"What they're doing, it reminds me of a pornographic Web site -- it's like the fantasy of all these S&M clubs."
-- Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents several dozen detainees who claim sexual abuse and humiliation at Guantanamo.
Today, Dana Priest of the Washington Post -- in "Detainees Accuse Female Interrogators: Pentagon Inquiry Is Said to Confirm Muslims' Accounts of Sexual Tactics at Guantanamo" -- recounts the contents of newly declassified records:
German detainee Murat Kurnaz told his lawyer that three women in lacy bras and panties strutted into the interrogation room where he was sitting in chains. They cooed about how attractive he was and suggested "they could have some fun," he said.
When Kurnaz averted his eyes, he said, one woman sat on his lap, another rubbed her breasts against his back and massaged his chest and a third squatted near his crotch. He head-butted the woman behind him, he said, knocking her off him. [WOW!] All three ran out and a team of soldiers stormed in and beat him, he said. [OF COURSE.]
::: more below the fold :::
First, let me express my disgust with Dan Abrams of MSNBC who, two weeks ago, poo-poo'd the report of sexual humiliation of detainees. The transcript is no longer up or I'd quote Abrams for you. What numbskulls like Abrams forget is that -- as shown above -- if prisoners resisted the sexual come-ons, they were
beaten.
Some of this isn't news to you who've read Paisley Dodds' Associated Press reports -- Guantanamo Soldier Details Sexual Tactics, from a "draft manuscript [by former Army Sgt. Erik R. Saar] obtained by The Associated Press ... classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk" -- or my diary, Proof! Guantanamo Soldier Details Sexual Tactics:
One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren't their wives.
Beginning in April 2003, "there hung a short skirt and thong underwear on the hook on the back of the door" of one interrogation team's office, he writes. "Later I learned that this outfit was used for interrogations by one of the female civilian contractors ... on a team which conducted interrogations in the middle of the night on Saudi men who were refusing to talk."
Some Guantanamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by "prostitutes." AP, Jan. 27, 2005
These Practices Were Widespread:
A wide-ranging Pentagon investigation, which has not yet been released, generally confirms the detainees' allegations, according to a senior Defense Department official familiar with the report. While isolated accounts of such tactics have emerged in recent weeks, the new allegations and the findings of the Pentagon investigation indicate that sexually oriented tactics may have been part of the fabric of Guantanamo interrogations, especially in 2003.
Washington Post
Various Techniques Used on Detainees:
Menstrual Blood:
One lawyer, Marc Falkoff, said in an interview that when a Yemeni client told him a few weeks ago about an incident involving menstrual blood, "I almost didn't even write it down." He said: "It seemed crazy, like something out of a horror movie or a John Waters film. Now it doesn't seem ludicrous at all."
Washington Post
From the book manuscript by former Guantanamo linguist Saar:
The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God.
The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.
Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man's wife or family, and with any menstruating women, ... The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes. ...
"She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee," he says. "As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred.
"She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward" -- so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle.
"He began to cry like a baby," ... noting the interrogator left saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself." AP/Diary
Rape + Good Cop Versus Bad Cop
Falkoff said some of his clients have also been threatened with rape by male interrogators.
One soldier told another detainee, Muktar Warafi, that he had to start telling the truth or he would be raped, according to Falkoff's notes of the interview. When he left the room, another person immediately came into the room and told Warafi: "That interrogator is new and doesn't know the rules. We apologize on his behalf. Now let's talk." Washington Post
Mammary Methods:
Yasein Esmail, a Yemeni detainee, said he had been interrogated more than 100 times since being "kidnapped" in a marketplace in Kabul, Afghanistan, and brought to Guantanamo Bay. He recounted to his lawyer that when he refused to talk in one interview, a female soldier entered wearing a tight T-shirt.
"Why aren't you married?" she reportedly asked Esmail. "You are a young man and have needs. What do you like?"
Esmail said "she bent down with her breasts on the table and her legs almost touching" him. "Are you going to talk," she asked, "or are we going to do this for six hours?"
Washington Post
The humiliating, invasive titillation doesn't stop when detainees leave Guantanamo. The press takes over.
As famed civil rights attorney Gareth Pierce told Amy Goodman in an interviewed aired Feb. 5 on Democracy Now!:
You're someone other aspects that the press wants to vilify. There is one scandalous tabloid newspaper here that has effectively put a bounty on the heads of those who have returned, who said that if you know the whereabouts of these men, ring the Sun newspaper this number.
They are unable to re-enter the life they left in the same way.
They're not the same people, and they can't pick up where they left off.
Every day, I get news alerts on the stories about Mahmoud Habib, the Australian citizen released from Guantanamo last month. There are usually six to eight articles about him in the Australian press every day, on any number of topics. His notoriety must make it near impossible for him to live a normal life. The government tells Aussie reporters about Habib's confession to being in a terrorist training camp (although Habib would have confessed to anything under torture in Egypt for six months and Guantanamo for two years).
When I first diaried Habib's allegation that menstrual blood
As bad as all this is, at least -- for now -- we're finding out about this, bit by bit:
One of my fears is that they use Guantanamo for a permanent prison now, where they are going to do all of these extreme measures of interrogation. They're going to be in C.I.A. holes around the world or in other countries around the world where they render people.
So we're only at the beginning of the end of what has been a nightmare, a real nightmare for these people, for law, for morality, for politics. Democracy Now!, Jan. 11, 2005
And, if Ratner is right about the "holes," all this will go underground.
I sometimes suspect, albeit cynically, that these titillation "revelations" about mistreatment are a cover story that the Pentagon et al. is propogating -- on purpose -- to make most Americans think, "Well, that's awful but is it the worst thing in the world?" While, behind the curtains, in hidden detention centers, far worse is going on.