WP: Ex-Prisoners Allege Rights Abuses by US Military

[kainah]

By Tania Branigan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 19, 2003; Page A02

Prisoners released from the military camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram air base in Afghanistan have said in a series of interviews with Amnesty International that they were subjected to human rights abuses.

The accounts, which provide some of the most detailed information so far on alleged violations, include claims that people were forcibly injected, denied sleep and forced to stand or kneel for hours in painful positions. These charges are included in a new report from the human rights organization, which is reviewing 23 months of U.S. actions in the war on terror.

Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment yesterday, saying he had not seen the report. NSC spokesmen have challenged previous claims of ill treatment, saying that the United States treats enemy combatants humanely.

About 700 prisoners have been kept at Guantanamo Bay, most captured in Afghanistan after the war in 2001. About 60 men have since been released. Many had been transferred there through the base at Bagram, north of Kabul, which still holds an unknown number of prisoners. The United States has designated the prisoners "enemy combatants" and has refused them access to lawyers or relatives. Earlier this year, it scheduled six detainees to face military tribunals, but three of those prosecutions have been suspended pending the completion of negotiations with the defendants' governments in Britain and Australia.

The report, "Threat of a Bad Example," concludes that conditions at the bases may be coercive in the context of repeated interrogations and calls for the Bush administration to treat detainees humanely, provide legal counsel and charge them promptly with recognizable criminal offenses -- or release them.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11440-2003Aug18.html