Declassified Gitmo Notes Tell of Widespread Abuse
Providing another indirect view into the lives of detainees held by the US military at Guantánamo Bay, a civil-rights group has released a report detailing what it calls the systematic physical, psychological, sexual, medical and religious abuse of detainees.
The report, compiled by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), mixes previously classified accounts from detainees themselves, as relayed through their lawyers, with information that has been made publicly available, like FBI memos, official reports and testimonials from government officials who previously worked at Guantánamo.
The 51-page document is one of the most detailed and comprehensive accounts to date of the mistreatment endured by captives at Guantánamo.
I think the torture and abuse detailed here will shock Congress and the American public, said CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman in a press statement announcing the report.
The report is largely based on prisoners' statements during meetings with their attorneys. According to CCR, all of the detainee accounts included in the report had to be cleared through the US Defense Department under rules that information given to lawyers at Guantánamo is presumed secret until cleared by Pentagon censors.
CCR has led efforts to provide legal counsel and other basic rights to the hundreds of captives detained in the so-called war on terror. CCR coordinates hundreds of pro bono attorneys who are representing the detainees held at Guantánamo.
In Goodman's opinion, the report reveals a lawless, immoral and ineffective detention facility and undermines the administration's increasingly desperate attempts to lie about what is happening down there.
The allegations made by prisoners and recounted in the report include brutal beatings resulting in severe injury, shackling in extremely painful positions, intense psychological humiliation and degradation, religious desecration, sexualized harassment and physical assault.
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