WASHINGTON - The storm
of controversy over abuse at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq
and Afghanistan largely has escaped the detention facility
at Guantanamo, Cuba, where terrorist suspects are held.
That soon may change.
A senior Navy admiral
who briefly visited Guantanamo Bay in early May at Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's request has recommended
a more in-depth look at the prisoners' treatment. He said
conditions there are good now but may have been different
earlier.
Also, the Pentagon (news
- web sites) is facing allegations by former British detainees
who say they were abused and videotaped. Sen. Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., is demanding the Pentagon release any such
videos.
The International Committee
of the Red Cross said Friday that a delegation will return
later this month for an inspection and meetings with prisoners.
The Red Cross is the only independent organization allowed
access to the approximately 600 prisoners at Guantanamo.
The Red Cross, whose reports
are supposed to be confidential, has criticized the open-ended
nature of the detentions at Guantanamo and the Bush administration's
decision in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions do not apply
to detainees there because the terrorist suspects are
not prisoners of war.
The Pentagon itself is
reconstructing events from the early months of detention
and interrogations at Guantanamo, when the focus was on
extracting as much information as possible — as
quickly as possible — from prisoners thought to
have knowledge of planned terrorist attacks.
The first prisoners arrived
on Jan. 11, 2002, from battlefields in Afghanistan.
It is unclear whether
the interrogation methods used in those circumstances
may have evolved into the techniques reported in Iraq
— and whether they in some way led to the abuse
at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Pentagon officials assert
that prisoners at Guantanamo have been treated humanely
from the start, but they acknowledge that some pieces
of the historical record remain missing or fuzzy.
"We're rediscovering
a lot of this in the context of trying to make sure we
fully understand all aspects of detainee operations,"
said Larry Di Rita, chief spokesman for Rumsfeld.
He confirmed last week
that military lawyers in the Pentagon raised objections
to some of the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo
in 2002, particularly with respect to one prisoner believed
to have information about planning for a terrorist attack.
Di Rita said he could not specify any of the interrogation
techniques because they are classified.
In testimony last week
before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller, who recently was reassigned to Iraq after
spending 17 months as commander of the Guantanamo operation,
asserted there "was no systemic abuse" of prisoners
in Cuba "at any time."
He alluded to three or
four minor incidents in which standard operating procedures
were violated. Vice
Adm. Albert T. Church, the Navy inspector general who
visited Guantanamo on May 6-7, told reporters on May 12
that he had found conditions to be professional and humane.
But he also said that his visit was too short to look
farther into the past for possible abuses.
Church said he found eight
"minor infractions." Four involved prison guards,
three involved interrogators and one involved a barber
who gave a prisoner an "unauthorized haircut"
— a Mohawk-style cut.
Another of the eight cases went to a court-martial and
the soldier was found innocent, Church said.
Church described one case
that appeared similar in some respects to the allegations
lodged by a British detainee who was later released. A
guard who was assigned to the prison's "immediate
response force," which stood ready to respond to
disturbances in prison cells, hit a prisoner with a walkie-talkie
after the prisoner bit him. That
was judged to be an act of self-defense, but for subsequently
punching the prisoner, the guard punished with a reduction
in rank, Church said. He said that was the most serious
case of the eight he reviewed.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Robert Mulac,
a spokesman at Guantanamo, said Friday that the actions
of the "immediate response force" are routinely
videotaped and that Church had taken some tapes back to
Washington with him after his visit."I
can't get into the specifics of what the tapes have, other
than I can assure you there are no beatings on the tapes,"
Mulac said. Church
said he found it remarkable that the prison guards and
interrogators had managed to restrain themselves under
the kinds of pressure they face daily.
He said he was told there
are about 14 acts of abuse against the prison staff each
week — from verbal harassment to the throwing of
excrement and toilet water.
