Systematized sleep deprivation at Guantanamo persisted far longer than previously admitted
August 8th, 2008
Today’s Washington Post brings further information on the Pentagon’s duplicity at Guantanamo. After Guantanamo officials claimed that the “frequent flyer” psychological torture program was shut down, they continued using it for many months, at least. The “frequent flyer” program involves frequent moves from cell to cell for days or weeks on end, profoundly disrupting sleep and increasing a sense of distress and disorientation.Apparently it was often, though not always, used to facilitate certain Guantanamo interrogations.
The basis for this program was established in a crucial October 2002 meeting — the infamous meeting where the CIA lawyer said “If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong” — to plan the Guantanamo abusive techniques. According to the minutes, at that meeting the Behavioral Science Consultation Team [BSCT] consisting of a psychologist and psychiatrist recommended techniques such as “sleep deprivation, withholding food, isolation, loss of time” in order to increase “psychological stress” and “to create an environment of ‘controlled chaos.’ ” This meeting also described what might have been the initial form of the “frequent flyer” program: “Let detainee rest just long enough to fall asleep and wake him up about every thirty minutes and tell him it’s time to pray again.”
One lesson here is that one should never believe official statements on the treatment of detainees. One should assume these statements are false until there is independent evidence otherwise. In the case of the “frequent flyer” program, they simply claimed it had ended in early 2004 and continued on with no change. In fact, they were torturing Mohammad Jawad at the very time that Vice Admiral Church was conducting one of the never-ending “investigations” that concluded that US abuses were isolated incidents due to the proverbial “few bad apples” and not evidence of a systematic program. Jawad’s attorney, Maj. David Frakt described the extreme contrast between official statements and the reality of abuse in his June 19, 2008 closing argument on a motion to dismiss charges due to subjection to the “frequent flyer” program:
“Incredibly, the very day that Admiral Church was investigating conditions at Guantanamo and finding the treatment of detainees to be so wonderful, detention officials at Guantanamo ordered the initiation of the frequent flyer program on Mohammad Jawad. Before the wheels of Admiral Church’s plane were even off the Guantanamo runway, Mohammad Jawad’s arms and legs were being shackled in preparation for the first of 112 moves up and down the hall of L Block, every 3 hours for the next 14 days. While Jawad was being shackled for the first of these moves, back on Capitol Hill, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was testifying before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, reassuring the nation that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was isolated to a few rogue guards. When Secretary Rumsfeld testified before the HASC on May 7, 2004, the day the torture of Mohammad Jawad commenced, he told Congress, in reference to those detainees who had been abused at Abu Ghraib, Quote ‘I am seeking a way to provide appropriate compensation to those detainees who suffered such grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the U.S. military. It’s the right thing to do.’ “
Interestingly, while most detainees were subjected to the “frequent flyer” program to aid interrogations, Jawad was not interrogated for months afterward. His brutal treatment, all meticulously documented in official logs, was apparently punishment for some unspecified offense, or perhaps simply entertainment for the guards. There is still much that we don’t know about this “program,” just as there is much we still don’t know about many other aspects of recent US brutality toward detainees.
Here is the Washington Post article:
Tactic Used After It Was Banned
Detainees at Guantanamo Were Moved Often, Documents SayBy Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2008At least 17 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to a program that moved them repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation, according to U.S. military documents.
Defense Department investigations of abuse had previously revealed that the program was used in a limited manner and only on high-value detainees, but the documents indicate that the program was far more widespread and that the technique was still used months after it was banned at the facility in March 2004. Detainees were moved dozens of times in just days and sometimes more than a hundred times over a two-week period.
Military police logs for cell blocks at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, show that guards used the program — dubbed the “frequent flyer” program in official documents — on numerous detainees and noted the program in their 2003 and 2004 records. The logs, reviewed by The Washington Post, also indicate that the frequent cell movements took place on the same days a Navy admiral was visiting Guantanamo to assess possible detainee abuses.
Some of the detainees violently objected to the moves, spitting at guards and resisting handcuffs and shackles after enduring repeated cell transfers, leading to even more sanctions. One “cell transfer schedule” for detainee 519 — Maher Rafat al-Quwari — shows that he was moved six times a day for 12 days in July 2003, with a four-hour interrogation session in the middle.
Defense officials have previously acknowledged the program’s existence, saying it stopped in 2004. They also have said that detainees are treated humanely and that credible allegations of abuse are investigated.
“There is no such program currently in place,” said Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo. “JTF Guantanamo conducts the safe and humane care and custody of detained enemy combatants legally, ethically and transparently.”
U.S. military investigators deemed the program “abusive” but did not describe the extent of its use. Military police soldiers noted in handwritten entries that the cell movements were part of interrogation plans and that they were carefully organized.
For example, Moroccan detainee Ahmed Rashidi was scheduled for six-hour interrogations in the middle of the night and then moved to his cell for four hours, “then cycled through again repeatedly,” according to one notation.
“Detainee must be monitored, observed, and recorded by on-duty MPs,” the entry states. “The room will contain nothing more than a chair.”
Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, a Saudi detainee who has been charged with terrorism offenses, was in the “frequent flyer” program from November 2003 to February 2004, according to the records, moving repeatedly from cell K36 to K38. Sharbi’s civilian lawyer said he was troubled to learn that his client might have faced sleep deprivation at the hands of his jailers.
“We have to assume that the frequent flyer program, what its details were, was not designed to strengthen the comfort and resolve of the prisoner,” said Robert Rachlin, who represents Sharbi. “Sleep deprivation is coercive. Of course it troubles me.”
Mohammed Jawad, a 24-year-old detainee accused of trying to kill U.S. forces in Afghanistan with a grenade, has asked through his lawyers to have all military commission charges against him dismissed as a result of the abuse he suffered by the frequent moves.
Other detainees could raise similar arguments in military commission cases, as Salim Ahmed Hamdan did in his commission trial that ended yesterday. The judge in that case ruled that some evidence could not be presented because of “coercive” techniques but found that his treatment at Guantanamo, including the frequent flier program, did not affect his statements to interrogators.
Jawad’s lawyer, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, said the newly discovered records indicate that “no one actually knows the full scope of the abuses at Guantanamo” and that “all of these allegedly comprehensive investigations were whitewashes.”
“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Frakt said. “This program was approved at the highest levels. . . . It suggests that people had simply lost their ability to distinguish right from wrong.”
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said he worries that more of the organization’s numerous clients at Guantanamo could have faced the frequent flier technique.
“News that this methodology is more widespread than the government has initially acknowledged is troubling but not initially surprising,” Warren said. “Things like sleep deprivation are against international law and U.S. domestic law, and all investigators, including those in Congress, need to focus on these issues of programmatic torture.”
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Entry Filed under: APA, Guantanamo, Interrogation, Law, Psychiatry, Psychological Torture, Psychology, Torture, War Crimes