{"id":35181,"date":"2013-05-22T04:33:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T03:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/dont-interact-dont-talk-they-are-not-humans-gitmo-guards-basic-orders\/35181\/"},"modified":"2013-05-22T04:33:04","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T03:33:04","slug":"dont-interact-dont-talk-they-are-not-humans-gitmo-guards-basic-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/dont-interact-dont-talk-they-are-not-humans-gitmo-guards-basic-orders\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Don\u2019t interact, don\u2019t talk, they are not humans\u2019 – Gitmo guard's basic orders"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Published time: May 22, 2013 03:21 <\/span>
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\n Reuters \/ Bob Strong <\/p>\n

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One of the methods used to extract information from Muslim inmates in Guantanamo was to apply sexual interrogation techniques, Terry Holdbrooks, former guard at the camp has told RT.<\/p>\n

Such a degradation methods, the former US soldier said, were
\nused on innocent men. Holdbrooks claims that it is the inmates\u2019
\nreligious perseverance in the face of pain and humiliation made him
\nconvinced that US was not fighting for the right cause.<\/p>\n

RT:<\/b> What did you experience at the detention camp that
\nchanged you?<\/i><\/p>\n

Terry Holdbrooks:<\/b> To be honest with you I would not even
\nknow where to begin with that. Initially seeing religion practiced
\nthe way that the detainees practice Islam is a really life changing
\nexperience in itself. I have not really seen any kind of any
\nserious devotion, the faith like that growing up in the US.<\/p>\n

The torture and information extraction methods that we used
\ncertainly created a great deal of doubt and questions in my mind to
\nwhether or not this was my America. But when I thought about what
\nwe were doing there and how we go about doing it, it did not seem
\nlike the America I signed up to defend. It did not seem like the
\nAmerica I grew up in, I grew to believe in. And that in itself was
\na very disillusioning experience. There was a great deal of
\npersonal growth that took there as well.<\/p>\n

RT:<\/b> Could you describe the relationship between the
\nguards and detainees at Guantanamo back when you were serving (and
\nhow has it changed since then)?<\/i><\/p>\n

TH:<\/b> I suppose that if we\u2019re going to take a stroll down
\nthe memory lane, Brandon Neely was there first. He was there when
\nit was camp x-ray. It was essentially dog cages, nothing more. It
\nwas dog kennels, I suppose you can say. When I was there camp Delta
\nwas in full swing. Delta housed about 612 men that would be the
\ngeneral population of the camps.<\/p>\n

RT:<\/b> Were you given any orders as how to treat the
\ninmates?<\/i><\/p>\n

TH:<\/b> Our interaction with the detainees was such that we
\nwere told not to talk to them, not to treat them as humans, to not
\nengage in conversation with them whatsoever. And the army sort of
\nmade a mistake by allowing somebody who is inclined to sociology
\nand to studying people by leaving me with individuals from all over
\nthe world unsupervised for eight hours. I was very low in rank so I
\nwas delegated all the work, while those who were higher in rank
\nwere sitting in the air-conditioned shacks, nurturing their
\nhangovers. So the instructions I was given were simple \u2014 don\u2019t
\ninteract, don\u2019t talk, they are not humans.<\/p>\n

RT:<\/b> There have been reports of torture and other human
\nrights violations happening at the prison camp. Could you tell us
\nwhat you saw?<\/i><\/p>\n

TH:<\/b> We can begin with experiences I had the pleasure of
\nhaving. Myself, Eric Sarr and another Guantanamo guard were
\ninvolved in this. Eric was a linguist and he was working with an
\ninterrogator.<\/p>\n

We took the detainee into interrogation and throughout the
\ninterrogation the interrogator took off her clothing. She
\nessentially gave the detainee a lap dance, tried to arouse him and
\nthen let him believe that he had menstrual blood on him. We then
\ntook the detainee back to his cell and were told that he was not
\nallowed to have shower privileges nor fresh water for days. The
\nidea behind this being that if he could not clean himself he would
\nnot be able to pray, if he could not pray, he could not practice
\nIslam. Essentially it was an idea to break him down
\nspiritually.<\/p>\n

\"Detainees<\/p>\n

Omar Khadr and a number of other detainees, I remember hearing
\njust few moments ago Shaker Aamer, they were privileged to
\nsomething we called the frequent flyer program, where we would
\nessentially move them every two hours. Whether we were moving them
\nfrom camp Delta to camp Echo or moving them from Bravo block to
\nCharlie block, be it a little move or a big move, the idea is that
\nevery two hours they would be moved and they would not be able to
\nsleep. This was essentially to wear down their psyche and make them
\nmore probable to give out their information during
\ninterrogation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what has questioned me ever since I first saw it, it seemed
\nthat most of these men were innocent and as numbers are starting to
\nshow, we\u2019ve sent over 600 of them home, so they must have been
\ninnocent; if we knew that we were purchasing men that were
\ninnocent, why were we trying to interrogate innocent men? What were
\nwe hoping to get from them?<\/p>\n

Some of the tactics I saw practiced in Guantanamo, I just want
\nto never want to relive again and then a great deal of regret takes
\nplace and then I did not take the most productive use of some years
\nafter Guantanamo. I tried to drown away some of those memories and
\nthat is something you cannot do. You have to confront it.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published time: May 22, 2013 03:21 Reuters \/ Bob Strong Embed Code One of the methods used to extract information from Muslim inmates in Guantanamo was to apply sexual interrogation techniques, Terry Holdbrooks, former guard at the camp has told RT. Such a degradation methods, the former US soldier said, were used on innocent men. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}