Treatment of Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Called Torture by Red Cross

A secret report made by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2006 concluded that the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners “constituted torture” in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Extensive excerpts of the Red Cross report were published last week by author and journalist Mark Danner in the New York Review.

After then President Bush admitted in a speech in 2006 that “the C.I.A. used an alternative set of procedures” when interrogating “suspected terrorists,” Red Cross officials – whose duty it is to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and to supervise treatment of prisoners of war – traveled to Guantanamo and began interviewing the prisoners. 

A few of the abuses reported by prisoners include being kept naked, often in very cold rooms or coffin-like boxes for days, with artificial light and loud music on 24 hours a day. A towel or piece of plastic wrapped around the prisoner’s neck was then used to smash their head against the wall on a consistent basis. Beatings were common as well as forced standing for weeks at a time with hands cuffed and shackled above their heads and feet shackled to the floor. Waterboarding was also commonly used. Solid food was kept from the prisoners for 2-3 weeks at a time, only allowing them Ensure and water.

According to the report, detainees were kept apart and isolated both at “black sites” and Guantanamo making collaboration of their stories unlikely. This was emphasized by the introduction that stated, “The I.C.R.C wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.” These 14 prisoners had been held in complete isolation from the outside world for five years before the relief group got to speak to them.

The I.C.R.C came to this unequivocal conclusion, “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture…..cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” 

Major General Dunlavey, base commander of Guantanamo until November 2002, reported that he flew up to Washington every week to brief Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld but he said at some point, “the directions changed and I got my marching orders directly from the President of the United States.” (The Dark Side)

One FBI agent reporting on Guantanamo told his superiors, “On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 or 24 hours or more.” (The Dark Side)

How did the Bush administration justify their “enhanced interrogation” techniques and “alternative set of procedures”? By making up their own set of rules. According to Jane Mayer in her recently published book, “The Dark Side. The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals,” Dick Cheney, his attorney David Addington, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Jim Haynes, general counsel to the Pentagon, Timothy Flanigan, lawyer for the White House Counsel, and John Yoo from the Justice Department, constituted the conservative, self-appointed “War Council.”  It was this group that came up with a solution to the “conundrum” of what to do with captured suspected terrorists. They put in place an alternative legal system following rules of the executive branch’s own devising.

Cheny and Addington put in place the idea of using military commissions to try suspects, therefore giving the President the latitude to hold, interrogate, and prosecute suspects in any way he saw fit. Unlike the U.S. courts, military commissions concentrated all power in the hands of the executive branch, thereby circumventing Congress and the Justice Department.  The accused would have no access to review by the federal courts or any other independent body.

Another dirty secret of the Bush Administration was a program called “extraordinary rendition.” It was a clandestine program run by the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and was devised as a means of extraditing criminal suspects from one foreign country to another outside the recognized legal process.  Rendition was used to transport prisoners to so-called “black sites,” in at least eight countries known to be tolerant of torture and inhumane treatment. Upon arriving in foreign countries, rendered suspects simply vanished. 

A former CIA lawyer, when asked whether senior administration officials were aware of the harrowing treatment going on inside the black sites, said, “I’m afraid so. You might have thought there was some adult supervision. But you would have been wrong.”

Referring to the system of rendition, an outside expert familiar with the protocol said, “It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever.”

This was all done with complete disregard for the Geneva Conventions, which the United States helped to draft, as well as the Convention Against   Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment, ratified by Congress in 1994, which provides international law’s first explicit definition of torture. “The Cat” bans torture absolutely, and explicitly prohibits the United States from transferring prisoners to other countries. It applies to people in U.S. custody anywhere in the world, not just within the borders of America. (The Dark Side)

Despite his denial of such and assurances to the world that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture,” as he stated in 2005, the evidence is building against Bush and his administration. With the condemnation of the Red Cross now in the open, it behooves the United States as well as the international community to prosecute those guilty of such heinous war crimes.



Cheri Cabot, Politics Correspondent
Cheri’s column, “Personal About Politics,” published every week, will reflect on how the life of a 59 year-old, middle class woman is affected by politics, policy and the current state of the nation - a look at the personal aspects of politics. Her column is part of Gather Essentials.



Cheri is a freelance writer, living in Southern California.  She has two grown children, one in Iowa and one a recent graduate of Columbia University, and is the proud grandmother of two. Cheri is also a purveyor of fine coffee, warm chatter and dry wit.



You can find all of Cheri’s columns on Personal About Politics at www.personalpolitcs.gather.com, or www.ccabot.gather.com.