Investigators Detail Gitmo Abuses
Interrogators subjected a suspected terrorist to abusive and degrading treatment, forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog, military investigators reported Wednesday, saying that justified their call for disciplinary action.
They said they recommended that Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller be reprimanded for failing to oversee his interrogation of the 9-11 suspect at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said he overruled their recommendation and will instead refer the matter to the Army's inspector general. Craddock concluded that Miller did not violate any U.S. laws or policies, according to officials familiar with the report.
Investigators described their findings before the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday. They were looking into allegations by FBI agents who say they witnessed abusive interrogation techniques at the Guantanamo prison for terrorist suspects.
The chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, described the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
It was learned later that he had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 but was turned away by an immigration agent at the Orlando, Fla., airport. Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was in the airport at the same time, officials have said.
Schmidt said that to get him to talk, interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra, forced him to wear a thong on his head, told him he was homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator, Schmidt added, and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women and forced him onto a leash, to act like a dog.
Still, he said, "No torture occurred."
Al-Qahtani was provided food, water and medical care, he said. Together these techniques are degrading and abusive, he said. FBI agents raised their concerns about the techniques to Miller, and he should have monitored them, but he apparently took no action, Schmidt said.
"It is clear from the report that detainee mistreatment was not simply the product of a few rogue military police in a night shift," said Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee. Bush administration officials have sought to portray the excesses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as just that.
But Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said investigators found only three instances, out of thousands of interrogations, where military personnel violated Army policy. He did not immediately describe those incidents.
Investigators determined that interrogators violated the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations three times. It was unclear from the aide's description what those instances were.
The military investigation was conducted by Schmidt and Army Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow after the FBI agents' reports of abuse at Guantanamo surfaced last year. Craddock and the two investigators testified about their findings at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday.
Previous investigations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo have hurt U.S. standing worldwide.
No officer of Miller's rank or higher has been officially admonished in connection with any of the abuse scandals. Former Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, is the highest-ranking officer to face punishment, despite calls from human rights groups to hold more senior leaders accountable.
Miller, a subject of criticism by human rights groups, took command of the prison camp at Guantanamo in late 2002 with a mandate to get more and better information from prisoners. He later went to Iraq to oversee detainee operations there. He is now stationed at the Pentagon in a position unrelated to prisoners.
According to investigators:
The report said the military should review how it determines the legal status of prisoners at Guantanamo, and decide what forms of treatment and interrogation techniques will be allowed.
Guantanamo holds 520 prisoners, while more than 230 others have been released or transferred to the custody of their home governments. Most were captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; only a few have been charged with any crime.
There have also been repeated accusations that American personnel at Guantanamo mishandled the Quran, the Muslim holy book. A separate Pentagon investigation found five such instances.