| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Films of Subduing of Guant’o Prisoners Becoming an Issue |
| 2004-05-17 |
| Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed. The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to speak until now, prompted demands last night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately. ... Dergoul tells of one assault by a five-man ERF in shocking terms: ’They pepper-sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed. ’They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec[reation] yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.’ After their release last March, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, the so-called Tipton Three from Staffordshire, told of similar ERF attacks. Rasul said they led to a new verb being coined by detainees: ’to be ERFed’. That, he said, meant being slammed against a floor by a soldier wielding a riot shield, pinned to the ground and beaten up by five armed men. However, it is Dergoul who now reveals that every time the ERFs were deployed, a sixth team member recorded on digital video everything that happened. Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed this last night, saying all ERF actions were filmed so they could be ’reviewed’ by senior officers. All the tapes are kept in an archive there, he said. He refused to say how many times the ERF squads had been used and would not discuss their training or rules of engagement, saying: ’We do not discuss operational aspects of the Joint Task Force mission.’ The Observer can also now disclose that a British military interrogator posted to the now notorious Abu Ghraib abuse jail raised the alarm about maltreatment of detainees by US troops as long ago as last March. While ministers insisted last week that the three Britons working in the jail did not see any of the systematic and sadistic abuse, an unnamed lieutenant - a debriefer trained to deal only with co-operative witnesses - made an official complaint to US authorities after seeing what he considered to be ’rough handling’ of prisoners. ... In London, Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said: ’The Government must demand that these videos be delivered up, and the truth of these very serious allegations properly determined once and for all. ’The videos provide an unequalled opportunity to check the veracity of what Mr Dergoul and the other former detainees are saying.’ |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #10 I think the average person is out of touch with what bad guys do, and what has to happen to make them stop--in a prison situation or othewise. The Islamoidz have found a Western "hot button" with this "prisoner abuse" thing, and will keep pushing it if they can get publicity--which all too likely this election season. I suggest publishing story after story about what the Islamoidz do. Talk about shockers! Would make the normative treatment of prisoners at gitmo pale in comparison. But the media wants to back Kerry, generally speaking, so no luck on "fair and balanced" reporting (a rare occurence in the best of times). |
| Posted by: ex-lib 2004-05-17 7:50:00 PM |
| #9 And Ed if you saw your buddy get shived by some low-life would you not want to correct his 'attitude'? I am sure the Brits were the mouthiest of all prisoners because they ‘thought’ they had some right to do whatever the hell they please. I am not a mean person but I would not think twice about cracking some mouthy jihadist on the head if they continued to give me trouble. The world would have been better off if we had left them in a hole in Afghanistan. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2004-05-17 6:07:39 PM |
| #8 Still more photos! When will the horror stop! I can just feel the umma's indignation and cry for justice. |
| Posted by: ed 2004-05-17 12:39:30 PM |
| #7 More photos of terrorist abuse by prison guards, this time in the US! Why the silence? Where is the worldwide outrage! |
| Posted by: ed 2004-05-17 12:31:45 PM |
| #6 B, I can't agree more. It's like a lifer complaining because he can't beat up guards. The publicity will 'de-traumatize' what has happened. I can't say I feel sorry for any of their Brits that 'happened' to be in Afghanistan and were captured. Their stories are as flimsy as one of the Kerry's daughters dresses. I bet that more than one of them attempted to 'put the guards in their place.' I was a guard in Korea for a short time and they (prisoners) always feel they have to test the rules or try to intimidate the guards. After an encounter with the Emergency Response Force they lose that desire. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2004-05-17 10:58:10 AM |
| #5 Re: the Gitmo prisoners, I wouldn't care if they tear their nervous systems out by hand to string their guitars. These guys are al-Qaeda, they have no human rights. None. |
| Posted by: Anonymous4886 2004-05-17 10:07:13 AM |
| #4 Three years ago I read "NEWJACK: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover. He spent a year as a prison guard. And the stuff that goes on in American prisons is FAR worse than anything in Iraq. Also, I think a lot of these guys getting out now are exagerating or just plain lying. |
| Posted by: growler 2004-05-17 10:01:29 AM |
| #3 Overplaying their hand will ultimately work in Bush's favor. |
| Posted by: B 2004-05-17 9:27:47 AM |
| #2 This issue has "jumped the shark". People with no experience in the professional operation of prison facilities are making authoratative comments on matters they know nothing about. ERF type units are used when a prisoner is uncooperative and threatens violence. Better the prisoner's feelings and body get bruised than a corrections officer be injured. Turn it around. How many of our troops should be injured in order that this guy get deloused? |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2004-05-17 9:21:56 AM |
| #1 And, now, a look with less sensationalism: ’They pepper-sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting. Pepper spray will do that. What did he do to deserve the pepper spray? They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed. Thus clearing the pepper spray from his eyes. I guess they COULD have left it in his eyes... ’They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. He wouldn't cooperate, so they used force to make him cooperate. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec[reation] yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.’ And they did what they could to get rid of the lice he had since Afghanistan. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-05-17 8:48:18 AM |