Guantánamo man’s family release ‘torture’ dossier:
Mr Deghayes was captured in Pakistan - his family claim by bounty hunters - after the US attacked Afghanistan. They say he had gone there to start a business exporting dried fruit to a leading supermarket.
In the dossier, he claims to have seen US guards kill people, witnessed prisoners being partially drowned, and saw the Qur’an thrown into a toilet by a US guard.
The new claims come after earlier Guardian reports of Mr Deghayes’s ill treatment, including allegations that he was left blinded in one eye after a soldier plunged his finger into it, and claims that he had human excrement smeared on his face.
As several Guantanamo prisoners slowly are allowed release, no doubt more and more of these former prisoners will tell such stories. The “few bad apples” defense simply won’t match the systemic magnitude of the prisoners’ stories of abuse. Referring back to the New Yorker piece on “black sites,” it seems our government already has quite a handle on creating a systemic torture regimen for its “detainees.”
“The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. “It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,” an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. “At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”
[...]
A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout” of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location. A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to “sodomy.” He said, “It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.” The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.”
[...]
Ramzi Kassem, who teaches at Yale Law School, said that a Yemeni client of his, Sanad al-Kazimi, who is now in Guantánamo, alleged that he had received similar treatment in the Dark Prison, the facility near Kabul. Kazimi claimed to have been suspended by his arms for long periods, causing his legs to swell painfully. “It’s so traumatic, he can barely speak of it,” Kassem said. “He breaks down in tears.” Kazimi also claimed that, while hanging, he was beaten with electric cables.
There is no well-mannered “intellectually honest” State Department lawyer, no distinguished law professor, no “follower” of the philosophy of Christ, who can justify, excuse or otherwise explain the systematic dehumanization and degradation of Guantanamo, the “Black Sites,” and Abu Ghraib. This administration’s evisceration of the Geneva Conventions, its persistent forwarding of the theory of a “unitary executive,” and the petulance of its divine-righted “decider” each in its own way have contributed to the culture of lawlessness and human degradation of Guantanamo. There is no law but the Decider’s law. And there is no act, however cruel, degrading or perverted, that cannot be coolly and systematically committed in the name of the Decider’s War on Terror. A man sodomized, his face smeared with feces - this is an end result, a logical conclusion to the “advocacy” of genteel government lawyers, the novel theories of legal “scholars,” and the “necessary steps” of a self-described “Christian.”
In January of 2009 it will be tempting for America, before itself and before the world, to write-off the Cheney-Bush administration as an aberration. But throughout this current administration’s lawlessness, Congress bi-partisanly either meekly assented to or actively promoted every one of the administration’s actions involving “detainee” treatment. Most importantly, we the people have assented as well. Perhaps we are too willing, as in the case of Abu Ghraib, to accept the “bad apples” defense our government puts forth. Perhaps we are unwilling to look squarely at what we’ve allowed our government systematically to do to countless human beings. Perhaps it’s too disturbing for us to admit having a part in.
