Published on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
FBI Agents Complained of Prisoner Abuse, Records Say
Documents obtained by ACLU show continued reports of mistreatment in
Iraq and Cuba
by Richard Serrano
WASHINGTON — FBI agents have lodged repeated complaints of physical and
mental mistreatment of prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, saying in
reports that military officials have placed lighted cigarettes in
detainees' ears and humiliated Arab captives by wrapping Israeli flags
around them, according to new documents released Monday.
The FBI records, which are among the latest set of documents obtained by
the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government, also include
instances in which bureau officials said they were disgusted by military
interrogators who pretended to be FBI agents as a "ruse" to glean
intelligence from prisoners.
The FBI complained that military interrogators had gone beyond the
restrictions of the Geneva Convention that prohibit torture; the agents
cited Bush administration guidelines that permit the use of dogs and
other techniques to harass prisoners.
The records disclosed Monday are the second set in which FBI officials
objected to military detention practices, and are notable because some
instances occurred after revelations this year of prisoner abuses at the
U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Earlier this month, the ACLU released records in which FBI agents
complained about prisoner abuse in 2002. The new records show FBI
complaints have continued through 2004. In each case, the names of the
agents were removed before the records were released.
FBI officials participate in interrogations at military prisons and
lockups as part of the bureau's counterterrorism duties. FBI agents have
been stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq.
"We know what's permissible for FBI agents but are less sure what is
permissible for military interrogators," the FBI's "on-scene commander-
Baghdad" complained to his bureau colleagues in May. "We cannot have our
[FBI] personnel embedded with military units abroad, which regularly use
these interrogation techniques."
Another unidentified FBI agent told his superiors in July that he had
witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at
the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay using "aggressive treatment and
improper interview techniques" on prisoners.
"I did observe treatment that was not only aggressive, but personally
very upsetting," he said.
At the Pentagon, Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a military spokesman,
said the Defense Department would have no comment about the FBI records
or the administration guidelines that were the subject of complaints by
agents.
The FBI agents referred to what they described as a new executive order
on prisoner treatment by President Bush. They described the order as
allowing interrogation tactics that were forbidden for FBI agents. The
records did not include a copy of the Bush order, or make clear exactly
when it was signed. Pentagon officials would not comment on whether
there was any new order.
According to FBI officials, the Bush order approved interrogation
tactics that included "sleep deprivation and stress positions," as well
as "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with
hoods on their heads."
Earlier this year, White House documents and legal memos outlined the
administration's legal view that enemy combatants were not strictly
prisoners of war, and that therefore the Geneva Convention might not
always apply in the post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism. Iraqi detainees
always have been considered POWs.
Nevertheless Jameel Jaffer, a staff attorney for the American Civil
Liberties Union in New York, maintained that "the methods that the
Defense Department had adopted were illegal, immoral and
counterproductive."
He added that the ACLU, which has been obtaining detention records under
a lawsuit it filed against the federal government, finds it "astonishing
that these methods appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy by
the highest levels of government."
In many of the records released Monday, FBI officials expressed
repulsion upon learning that military interrogators posed as FBI agents
in their interviews with prisoners.
They said they had learned the "ruse" was approved by Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld, and that it had an adverse effect on obtaining
"cooperation" from prisoners.
In one instance, an FBI official told his superiors in a December 2003
e-mail that impersonation "tactics have produced no intelligence." The
official added that these techniques actually "have destroyed any chance
of prosecuting this detainee."
The FBI official added: "If this detainee is ever released or his story
made public in any way, [Defense Department] interrogators will not be
held accountable because these torture techniques were done [by] the
'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will be left holding the bag before the
public."
Another FBI official, who worked in the bureau's counterterrorism
division and was assigned to Guantanamo Bay, wrote in a July 2003 memo
that military interrogators often interrupted efforts underway by FBI
agents.
"Every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military
would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative," the FBI
official wrote. "The military did not stop the interviews while they
were in progress but routinely took control of the detainee when the
interview was completed.
"The next time that detainee was interviewed, his level of cooperation
was diminished," the official said.
Many agents assigned to Iraq and Cuba reported witnessing incidents of
abuse by military units or civilian contractors.
In a June "urgent report" to the FBI director from the Sacramento field
office, for example, a supervising special agent described abuses such
as "strangulation, beatings, placement of lighted cigarettes into the
detainees' ear openings and unauthorized interrogations."
The supervisor added that some military officials "were engaged in a
cover-up of these abuses."
In other instances, a female prisoner "indicated she was hit with a
stick," according to a memo from May 2003.
In July, Army criminal investigators were reviewing "the alleged rape of
a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison." It was not clear whether
the incident was related to a previous report of a boy who was raped by
a contractor.
Other agents gave more details of alleged abuses.
In a June instance, an agent from the Washington field office reported
that an Abu Ghraib detainee complained he was cuffed and placed into an
uncomfortable physical position that the military called "the Scorpion"
hold. Then, the prisoner told the FBI, he was doused with cold water,
dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the
stomach.
An FBI official in a July 30 e-mail message described an incident at
Guantanamo Bay that he found bothersome: "I saw a detainee sitting on
the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him,
loud music being played and a strobe flashing."
He said the captive was in the custody of military officials at the
time.
"Such techniques were not allowed nor approved by FBI policy," the agent
wrote.
One FBI report said a Guantanamo Bay detainee in May 2002 was spat upon
and then beaten when he tried to protect himself. At one point, soldiers
apparently were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the
cell floor," knocking him unconscious, the report said.
Another agent reported in August that while in Cuba he often saw
detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor, "with
no chair, food or water."
"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been
left for 18 to 24 hours or more," the agent wrote.
Sometimes, he reported, the room was chilled to where a "barefooted
detainee was shaking with cold."
Other times, he said, the air-conditioning was turned off and the
temperature in the unventilated room rose to well over 100 degrees.
He said one 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."
The FBI documents also included a report of a prisoner in Cuba whose
legs were injured and who said he had lied about being a terrorist out
of fear that the U.S. military would otherwise have his legs amputated.
"He indicated he was injured severely and in a lot of pain," the FBI
documents said, yet the prisoner constantly was being asked whether he
had attended a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. The agent wrote that the
prisoner "stated he wanted to receive decent medical treatment, and felt
the only way to get it was to tell the Americans what they wanted to
hear."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1221-04.htm
.
|
