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Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees

By Jeralyn, Section Terror Detainees
Posted on Mon Jul 31, 2006 at 06:44:21 PM EST
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The AP is reporting that new documents obtained by an FOIA request show that the detainees at Guantanamo repeatedly have been abusive to the guards.

Pentagon incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press show Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by "cocktails" of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.

They've been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small "bean holes" used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.

Contrast this with the report issued by Seton Hall Law School in early July, Guantanamo Detainees in Detention (pdf) also based on official Pentagon documents:

The Government has, at various points, characterized the conduct of the detainees, both in terms of the threat they offer to their guards and the threat they offer to themselves. Analysis of the Government's own data strongly suggest that the former has been greatly over-stated and the latter greatly under-played. While some of the details of the detention are undeveloped because of the limitations of the data the Government has released, the overall picture of a cowed, unthreatening, depressed and suicidal detainee population emerges clearly.

Based on Government records of 759 detainees held at Guantanamo, the report finds:

Government records reflect that detainees committed acts defined by the Government as "manipulative self-injurious behavior" more often than they commit disciplinary violations:

From the Report's introductory section:

  • Detainees committed 460 acts of "manipulative self-injurious behavior" in 2003 and 2004, an average of one such act every day and a half (one per every 1.59 days.)
  • Detainees committed 499 disciplinary violations over 2 years and eight months, an average of one incident every two days (one per every 1.91 days.)
  • There are more "hanging gestures" by detainees than there are physical assaults on guards, based upon 120 "hanging gestures" for 2003 and 95 assaults and 22 attempted assaults for the 2 years and 8 months of reported disciplinary violations.
  • More than 70% of the disciplinary violations, including "assaults," are for relatively trivial offenses, and even the most serious are offensive but not dangerous.
  • The disciplinary reports reveal that the most serious injuries sustained by guards as a result of prisoner misconduct are a handful of cuts and scratches.
  • Assuming no recidivism (obviously, an unlikely assumption), at least one third of the detainees have never committed a Disciplinary Violation.
  • Nearly half (43%) of the reported Disciplinary Violations were for spitting at staff.
  • Almost half of all disciplinary violations (46%) occurred during a 92-day hunger strike that followed allegations of Koran abuse by guards.
  • For 736 of the 952 days covered by the Incident Reports, or 77%, the Government has released no report of a disciplinary violation.
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    Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees | 6 comments (6 topical)
    Re: Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees (none / 0) (#1)
    by cpinva on Mon Jul 31, 2006 at 07:52:37 PM EST
    i can't help but be reminded of a comment, attributed to one a. lincoln, a politician of some nominal repute, with regards to slavery.: "the problem with the institution of slavery is that it tends to enslave both master and slave." i'm sure that isn't the exact quote, but it's close enough.

    Re: Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Jul 31, 2006 at 08:50:27 PM EST
    Sounds like a typical prison to me. The prisoners throwing urine and feces at the guards? GTMO? Or Pelican Bay? Prisoners threatening to kill themselves? Angola? or GTMO? What magic wand can the DoD wave to make those at GTMO model prisoners? Are they going to loan it out to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice? How about the thousands of county lock-ups around the nation? When you're dealing with human beings, on either side of the electrified fence, you're going to have bad apples. I'm sure some of the guards have been abusive at times, and that's wrong - they should be punished. At the same time, I'm sure there are some polite, respectful prisoners. In the end, both of these represent the exception, rather than the rule, if other prisons can serve as a model.

    Re: Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Jul 31, 2006 at 08:55:54 PM EST
    (exerpt) I am one of those lawyers. ...I represent six Kuwaiti prisoners, each of whom has now spent nearly four years at Guantanamo. It took me 2 1/2 years to gain access to my clients, but now I have visited the prison camp 11 times in the last 14 months.... .... When I met with Fawzi three weeks ago, the tubes were out of his nose. I told him I was thankful that after five months he had ended his hunger strike. He looked at me sadly and said, "They tortured us to make us stop." At first, he said, they punished him by taking away his "comfort items" one by one: his blanket, his towel, his long pants, his shoes. They then put him in isolation. When this failed to persuade him to end the hunger strike, he said, an officer came to him Jan 9 to announce that any detainee who refused to eat would be forced onto "the chair." The officer warned that recalcitrant prisoners would be strapped into a steel device that pulled their heads back, and that the tubes would be forced in and wrenched out for each feeding. "We're going to break this hunger strike," the officer told him. Link
    The first link in the original thread article here mentions a guard being scratched by a recalcitrant prisoner, possibly objecting to being tortured. There's an easy way to clear up any confusion on the claims. A full and open investigation...no more secrets.

    Re: Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees (none / 0) (#4)
    by Ernesto Del Mundo on Mon Jul 31, 2006 at 09:02:45 PM EST
    ...you're going to have bad apples.
    I guess we didn't catch any innocent mullahs and we've got the right guys locked up in Gitmo.
    If someone abducted you two...shackled you and took you halfway around the world to beat the sh*t outta you...you might be a bit upset, too. Then again your ilk is most famous for falling into the fetal position and peeing on yourself at the first sign of personal danger, so maybe I am overreaching here. ; )

    Re: Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Jul 31, 2006 at 09:20:16 PM EST
    With many nearing five years in U.S. captivity, the prisoners "have a Ph.D. in being a detainee" and "know our procedures and they try to turn them against us and try to make us question what we are doing," said Army Lt. Col. Michael J. Nicolucci, the prison's executive officer. "They'll take the smallest things, be it a piece of rust," he said. "They told us they are going to take that piece of rust and they are going for the jugular, they are going for the eye. They know what our vulnerabilities are, anatomically speaking."
    Look at this ridiculous statement. This was made by an officer of the Army, presumably trained in the long term detention of individuals held without charge. ...'attacked with a piece of rust'...'after so many years in captivity they know our vulnerabilities'? I think Gitmo has pushed them all over the edge.

    Re: Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees (none / 0) (#6)
    by Sailor on Wed Aug 02, 2006 at 07:19:30 AM EST
    I think the timing of the article is kind of funny, seeing how this came out on the same day: New maximum-security jail to open at Guantanamo Bay

    Guantanamo Guards and the Detainees | 6 comments (6 topical)