the committee has made with governments for decades. In
exchange for exclusive access to the prison camp and meetings with
detainees, the committee has agreed to keep its findings confidential. The
findings are shared only with the government that is detaining people.

Beatric Mgevand-Roggo, a senior Red Cross official, said in an interview
that she could not say anything about information relayed to the United
States government because "we do not comment in any way on the substance of
the reports we submit to the authorities."

Ms. Mgevand-Roggo, the committee's delegate-general for Europe and the
Americas, acknowledged that the issue of confidentiality was a chronic and
vexing one for the organization. "Many people do not understand why we have
these bilateral agreements about confidentiality," she said. "People are
led to believe that we are a fig leaf or worse, that we are complicit with
the detaining authorities."

She added, "It's a daily dilemma for us to put in the balance the positive
effects our visits have for detainees against the confidentiality."

Antonella Notari, a veteran Red Cross official and spokeswoman, said that
the organization frequently complained to the Pentagon and other arms of
the American government when government officials cite the Red Cross visit
to suggest that there is no abuse at Guantnamo. Most statements from the
Pentagon in response to queries about mistreatment at Guantnamo do, in
fact, include mention of the visits.

In a recent interview with reporters, General Hood, the commander of the
detention and interrogation facility at Guantnamo, also cited the
committee's visits in response to questions about treatment of detainees.
"We take everything the Red Cross gives us and study it very carefully to
look for ways to do our job better," he said in his Guantnamo
headquarters, adding that he agrees "with some things and not others."

"I'm satisfied that the detainees here have not been abused, they've not
been mistreated, they've not been tortured in any way," he said.

Scott Horton, a New York lawyer, who is familiar with some of the Red
Cross's views, said the issue of medical ethics at Guantnamo had produced
"a tremendous controversy in the committee." He said that some Red Cro
officials believed it was important to maintain confidentiality while
others believed the United States government was misrepresenting the
inspections and using them to counter criticisms.

Mr. Horton, who heads the human rights committee of the Bar Association of
the City of New York, said the Red Cross committee was considering whether
to bring more senior officials to Washington and whether to make public it
criticisms.

The report from the June visit said the Red Cross team found a far greater
incidence of mental illness produced by stress than did American medical
authorities, much of it caused by prolonged solitary confinement. It said
the medical files of detainees were "literally open" to interrogators.

The report said the Biscuit team met regularly with the medical staff to
discuss the medical situations of detainees. At other times, interrogator
sometimes went directly to members of the medical staff to learn about
detainees' conditions, it said.

The report said that such "apparent integration of access to medical care
within the system of coercion" meant that inmates were not cooperating with
doctors. Inmates learn from their interrogators that they have knowledge of
their medical histories and the result is that the prisoners no longer
trust the doctors.

Asked for a response, the Pentagon issued a statement saying, "The
allegation that detainee medical files were used to harm detainees i
false." The statement said that the detainees were "enemy combatants who
were fighting against U.S. and coalition forces."

"It's important to understand that when enemy combatants were first
detained on the battlefield, they did not have any medical records in their
possession," the statement continued. "The detainees had a wide range of
pre-existing health issues including battlefield injuries."

The Pentagon also said the medical care given detainees was first-rate.
Although the Red Cross criticized the lack of confidentiality, it agreed in
the report that the medical care was of high quality.

Leonard S. Rubenstein, the executive director of Physicians for Human
Rights, was asked to comment on the account of the Red Cross report, and
said, "The use of medical personnel to facilitate abusive interrogation
places them in an untenable position and violates international ethical
standards."

Mr. Rubenstein added, "We need to know more about these practices,
including whether health professionals engaged in calibrating levels of
pain inflicted on detainees."

The issue of whether torture at Guantnamo was condoned or encouraged ha
been a problem before for the Bush administration.

In February 2002, President Bush ordered that the prisoners at Guantnamo
be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate with military
necessity, in a manner consistent with" the Geneva Conventions. That
statement masked a roiling legal discussion within the administration a
government lawyers wrote a series of memorandums, many of which seemed to
justify harsh and coercive treatment.

A month after Mr. Bush's public statement, a team of administration lawyer
accepted a view first advocated by the Justice Department that the
president had wide powers in authorizing coercive treatment of detainees.
The legal team in a memorandum concluded that Mr. Bush was not bound by
either the international Convention Against Torture or a federal
antitorture statute because he had the authority to protect the nation from
terrorism.

That document provides tightly constructed definitions of torture. For
example, if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from hi
actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite
specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," it
said. "Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the
express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within
his control."

When some administration memorandums about coercive treatment or torture
were disclosed, the White House said they were only advisory.

Last month, military guards, intelligence agents and others described in
interviews with The Times a range of procedures that they said were highly
abusive occurring over a long period, as well as rewards for prisoners who
cooperated with interrogators. The people who worked at Camp Delta, the
main prison facility, said that one regular procedure was making
uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a
chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them
to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two
close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.

Some accounts of techniques at Guantnamo have been easy to dismiss because
they seemed so implausible. The most striking of the accusations, which
have come mainly from a group of detainees released to their native
Britain, has been that the military used prostitutes who made coarse
comments and come-ons to taunt some prisoners who are Muslims.

But the Red Cross report hints strongly at an explanation of some of those
accusations by stating that there were frequent complaints by prisoners in
2003 that some of the female interrogators baited their subjects with
sexual overtures.

Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commanded the detention and intelligence
operation at Guantnamo until April, when he took over prison operations in
Iraq, said in an interview early this year about general interrogation
procedures that the female interrogators had proved to be among the most
effective. General Miller's observation matches common wisdom among
experienced intelligence officers that women may be effective a
interrogators when seen by their subjects as mothers or sisters. Sexual
taunting does not, however, comport with what is often referred to as the
"mother-sister syndrome."

But the Red Cross report said that complaints about the practice of sexual
taunting stopped in the last year. Guantnamo officials have acknowledged
that they have improved their techniques and that some earlier methods they
tried proved to be ineffective, raising the possibility that the sexual
taunting was an experiment that was abandoned.

Meanwhile, The Response from U.S. and Australian Governments..

Pentagon Denies Abuse Charges at Guantanamo

A statement says the Red Cross' allegations of detainee torture at the naval base go against the Defense Department's own review.

By Richard A. Serrano
Times Staff Writer
December 1, 2004

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo1dec01,1,5158164.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

WASHINGTON The Pentagon on Tuesday strongly denied allegations that terrorism suspects were being tortured at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying that charges reportedly made by the International Committee of the Red Cross run counter to a Defense Department review that found "no credible instances of detainee abuse."

Although Red Cross officials would not confirm that their July inspection of the facility found instances of torture, an official at the organization's Geneva headquarters did say that "there are significant problems" at the prison "that have not yet been addressed."

The Guantanamo Bay base holds about 550 detainees who have been classified as "enemy combatants" and thus do not fall under the Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war. Many were captured during the 2001 operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A Pentagon spokesman, Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, said Tuesday that the Department of Defense would not officially discuss any confidential reports by the Red Cross. But he did release a lengthy statement countering much of what the Red Cross reportedly found last summer.

The statement specifically denied an assertion that some military doctors and other personnel were complicit in the alleged torture by withholding medical assistance in an attempt to persuade prisoners to cooperate with interrogators.

"DOD personnel have not denied medical care to a detainee to obtain information during an interrogation," the Pentagon statement said. "There have been investigations to review procedures at [the prison] and there has been no credible information that DOD personnel improperly used detainee medical information to physically or mentally harm a detainee during detention or interrogation operations.

"The Department would take such allegations seriously and would investigate all credible reports."

According to the New York Times, which obtained a memo based on the Red Cross report, the organization concluded after the July inspection that the military intentionally employed psychological and sometimes physical coercion against detainees that was "tantamount to torture."

The Red Cross report would be the first from an outside agency to document such abuse, similar to that found at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But many detainees and some of their American lawyers have complained that harsh tactics are often used at Guantanamo Bay. The Los Angeles Times reported last month, for instance, that many prisoners had spoken openly during special hearings at the prison about harsh treatment, including beatings and long stretches of solitary confinement.

Amanda Williamson, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Washington, said that officials began regular visits to the prison in Cuba in early 2002 "for the purpose of monitoring that persons held there are treated in accordance with applicable international laws and standards."

The Red Cross also repeatedly visited the Abu Ghraib facility, and several times put the military on notice about problems with prisoners there last fall.

Scott Horton, a New York lawyer who has worked on human rights issues, said Tuesday that he did not think it was unusual for such treatment of prisoners to go on in Cuba even after the scandal in Iraq at Abu Ghraib embarrassed the Pentagon.

"It's authorized. This is completely on the up-and-up as far as they are concerned," Horton said of top Defense officials.

He said he recently spoke with a student at the military's school for interrogators in Arizona and learned that sexual humiliation, as seen at Abu Ghraib, was being taught as a suitable technique for breaking down prisoners and getting more information from them.

The military, Horton said, "can be very abusive and create very grave damage, with mental illness and mental disease."

But the Pentagon statement released Tuesday said, "We vehemently deny any allegations of torture at Guantanamo, and reject categorically allegations that the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo is improper."

The statement said the military had conducted numerous investigations into "detainee treatment and handling," and that "in all alleged cases of abuse at Guantanamo, DOD has examined the allegations and has found no credible instances of detainee abuse."

The statement added, "The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances."

Guantanamo torture claims must be checked: Ruddock
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1255855.htm
Wednesday, December 1, 2004
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Federal Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock says new allegations that detainees have been tortured at Guantanamo Bay need to be tested before they are accepted as fact.

The claims are contained in a confidential report by the International Red Cross.

The minor parties have accused the Federal Government of not doing enough for Australian detainees David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib.

Mr Ruddock says a US Navy investigation is already looking into the claims of mistreatment at the prison.

"There are issues about the way in which information that people might give, that are said to be confessions, there are issues about the probity of that material," he said.

"I think simply to accept unquestioningly the allegations made may not necessarily be the right approach."

Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantnamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Time
November 30, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html