- 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.
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- 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.
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- They say that if the contents are as shocking as Dergoul
claims, they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees
has become an institutionalised feature of America's war on terror.
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- In the wake of the furore over the abuses photographed
at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has continued
to insist they were the work of a few rogue soldiers, and not a systemic
problem.
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- The disclosures come as the top American commander in
Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, announced he has barred all coercive
interrogation practices, including forcing prisoners into stress positions
for long periods and disrupting their sleep, except in very rare circumstances.
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- British military police made four arrests over allegations
that British troops abused Iraqi prisoners. All four men were later released
without charge, pending fur ther interviews. It is the case of Dergoul,
however, that is likely to be the most damaging. The 26-year-old, from
Mile End in east London, spent 22 months at Guantanamo Bay from May 2002.
Today he tells The Observer of repeated assaults by Camp Delta's punishment
squad, known as the Extreme Reaction Force or ERF.
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- Their attacks, he says, would be prompted by minor disciplinary
infractions, such as refusing to agree to the third cell search in a day
- which he describes as an act of deliberate provocation.
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- 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.
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- '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.'
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- After their release last March, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal
and Ruhal Ahmed, the so-called Tipton Three from Staffordshire, told of
similar ERF attacks.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.'
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- But it is the revelations about Guantanamo Bay that are
the most damaging for a White House desperately trying to draw a line under
the Iraq abuse allegations.
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- Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, who has been an outspoken critic of the Abu Ghraib
abuse, said he would demand that Rumsfeld must produce the videos this
week.
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- 'Congressional oversight of this administration has been
lax in many areas, including detention policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Guantanamo,' Leahy said. 'It is past time for that to change. If photos,
videotapes or any other evidence exists that can help establish whether
or not there has been mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it should
be provided without delay to Congress.
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- 'I have asked the Pentagon for sufficient information
to allow Congress to evaluate the effectiveness and propriety of the treatment
of those in our custody. Pentagon officials owe the Congress a comprehensive
response. I have made clear that compliance must include any tapes or photos
of the activities of the ERF or any other military or intelligence units
there.'
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- 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.
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- 'The videos provide an unequalled opportunity to check
the veracity of what Mr Dergoul and the other former detainees are saying.'
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
- http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1217973,00.htm
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