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Guantanamo Interrogators Try Soft Touch With Detainees
Agence France Presse
October 27, 2006
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Oct 27, 2006 (AFP) - Except for the manacles, the scene could have been mistaken for a visit to a therapist.
The young bearded man hunched forward in a plush blue easy chair, apparently rapt in thought as he watched his toes curl and uncurl in his flip-flops.
Two other sets of feet, these clad in shoes, were visible on the edge of the television monitor -- the man's interrogator and a linguist.
For several long minutes, the prisoner sat without any sign of words being exchanged between them.
Observing the interaction earlier this week on a muted television monitor in another room was a small group of journalists and analysts on a tour of the US Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention center that holds some 454 "war on terror" detainees.
"This has not been staged. This is an actual interrogation that was scheduled today," said the officer in charge of the interrogation center, a complex of cells called the Interrogation Control Element, or ICE.
US military officials here appeared eager to show that whatever one may have heard about Guantanamo -- and there have been a stream of allegations of abuse of detainees -- the interrogations are closely supervised, hands-off affairs that follow plans that have been approved up the chain of command.
The guiding standard is the Geneva Conventions, said Brigadier General Ed Leacock. "We follow it to the letter."
Abuse scandals at US detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo have prompted new laws adopting Geneva Convention bans on "cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
The laws leave an out for Central Intelligence Agency interrogations, which can be conducted under an undisclosed set of rules that allow harsher tactics with prisoners.
But the military and anyone else questioning detainees at military-run facilities must now abide by a set of army rules designed to comply with the Geneva Conventions.
It follows a swing of the pendulum from late 2002 when US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized harsh procedures not in the army manual to be used on Mohammad Al-Qahtani, the so-called twentieth September 11, 2001 hijacker.
The interrogations spawned practices -- nudity, sleep deprivation, the use of growling dogs to intimidate, and sexual humiliation -- that surfaced in similar form at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in the wake of the US-led invasion.
Officials at Guantanamo now emphasize slowly developing rapport between interrogator and detainee, helped along with rewards rather than punishment.
Whether that approach will be applied to 14 top Al-Qaeda captives transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons September 5, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the reputed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, is still unclear.
"That's being determined now by high levels of the Department of Defense," said Leacock. "They're such special detainees we're still working through the modalities."
"We've just had them over a month. We're going through all the procedures of what we want to do and not do," he said.
But other detainees can opt out of interrogations altogether, said the military official in charge of the interrogation center. "If they don't want to see an interrogator, they don't have to."
The interrogation cells themselves have been given the homey look of a den or a small living room to foster rapport.
The detainee is shown to the deeply cushioned easy chair while the interrogator and translator sit across a coffee table from him in two simpler seats.
An oriental-style carpet covers the floor of a typical interrogation cell. A television set, a coffee maker and a small refrigerator complete the welcoming image.
Not all traces of prison life have been erased. Padding covers portions of the cell wall to absorb sound, and a steel ring is set in the floor in front of the detainees' seat to which he is always cuffed.
A buzzer is located on the wall just behind the interrogator in case of trouble.
A detainee may be questioned three or four times a week, usually by the same interrogator. So they can get quite close over time, the military official said.
Interrogators sometimes bring McDonalds hamburgers or other fast food as treats.
"That brings them a lot of joy," said the official, who like others here do not allow their names to be used.
"They'll share a meal with the interrogator and the linguist. They'll discuss things. They'll be very jovial, you'll hear a lot of laughing."
"And sometimes they'll be more serious and somber and distant. It all depends on the actual person that is being interrogated."
The detainee observed by the reporters remained subdued for most of the time except for brief moments when he appeared to blurt out a few words, then sinking back into himself.
A substantial portion of the prisoners at Guantanamo, most of whom have been here since early 2002, have refused to interrogated, the official said.
"Some of them go to the interrogation room, sit down, look at the floor and never say a word," he said.
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