Guantanamo Bay Detainees—Interrogation Techniques

Guantanamo Bay has been back in the headlines recently, mostly because three detainees committed suicide over the weekend.^[1] Bush administration officials were notably less than compassionate about the news, with the camp commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, calling the suicides an “act of war,” and US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, calling them a “good PR move.”^[2] Some other officials have tried to distance themselves from the comments, with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson telling BBC Radio that he “wouldn’t characterize it as a good PR move,” but he couldn’t help himself from saying that the US “value[s] life, even the lives of violent terrorists who are captured waging war against our country.”^[3] Of course, not all detainees at Guantanamo are actually terrorists. For example, five Chinese nationals who are ethnic Uighurs were “captured in Pakistan by bounty hunters” and sent to Guantanamo.^[4] They have been cleared of any links to terrorism, but their stint at the base has tainted their reputations so badly, that it has been difficult to find a country that will accept them.^[5] And at least four other detainees have been “formally cleared of terror charges by a combat status review tribunal,” but they are staying at Camp Iguana while the United States looks for a country willing to accept them.^[6]

Responding to criticisms about the base, the Pentagon has decided to “make public all of the military’s interrogation techniques.”^[7] Months of internal debate and pressure from some members of Congress has led to the decision to reveal the tactics “in a long-awaited revision of the Army Field Manual, despite arguments that it could allow enemy prisoners to better resist questioning.”^[8] Some of the abuses that have happened at places such as Abu Ghraib have been blamed on the lack of an appropriate training manual that would explicitly instruct soldiers on the proper methods of interrogation.^[9] If the Pentagon had decided to classify some of the techniques, there would have been rampant speculation that the classified portions contained torture techniques.^[10]

Such allegations won’t disappear, of course, because allegations of torture are being made all the time. “An expert in CIA interrogation techniques says the Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks has been subjected to the most extreme torture in the agency’s history.”^[11] According to Professor Alfred McCoy, who has been studying CIA interrogation techniques for 50 years, “Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc laboratory used to perfect CIA psychological torture methods.”^[12] According to Prof. McCoy, Mr. Hicks was subjected to “244 days of sensory disorientation, was left in a dark cell and denied sunlight,” with his only contact being a weekly visit by the military chaplain.^[13] He argues that much of the torture at Guantanamo is not “the conventional, physical, brutal torture, but a distinctively American form of torture—psychological torture,” which “will take a great deal of care, a great deal of treatment, and probably the rest of his life to move beyond.”^[14]

Furthermore, there is still looming, the specter of the “black sites,” at which torture is allegedly carried out by people not beholden to the Army Field Manual. There also remains the question of whether the CIA must follow the manual.

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[1] See, e.g., Father Queries Guantanamo Suicide BBC News, Jun., 14, 2006.
[2] See Peter Graff, Guantanamo Suicide Comments, Agence France-Presse, Jun. 12, 2006.
[3] Id.
[4] Glen McGregor, Canada May Welcome Detainees, Ottawa Citizen (via Canada.com), Jun.14, 2006.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Lolita C. Baldor, Pentagon to Disclose Interrogation Tactics, AP (via Yahoo!), Jun. 14, 2006.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Hicks Subjected to Most Extreme CIA Torture, Expert Says, ABC News (Australia), Jun. 14, 2006.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.