FBI de Misdaden van de Oorlog van Guantánamo van de Details van het Rapport
Door ERIC LICHTBLAU en SCOTT SHANE | In 2002, als bewijsmateriaal van gevangenemishandeling bij De Baai van Guantánamo begon op te zetten, Federale Dienst van Onderzoek de agenten bij de basis cre�ërden uiteindelijk een „dossier van oorlogsmisdaden“ aan documentbeschuldigingen tegen Amerikaans militair personeel, maar werden bevolen om het dossier, een geopenbaarde Dinsdag van de Afdeling van de Rechtvaardigheid te sluiten rapport.
Het rapport, diepgaand, 437 paginaoverzicht dat door de algemene inspecteur wordt voorbereid van de Afdeling van de Rechtvaardigheid, verstrekt de meest volledige rekening tot op heden van interne verschil van mening en verwarring binnen het beleid van Bush over het gebruik van ruwe ondervragingstactiek door militair en Het centrale Agentschap van de Intelligentie.
In één van verscheidene eerder niet bekendgemaakte episoden, vond het rapport dat de Amerikaanse militaire ondervragers om met het bezoeken van Chinese ambtenaren bij Baai schenen samengewerkt te hebben Guantánamo om de slaap van Chinese Moslims te onderbreken daar hielden, die hen wekt om de 15 minuten de nacht vóór hun gesprekken door de Chinezen. In een ander incident, zei het, boog een vrouwelijke ondervrager naar verluidt de duimen van een terug medebewoner en drukte zijn genitaliën aangezien hij in pijn grimassen trok.
Het rapport beschrijft wat één ambtenaar genoemd „geuloorlogvoering“ tussen F.B.I. en de militairen over de ruwe methodes die op gevangenen in Baai Guantánamo, Afghanistan en Irak worden gebruikt.
Het rapport zegt dat F.B.I. de agenten namen hun zorgen aan hoog-UPS, maar dat hun zorgen vaak op dove oren vielen: ambtenaren op hogere niveaus bij F.B.I., de Afdeling van de Rechtvaardigheid, de Afdeling van de Defensie en Nationale Veiligheidsraad waren alle gemaakt van F.B.I. bewust. de agenten' klachten, maar weinig schijnen gedaan te zijn dientengevolge.
Het rapport citeert hartstochtelijke bezwaren van F.B.I. ambtenaren die over de rapporten die van praktijken als het intimideren van medebewoners met snauwende honden meer en meer bezorgd groeiden, hen paraderen in nude vóór vrouwelijke militairen, of „kort-shackling“ hen aan de vloer voor vele uren in extreme hitte of koude.
Dergelijke tactiek, bovengenoemd één F.B.I. de agent in een e-mailbericht aan supervisors in November 2002, zou Amerikaanse wet kunnen overtreden verbiedend marteling.
More senior officials, including Spike Bowman, who was then the head of the national security law unit at the F.B.I., tried to sound the alarm as well.
“Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don’t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war,” Mr. Bowman wrote in an e-mail message to top F.B.I. officials in July 2003.
Many of the abuses the report describes have previously been disclosed, but it was not known that F.B.I. agents had gone so far as to document accusations of abuse in a “war crimes file” at Guantánamo. The report does not say how many incidents were included in the file after it was started in 2002, but the “war crimes” label showed just how seriously F.B.I. agents took the accusations. Sometime in 2003, however, an F.B.I. official ordered the file closed because “investigating detainee allegations of abuse was not the F.B.I.’s mission,” the report said.
The inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, found that in a few instances, F.B.I. agents participated in interrogations using pressure tactics that would not have been permitted inside the United States. But the “vast majority” of agents followed F.B.I. legal guidelines and “separated themselves” from harsh treatment, the report says.
The report says that the F.B.I. “had not provided sufficient guidance to its agents on how to respond when confronted with military interrogators” who used interrogation techniques that were not permitted by the F.B.I., and that fueled confusion and dissension. But it also says that “the F.B.I. should be credited for its conduct and professionalism in detainee interrogations in the military zones.”
Jameel Jaffer, who tracks detainee issues for the American Civil Liberties Union, took a more critical stance, saying the report shows “the F.B.I.’s leadership failed to act aggressively to end the abuse.” Mr. Jaffer said the report “only underscores the pressing need for an independent and comprehensive investigation of prisoner abuse.”
The report documents in greater detail than ever before the conflict between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. over interrogation methods, which began with the capture of Abu Zubaydah, a senior Qaeda figure, in Pakistan in March 2002. F.B.I. agents began the interrogation using traditional rapport-building methods, and one agent even provided personal care for Mr. Zubaydah, who had been shot three times and grievously wounded, “even to the point of cleaning him up after bowel movements.”
But C.I.A. personnel who took over the case within a few days began to use harsher methods that one F.B.I. agent described as “borderline torture,” and which the C.I.A. has acknowledged included waterboarding, in which water is poured over the prisoner’s mouth and nose to create a feeling of suffocation.
The report describes extensive debate inside the F.B.I. over the next six months over whether it should continue to observe or assist the C.I.A. with interrogations using harsh methods it believed were counterproductive.
F.B.I. officials, including Pasquale D’Amuro, then the bureau’s top counterterrorism officer, believed the physical pressure being used by the C.I.A. was less effective than traditional noncoercive methods, that it would “taint” any future effort at prosecution, and that it “was wrong and helped Al Qaeda in spreading negative views of the United States,” the report says.
After the capture of another Qaeda figure, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, in September 2002, F.B.I. agents again traveled to a secret C.I.A. site where Mr. bin al-Shibh was being questioned. But only in 2003, the report concludes, did the F.B.I. make a “clean break” and choose to have no involvement in the C.I.A.’s harsh interrogations.
The report said several senior Justice Department Criminal Division officials raised concerns with the National Security Council in 2003 about the military’s treatment of detainees but saw no changes as a result. One Justice Department official said he believed that John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, had spoken to Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, about the department’s concerns about interrogation methods being used in late 2002 on Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Qaeda member who was believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker in the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.
But Mr. Ashcroft declined to be interviewed by the inspector general’s office of the department he had headed, an unusual refusal and one that hampered investigators’ effort to learn of discussions inside the National Security Council , the report says.
A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft, Mark Corallo, said the former attorney general had not cooperated because “his conversations with the White House and with staff on national security matters are privileged.”
The report says that while some Justice Department officials believed that the physical pressure techniques being used by the military were wrong, others merely thought they might be ineffective.
A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, noted that abuses at Guantánamo were the subject of a 2005 Defense Department investigation that found no evidence of torture, though it did fault some interrogation tactics and called the Qahtani interrogation degrading and abusive.
The Justice Department said it was pleased that the report “credited the F.B.I. for its conduct and professionalism during interrogations.”
A C.I.A. spokesman said the harsh methods it used were “found lawful by the Department of Justice itself” and were “employed only when traditional means of questioning — things like rapport-building — were ineffective.”
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 11:31 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News, General . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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