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Marine Says Morale Miserable at GuantanamoBay Prison

By Thomas Watkins
Associated Press
October 13, 2006

CAMP PENDLETON , Calif. (AP) - A Marine sergeant who reported that guards at GuantanamoBay boasted of routinely abusing detainees said morale was miserable at the military prison.

Sgt. Heather Cerveny, 23, said Thursday that one guard told her he viewed his job as making sure prisoners were alive but not looking after their well-being.

"I took that to mean he doesn't care what happens to these people, as long as they are alive, nobody cares," Cerveny, 23, told The Associated Press in an interview. "Their job is to keep them breathing and that's it."

The U.S. Southern Command on Friday launched an investigation into "credible allegations" that guards at GuantanamoBay abused detainees.

Cerveny said coming forward about the abuse was the right thing to do, even though it was difficult.

"I don't think it's right for us to be allowing these prisoners to be treated poorly," she said. "I think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard."

Cerveny, from Santa Rosa, Calif., reported the conversations she had with guards in a bar to military investigators last week.

She is the paralegal assistant to Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps' defense coordinator for the Western United States, based at CampPendleton.

He filed a complaint last week, attaching a sworn statement from Cerveny. In it, Cerveny described comments made by several guards in the bar.

"Other ones of them were talking about how, when they get annoyed with the detainees, about how they hit them, or they punched them in the face," Cerveny told The Associated Press.

"It was a general consensus that I (detected) that as a group this is something they did. That this was OK at Guantanamo, that this is how the detainees get treated," she said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday the Bush administration takes human rights seriously and expects the allegations to be investigated thoroughly.

"We are confident not only that what's going on in Guantanamo passes constitutional and American muster, but is consistent with the human rights of those who are detained there," Snow told reporters.

Vokey said it was a "good thing" an investigation had been ordered and was the outcome he had hoped for by filing his complaint.

Cerveny, who joined the Marines five years ago and has attended military legal school to train as a legal service specialist, visited the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba last month and said she spent an hour with the guards at an enlisted troops' club.

She said they stopped discussing beating detainees after finding out she works for a detainee's legal team.

The military Joint Task Force that runs the detention camps in GuantanamoBay pledged to work with investigators from the Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America.

"The Joint Task Force will cooperate fully with Southcom to learn the facts of the matter and will take action where misconduct is discovered," said Navy Cmdr. Rob Durand, spokesman for the detention center, in an e-mail to the AP from the base.

He insisted that his group's mission "is the safe and humane care and custody of detained enemy combatants. Abuse or harassment of detainees in any form is not condoned or tolerated."

The Inspector General receives 14,000 tips on misconduct each year via the hot line, and opens 3,000 cases each year as a result, said Gary Comerford, spokesman for the Pentagon's Inspector General's office.

There are now 454 detainees at GuantanamoBay, according to Vincent Lusser, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross just completed a two-week visit to the prison, meeting the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and 13 other high-profile detainees who were transferred there weeks ago from CIA custody.

Guantanamo Bay began receiving prisoners, most of them captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in January 2002. Only 10 of the detainees have been charged with crimes.

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