Inside Guantanamo

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted May 5, 2005.

We begin today by continuing our extensive look into the abuse and outright torture of prisoners held by the U.S. government since the onset of the so-called war on terror. Three years ago, most people in this country or around the world had never heard of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba or the Abu Ghraib prison, two places that have now become global symbols of the U.S. war on terror. Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the breaking of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

To date, no senior military officials have been held accountable for the systematic abuse of prisoners held by the U.S. military. Lawyers for the rank-and-file soldiers who have been prosecuted say that their clients are cogs in a much bigger wheel that goes higher up the chain of command. This weekend, The New York Times reported on a high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at the Guantanamo Prison camp. While its findings fall far short in describing the extent of the abuse that human rights groups and released prisoners allege are taking place there, it did reveal some significant details.

It concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information. The report on the investigation is still a few weeks from being completed and released. The Times says it will deal with accounts by FBI agents who complained after witnessing detainees subjected to several forms of harsh treatment. The FBI agents wrote in memorandums that were never meant to be disclosed publicly that they had seen female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners' genitals, and that they had witnessed other detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours.

This comes as a former U.S army linguist who worked as an Arabic translator at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo is speaking out. Erik Saar was stationed at the camp from December 2002 to June 2003. He has just written a new book called Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo, in which he describes a wide range of practices and techniques used by U.S. military officers at Guantanamo and condoned by senior officers.

Erik Saar joins us today in our Boston studio.

Amy Goodman: Welcome to "Democracy Now!," Erik.

Erik Saar: Thanks for having me, ma'am.

It's good to have you with us. Can you start off by talking about why you went to Guantanamo?

I volunteered to go to Guantanamo Bay because I believed in the mission, to be honest with you, ma'am. I went there enthusiastically to serve my country and hopefully to use my Arabic skills to contribute to the war on terrorism and to help. I believed I was going to sit face-to-face with those who perpetrated and were responsible for the events of Sept. 11 or those who were planning future attacks against the United States.

And is that what happened when you went to Guantanamo?

Well, I went there with one expectation. What I found shortly after I arrived, and then I actually went through a process of realizing that my expectations really clashed with the reality of Guantanamo Bay. And it's not exactly what I found. There were a number of things that troubled me, that ended up leading me to the conclusion that Guantanamo Bay, to me, represents a mistake and a failed strategy in this war.

You translated for the interrogators at Guantanamo?

I did. In the second half of my six-month assignment, I did serve as a translator in a number of interrogations.

You describe one scene of a female interrogator. Can you talk about what happened that day and start from the beginning?

That day, a technique was used in the interrogation booth where sex was used as a weapon to create a wedge between the detainee we were speaking with and his faith. For example, more specifically, the female interrogator I worked with that day sought to sexually entice the detainee. The logic behind that was that if he would be sexually attracted to her, he would feel unclean, and therefore, she believed, in Islam, he would be unable to go back to his cell and pray. One thing she additionally did in order to humiliate him and also to make him feel unclean was wipe what was red ink on his face, but it was done in a way that he believed it was menstrual blood. All of this again was in an attempt to create this wedge between himself and his religion and not only was it ineffective, but I thought it was unethical.

Could you describe the events in detail? I mean, what happened? You were sitting in the room translating, and she walked in the room, the prisoner already there or brought in after?

I walked in with her. The prisoner had already been there waiting for a good period of time before we arrived. He was shackled to the floor and forced to hunch over. We were telling him to be cooperative. She was saying that this is going to be unpleasant for you. After a break, we then returned to the interrogation booth, and that was when she started taking off her outer blouse, where she was wearing a tight T-shirt underneath, and she was touching herself and trying to arouse the detainee.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program "Democracy Now!"

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