Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Un "ordine presidenziale" giustificò le torture?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14936-2004Dec20?language=printer
FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay
By Dan Eggen and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A01
Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were
shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time,
left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI
agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors,
according to documents released yesterday.
In memos over a two-year period that ended in August, FBI agents and
officials also said that they witnessed the use of growling dogs at
Guantanamo Bay to intimidate detainees -- contrary to previous statements
by senior Defense Department officials -- and that one detainee was
wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music in an apparent
attempt to soften his resistance to interrogation.
In addition, several agents contended that military interrogators
impersonated FBI agents, suggesting that the ruse was aimed in part at
avoiding blame for any subsequent public allegations of abuse, according
to memos between FBI officials.
The accounts, gleaned from heavily redacted e-mails and memorandums, were
obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing
lawsuit. They suggest that extremely aggressive interrogation techniques
were more widespread at Guantanamo Bay than was acknowledged by military
officials.
The documents also make it clear that some personnel at Guantanamo Bay
believed they were relying on authority from senior officials in
Washington to conduct aggressive interrogations. One FBI agent wrote a
memo referring to a presidential order that approved interrogation methods
"beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice," although White House and FBI
officials said yesterday that such an order does not exist.
Instead, FBI and Pentagon officials said, the order in question was signed
by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2002 and then revised
four months later after complaints from military lawyers that he had
authorized methods that violated international and domestic law.
In a Jan. 21, 2004, e-mail, an FBI agent wrote that "this technique [of
impersonating an FBI agent], and all of those used in these scenarios, was
approved by the DepSecDef," referring to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
D. Wolfowitz.
Deputy Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in a statement last night
that Wolfowitz "did not approve interrogation techniques." Whitman also
said "it is difficult to determine" whether the impersonation technique
"was permissible or not," but that such a tactic was not endorsed by
Rumsfeld.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in an interview that the
incidents described in the documents "can only be described as torture."
The government is holding about 550 people detained in the war on
terrorism at a prison on the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay. Some have
been held for nearly three years without charges or access to attorneys.
Several dozen have taken advantage of a June ruling by the Supreme Court
and petitioned federal courts to challenge their imprisonment.
Some of the FBI memos were written this year after a request from agency
headquarters for firsthand accounts of abuse of detainees, officials said.
An overall theme of the documents is a chasm between the interrogation
techniques followed by the FBI and the more aggressive tactics used by
some military interrogators. "We know what's permissible for FBI agents
but are less sure what is permissible for military interrogators," one FBI
official said in a lengthy e-mail on May 22, 2004.
In another e-mail, dated Dec. 5, 2003, an agent complained about military
tactics, including the alleged use of FBI impersonators. "These tactics
have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature to date
and . . . have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee," the
agent wrote. "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public
in any way, DOD interrogators will be not be held accountable because
these torture techniques were done [by] the 'FBI' interrogators."
In another e-mail, an unidentified FBI agent describes at least three
incidents involving Guantanamo detainees being chained to the floor for
extended periods of time and being subjected to extreme heat, extreme cold
or "extremely loud rap music."
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee
chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair,
food or water," the FBI agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004. "Most times they had
urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24
hours or more."
In one case, the agent continued, "the detainee was almost unconscious on
the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been
literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
In an e-mail dated Aug. 16, 2004, an agent from the FBI's inspection
division reported observing a detainee sitting in an interview room at
Guantanamo Bay's Camp Delta "with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud
music being played and a strobe light flashing." The same agent said that
he or she did not witness any "physical assaults" while at Guantanamo.
A detainee, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan, an alleged paymaster
for al Qaeda and accused associate of Osama bin Laden, has claimed similar
abuse in documents contesting his imprisonment that were filed in federal
court in Washington last month. He alleges Guantanamo Bay interrogators
wrapped prisoners in an Israeli flag, showed them pornographic photos and
forced them to be present while others had sex. Military officials denied
his allegations.
The documents also contain what may be the first witness account of the
use of military dogs to intimidate detainees during interrogations at
Guantanamo Bay. In an undated and heavily redacted memo, initially
classified "Secret," an FBI employee reported that members of the agency's
Behavioral Analysis Unit had witnessed the use of "loud music/bright
lights/growling dogs" during interviews by U.S. military personnel at the
island prison.
The Army was embarrassed by photos of snarling military dogs and cowering
detainees in Iraq, which officials acknowledged later had violated the
Geneva Conventions protections for military prisoners. But officials have
maintained steadfastly that the technique was never used in Guantanamo
Bay.
The issue is particularly pertinent to statements by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D.
Miller, who commanded the Guantanamo Bay prison from October 2002 to March
2004. Miller has acknowledged urging in September 2003 that military dogs
be sent to Iraq to help deter prison violence, but he told a team of
Defense Department investigators in June -- and many reporters -- that "we
never used the dogs for interrogations while I was in command" of
Guantanamo Bay.
Miller's statement contradicted other sworn testimony -- by the senior
military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad -- that
Miller acknowledged using dogs to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay
and recommended a similar approach in Iraq.
Miller, who took over the Iraq prison operation after the Abu Ghraib
abuses became public, recently left that job for an assignment as the
Army's chief of installations and could not be reached through Army and
Pentagon spokesmen yesterday. Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a spokesman
on Guantanamo Bay issues, said he had no comment on the allegation of use
of dogs.
Staff writer Peter Baker and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this
report.

domestic law.
Bene. Che aspettano a mostralo con la "signature" di Rumsfeld cosi' da
dare sostegno alle loro "chiacchere anonime"? :)
-Stefano