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A library photo of a detainee in the US Guantanamo detention camp
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CAIRO,
October 17 (IslamOnline.net) - Uncooperative detainees held in the
notorious Guantanamo detention camp were regularly tortured by US
guards and subject to coercive treatment, a leading US daily newspaper
revealed on Sunday October 17.
The
abusive treatment included making the prisoners strip to their
underwear and having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot
to a bolt in the floor, US military guards and intelligence agents
told The New York Times.
The
detainees were also forced to endure strobe lights and screamingly
loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers for a
long period of time while the air-conditioning was turned up to
maximum levels, they added.
According
to the guards and official, such torturing sessions could last for 14
hours.
"It
fried them," a US official told the Times on conditions of
anonymity.
"They
were very wobbly. They came back to their cells and were just
completely out of it," the daily quoted another official familiar
with the torturing as saying.
In
another torture technique, a detainees would be awakened, subjected to
an interrogation in a facility known as the Gold Building and then
returned to a different cell.
As
soon as the guards determined the inmate had fallen into a deep sleep,
he would be awakened again for interrogation after which he would be
returned to yet a different cell.
This
could happen five or six times during a night, one US official said.
The
torture account was described to the newspaper by a military official
who said he witnessed the procedure and others who said they
participated in the techniques.
They
said most of the abuse treatment was focused on detainees known as the
"Dirty 30".
Torture
David
Sheffer, a senior State Department human rights official in the
Clinton administration, said the procedure of shackling prisoners to
the floor in a state of undress while playing loud music and lights
clearly constituted torture.
"I
don't think there's any question that treatment of that character
satisfies the severe pain and suffering requirement, be it physical or
mental, that is provided for in the Convention Against Torture.''
Moazzam
Begg, a British detainee, said in a letter to his lawyer was abused
in Guantanamo and witnessed the deaths of two other detainees at the
hands of US military personnel.
In
August, Martin Malaga, another British detainees in Guantanamo,
unveiled the ill-treatment
of prisoners at the infamous camp, accusing his US jailers of sexual
assault and physical violence in his 8ft-by-6ft cell.
Although
many critics of the detentions at Guantánamo have said that the
majority of the roughly 590 detainees are low-level fighters who have
little intelligence to impart, Pentagon and intelligence officials
have insisted that the facility houses many dangerous veteran
officials of Al Qaeda.
Amnesty
International condemned
in May last year US breaches of international law in Guantanamo under
the cloak of its so-called global war on terror.
The
New York-based Human Rights Watch had called on Bush to promptly
investigate and address charges
of torture of the Guantanamo detainees or risk
criminal prosecution.
The
new account of mistreatment at the Guantanamo provides a fresh
evidence that practices used have contributed to the abuses in the
Iraqi notorious Abu Ghreib prison.
The
abuses at Abu Ghraib caused outrage around the world when several
graphic photos of Iraqi detainees tortured and sexually
abused by American soldiers at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison were
made public.
Since
then, the scandal has been deepening, exposing more elements and
factors about interrogation techniques approved
by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has been under domestic
and international pressure to step down.
