Torture at Guantanamo

Murat Kurnaz on “60 Minutes” about a month ago.

From The Christian Science Monitor:

In a landmark congressional hearing Tuesday, former Guantánamo detainee Murat Kurnaz described abuses he said he endured while in US custody - among them electric shock, simulated drowning, and days spent chained by his arms to the ceiling of an airplane hangar.

Lawmakers were also provided with recently declassified reports, which show that US and German intelligence agencies had determined as early as 2002 that Mr. Kurnaz had no known links to terrorism. Still, he was held for four more years.

Kurnaz’s testimony to Congress, via videolink, as well as a report released Wednesday showing that FBI agents were troubled by the harsh interrogations at Guantánamo, are the latest signs of growing concerns in the United States about the prison camp, which has become emblematic of what many around the world see as American excess in the war on terrorism.

Nowhere was the disquiet more evident than in lawmakers’ responses. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, who had once accepted Pentagon assurances that those held at Guantánamo were the “worst of the worst,” reacted with outrage and regret to Kurnaz’s statements, which were broadcast from his hometown of Bremen, Germany.

Rep. William Delahunt (D) of Massachusetts, who chaired the hearing, said Kurnaz’s account - denied by Pentagon officials - was something “every patriotic American should find repugnant.”

Even Dana Rohrabacher, a stalwart Republican and defender of the Guantánamo prison system, voiced concern, saying, “It could be after seeing those buildings go down and 3,000 of our people were slaughtered, we moved so quickly that some mistakes were made…. The documents seem to indicate mistakes were made in this case.”

Words in my emphasis for your consideration.

From A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq (PDF; 6.1 MB)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General

Our report found that after FBI agents in GTMO and other military zones were confronted with interrogators from other agencies who used more aggressive interrogation techniques than the techniques that the FBI had successfully employed for many years, the FBI decided that it would not participate in joint interrogations of detainees with other agencies in which techniques not allowed by the FBI were used.

Our review determined that the vast majority of FBI agents complied with FBI interview policies and separated themselves from interrogators who used non-FBI techniques. In a few instances, FBI interrogators used or participated in interrogations during which techniques were used that would not normally be permitted in the United States.

[...]

However, FBI agents continued to witness interrogation techniques by other agencies that caused them concern. Some of these concerns were reported to their supervisors, which sometimes resulted in friction between FBI and the military over the use of these interrogation techniques on detainees. Some FBI agents’ concerned were resolved directly by the agents working with their military counterparts, while other concerns were never reported. Ultimately, however, the DOD made the decisions regarding which interrogation techniques could be used on the detainees in military zones. In our report, we describe the types of techniques that FBI employees reported to their supervisors.