USA: Marine sergeant on torture at Guantánamo

By Joe Kay:

US Marine reports widespread prisoner abuse at Guantánamo

9 October 2006

A US Marine Corps sergeant has given a sworn affidavit reporting widespread abuse at the US prison camp in Guantánamo Bay.

The affidavit comes only a week after the US Congress passed legislation sanctioning indefinite detention, abusive treatment and denial of due process and habeas corpus rights for prisoners held at the facility and at other US prisons around the world.

According to the sergeant, a female paralegal working on a criminal case involving one of the prisoners, guards at the prison bragged to her about beating up detainees.

“From the whole conversation,” she reported, “I understood that striking detainees was common practice.”

The sergeant reported speaking to a group of guards at a bar on the military base, several of whom reported punching prisoners and engaging in other forms of abuse.

The paralegal’s name was blacked out of copies of the affidavit provided to the press on Friday by lawyers for the Guantánamo prisoners.

Her report was also submitted to the Department of Defense.

One guard, identified as Bo, reported “taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door,” she wrote.

Bo told her that the other guards at the prison knew of the action, but that he was not reprimanded or punished in any way.

British prisoners at Guantánamo: here.

Bush and torture law: here.

Torture and Padilla case: here.

From the Google cache:

Freed Guantanamo prisoners on koran abuse

Linking: 14 Comments: 5

Date: 6/28/05 at 9:52AM

AFP reports:

June 28, 2005

Former Guantanamo prisoners freed by Pakistan allege Koran abuse

LAHORE, Pakistan – Seventeen former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who were detained on their return home to Pakistan were freed, with many alleging they had witnessed the desecration of the Koran at the US jail.

The men came back to Pakistan around nine months ago after being cleared by US authorities. …

“American soldiers have been committing desecration of the holy Koran at Guantanamo,” Haifz Ehsan Saeed, 27, told AFP as he emerged from the central jail in the city of Lahore.

“There were various incidents. Once I saw them throw the Koran in a bucket full of urine and faeces,” he said.

Saeed said he was arrested four years ago in Afghanistan on charges of having links with the Al-Qaeda terror network.

He was kept in a jail run by brutal Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam and then shifted to Guantanamo.

“The Americans declared me innocent but yet I have been in prison for about nine months in Rawalpindi and Lahore after being released from Guantanamo Bay,” he said.

“I am not ashamed because I have not done any wrong act,” Saeed added.

Another freed prisoner, 25-year-old Muhammad Hanif, said he was tortured and his beard was forcibly shaved by the US troops at the military jail in Cuba.

“The Americans removed our beards and have been spitting over the holy book,” Hanif told AFP.

See also here.