guantanamo bay

"It's a kangaroo court system and completely corrupt," said Michael Ratner, the president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is co-ordinating investigations and appeals lawsuits against the government by some 1,000 lawyers. "Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret."

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held for 558 detainees at the Guantanamo in 2004 and 2005. All but 38 detainees were determined to be "enemy combatants" who could be held indefinitely without charges. Detainees were not represented by a lawyer and had no access to evidence. The only witnesses they could call were other so-called "enemy combatants".

"Military necessity" was used to justify the "special interrogation plan" authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use on Guantánamo detainee Mohamed al-Qahtani, considered to have high intelligence value but to be resistant to standard US army interrogation techniques. Mohamed al-Qahtani was subjected to extreme isolation for three months in late 2002 and early 2003. He was variously forced to wear women’s underwear; was tied by a leash and led around the room while being forced to perform a number of dog tricks; was forced to dance with a male interrogator while made to wear a towel on his head "like a burka"; was subjected to forcible shaving of his head and beard during interrogation, stripping and strip-searching in the presence of women, sexual humiliation, culturally inappropriate use of female interrogators, and to sexual insults about his female relatives; was subjected to hooding, loud music, white noise, sleep deprivation, and to extremes of heat and cold; was made to stand for long periods; and was forced to urinate in his clothing when interrogators refused to allow him to go to the toilet.

Mohamed al-Qahtani was interrogated for 18 to 20 hours per day for 48 out of 54 consecutive days.

"Two or three guards immediately entered the cell while he was lying on the floor. One forced Mr Ait Idir’s body onto the steel floor of the cell and jumped on his back, using his knees to pound Mr Ait Idir’s body into the floor."

This testimony, contained in a lawsuit filed in a US court in April 2005 on behalf of Mustafa Ait Idir, is one of many allegations of beatings and other violence by the Initial or Extreme Response Force, groups of around five Guantánamo guards sent to detainees’ cells to punish them for minor or imagined disciplinary infractions of prison rules.

On 24 January 2003, a man in an orange jumpsuit was brutally treated at Guantánamo and reportedly suffered a brain injury as a result. He was not a detainee, but a US military guard who had volunteered to pose as an unco-operative detainee in a training exercise. However, the five-man team sent in to extract him from his cell was not told it was an exercise. The guard says that they slammed him to the floor, put him in a painful chokehold, and pounded his head at least three times against the steel floor.

"When they vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed them, and taunted them with statements like ‘look what your religion has brought you’."
Saudi Arabian detainee Yousef al-Shehri

During 2005 over 200 detainees participated in a hunger strike at Guantánamo to protest against conditions of detention and their long-term indefinite detention without trial. Hunger strikers were reportedly placed in isolation cells, strapped into restraint chairs, subjected to painful force feeding methods and deprived of "comfort items" such as blankets and books. Lawyers said that some hunger strikers were moved into isolation in cold rooms and strapped into restraint chairs. Guards allegedly taunted these detainees by rattling the doors of their cells, interrupting their prayers and disrupting their sleep.