US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp (Gitmo)

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1217973,00.html

David Rose and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday May 16, 2004
The Observer

<snip>
Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed.
The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to speak until now, prompted demands last night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately.

They say that if the contents are as shocking as Dergoul claims, they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees has become an institutionalised feature of America's war on terror.
...
But it is the revelations about Guantanamo Bay that are the most damaging for a White House desperately trying to draw a line under the Iraq abuse allegations.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been an outspoken critic of the Abu Ghraib abuse, said he would demand that Rumsfeld must produce the videos this week.

</snip>

It's all falling into place now.

s_m

but what do you mean, "It's all falling into place now."???

that Americans need to make an informed decision on issues such as whether civil liberties reducing legislation like the PATRIOT Act is a good idea, is certainly falling in to place.

The picture becomes clear, the remaining pieces fairly jump into their positions, and, well, get out the butter because this administration will soon be toast.

And it's "she" not "he" :D

s_m

It seems pretty clear.

From the article:

Dergoul tells of one assault by a five-man ERF in shocking terms: 'They pepper-sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed.

'They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.'

After their release last March, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, the so-called Tipton Three from Staffordshire, told of similar ERF attacks.

Rasul said they led to a new verb being coined by detainees: 'to be ERFed'. That, he said, meant being slammed against a floor by a soldier wielding a riot shield, pinned to the ground and beaten up by five armed men.

However, it is Dergoul who now reveals that every time the ERFs were deployed, a sixth team member recorded on digital video everything that happened.

Really odd that they had a need or an order to record their violence against these people.

Hope they still have the videos, it would be helpful.

The Chimp's presidential pardon list gets longer and longer every day....

These fuckers videotape everything.

they do like their records

Remember, they kept track of every single Jew, Gypsy, homosexual, socialist, communist, liberal, dissenter, etc. etc. etc., how they were shipped to the camps, where they were warehoused or disposed of, their slave labor assignments, medical experiments performed on them, and date and cause of death.

This is just too damn reminiscent of the psychopathic record keepers of yore.

I've heard some of the prisoners are not more than 12 and 14 yr old. Children who are being detained and tortured for no apparent reason than for the satisfaction of psychologically impaired guards put in charge of interrogation.

Thank you to whoever has shined a light on this forgotten hell hole of abuse.

Leaving aside any bizarre person predilections people in charge might have had, a few other reasons come to mind:

- supposedly, the reason for beatings or torture is to extract information. They would want the recording to review later, to see if the victim said anything that might be deemed useful, that wasn't caught by the "interrogation team".
- just showing beatings to prisoners might get some to talk without any further effort, especially if they were given a night to "think it over".
- as stated before, the photos or videos could be used as blackmail in a culture where the shame of being subjected to this type of event was overwhelming.
- showing the beating or torture of one family member to another might get the latter to talk, to save the former from further abuse.
- video like this would have obvious training potential, and reviewing them would help "sharpen technique".

So, the idea that they would not record these activities doesn't necessarily bear up, in my opinion. In fact, considered dispassionately, the reasons for recording probably outweigh the reasons for not recording. Note, I am not defending the practice; I consider it one more war crime in a long list. I am just trying to debunk any notion that "they would never record these things, so any claims that they did must be false".