Edited on Sun May-08-05 08:51 AM by seemslikeadream
Now
Inside the Wire: Life at Guantanamo
Novak, Viveca, Correspondent,
Magazine, Washington, DC Saar, Erik R., Sergeant (Fmr.), U.S. Army Erik Saar and Viveca Novak talk about their book Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo, published by Penguin Press. Erik R. Saar served as an army sergeant with the U.S. military in the Detainee Camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for six months from December 2002 to June 2003, working to support the intelligence and interrogation operations. The book chronicles his eyewitness account of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay's Camp Delta. Mr. Saar talks about his decision to volunteer to go to Guantanamo Bay, the expectations he had upon arriving, and his eventual conclusion that the prison camp violated his understanding of American values Detainee Questioning Was Faked, Book Says U.S. Military Denies Staging Interviews By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 29, 2005; Page A21 The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday. Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program "60 Minutes," which is slated to air Sunday night. "They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative," Saar told CBS. "They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors. Saar worked as a translator at Guantanamo from December 2002 to June 2003. During that time, several members of Congress reported visiting the base, but military officials said they do not know precisely how many toured it. Saar also told CBS, and claims in his upcoming book, "Inside the Wire," that a few dozen of the more than 750 men who have been held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay were terrorists, and that little valuable information has been obtained from them.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801639.html Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo We speak with former army sergeant, Erik Saar who served as an Arabic translator at Guantanamo Bay for six months. Among the abuses he says he witnessed was sexual abuse, mock interrogations, the use of dogs and a female interrogator smearing what looked like menstrual blood on a Muslim prisoner. He also says children were imprisoned at Guantanamo and that the military ordered them not to speak to the Red Cross. We begin today by continuing our extensive look into the abuse and outright torture of prisoners held by the US government since the onset of the so-called war on terror. Three years ago, most people in this country or around the world had never heard of Guantanamo Bay Cuba or the Abu Ghraib prison, two places that have now become global symbols of the US war on terror. Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the breaking of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. To date, no senior military officials have been held accountable for the systematic abuse of prisoners held by the US military. Lawyers for the rank-and-file soldiers who have been prosecuted say that their clients are cogs in a much bigger wheel that goes higher up the chain of command. This weekend, The New York Times reported on a high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at the Guantanamo Prison camp. While its findings fall far short in describing the extent of the abuse that human rights groups and released prisoners allege are taking place there, it did reveal some significant details. It concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information. The report on the investigation is still a few weeks from being completed and released. The Times says it will deal with accounts by FBI agents who complained after witnessing detainees subjected to several forms of harsh treatment. The FBI agents wrote in memorandums that were never meant to be disclosed publicly that they had seen female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners" genitals, and that they had witnessed other detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours. morehttp://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/04/1342253