Gitmo Prison Guards Getting in Last Licks
Reuters reported yesterday that prison guards at Guantanamo are stepping up the torture, beating, abusive forced feedings, and various other forms of sadistic behavior against detainees. The apparent reason: They know Gitmo will be closing, and they want to visit as much cruelty on inmates as they can in the relatively short time they have left.
The Reuters piece includes the information that the Pentagon knew about these reports of increased abuse when it concluded earlier this week that Gitmo was being run in accordance with the Geneva Conventions: “‘Fully’ ” now means 25%, when the fox is asked to exonerate its own doings in the henhouse and has no real fear of being held to account,” Cernig notes, acidly (emphasis is Cernig’s):
Ghappour said he had spoken to army guards who, unsolicited, had described the pleasure they took in abusing prisoners, whether interrupting prayer or physical mistreatment. He said they appeared unconcerned about potential repercussions.
Of course they don’t. They’ve been assured by Holden and Pannetta that there will be no prosecutions for those who just followed orders, no matter how gleefully they did so!
As if all this were not upsetting enough, the Obama administration continues to say it will “take time” to shut down Guantanamo. By itself, this is not cause for alarm. Gitmo has been a bureaucratic and human rights nightmare for eight years, and it’s reasonable for an administration that had no part in creating that nightmare to say they need time to figure out the safest, most efficient way to bring the nightmare to an end. But I find it deeply distressing and discouraging to read descriptions of AG Eric Holder praising the treatment of Gitmo detainees based solely on what he was told and on what he was allowed to see on an official visit to the prison camp:
Holder said his visit to the site was instructive. He met with military officials and toured the facilities, including the court setting where military commissions were to be held until Obama suspended them.
He said he did not witness any rough treatment of detainees, and in fact found the military staff and leadership performing admirably.
“I did not witness any mistreatment of prisoners. I think, to the contrary, what I saw was a very conscious attempt by these guards to conduct themselves in an appropriate way,” he said.
The attorney general said none of those impressions alters the administration’s goal of closing Guantanamo by January 2010.
“It does not in any way decrease our determination to close the facility, even though as I said it is being well-run now,” he said.
It defies all logic and common sense, not to mention reams of objective evidence, to conclude that prisoners at Guantanamo are now, suddenly, in the 36 days since Obama became president, being treated with humanity and professionalism and in accordance with international protocols that were ignored for the past eight years. You know? It just doesn’t work that way. As Andrew Sullivan says, Gitmo’s entire reason for being was to remove all the legal and customary controls that prevent abusive and cruel treatment of suspected terrorists in U.S. custody: “Gitmo was created as a torture lab – and in the end, the guards who are part of that system behave accordingly.”
Tags: Guantanamo, Human Rights
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