Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will no longer face "forced" interrogation – including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the detention commander announced yesterday. The announcement by Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who commands the detention camp, applies not only to prisoners who have been held in Guantanamo for lengthy periods, but also 14 "high-value" prisoners transferred to Guantanamo in September after years in secret locations – including Mohammed. Harris told visiting journalists this week that interrogations had been optional since midsummer because coercion was ineffective.
The need to interrogate foreign captives who may have information about terrorist activity has been one of the chief reasons given by the U.S. government for holding – without charge or the right of appeal – suspected al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners at the Guantanamo base in Cuba since 2002.
President Bush signed a law last month permitting aggressive interrogations under new rules, but they won't be used in Guantanamo because Harris says they don't work. "We don't make them talk," he said. "In fact, we don't make them go to interrogations. If you make a detainee go to interrogation, then that already is going to create an environment of potential non-cooperation."
Harris, who took command at the prison camp in March, said, "They might have done it when I first got here but we don't do it now." He said interrogators relied only on "rapport building" to elicit information from detainees, some of whom had only recently begun to talk after refusing to do so during more than four years of captivity.
Harris said the military had also posted notices in several languages throughout the camp informing the 430 Guantanamo captives that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions protects them from inhumane and degrading treatment and "outrages on personal dignity."
Congress ordered such notices posted at detention centers "where applicable" in 2005. They were not posted previously because the Bush administration considered Guantanamo prisoners to be unlawful enemy combatants not entitled to protections granted prisoners of war under the Geneva treaties.
The Supreme Court ruled in June the basic Article 3 protections applied to all detainees and the notices were posted, to considerable interest, Harris said. "Some of the detainees have told us that it's interesting I guess or they want to see more or they want to debate it, that kind of stuff – just what it is that we're posting, what does it mean," Harris said.