US military gives Helsingin Sanomat tour of Guantánamo facility
By Pekka Mykkänen
The female soldier is obviously tense, and she soon appears to be actually nervous. She has been asked to describe the work of a guard at the Guantánamo prison camp in Cuba, where hundreds of prisoners considered to be terrorists by the United States are being kept.
At times the 22-year-old woman, who does not want her name to be made public, tries to make eye contact with a higher-ranking soldier to get some hint of how she should answer.
She describes an event in which a prisoner threw urine and excrement on her. The guard does not remember how the prisoner was punished, but then she recalls "He lost his cup privileges."
A higher-ranking officer clarifies that the loss of a drinking cup did not mean that the prisoner would have been deprived of water, but he did have to make due with drinking straight out of a bottle. "We don't have permission to punish the prisoners", another officer adds.
Last week Helsingin Sanomat visited the infamous camp at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. During the visit, the US armed forces is trying to be "transparent"; it wants to project a humane image of the much-maligned camp.
Meeting the prisoners, who had been detained in Afghanistan and in different parts of the world, was not allowed. The military seeks to show in other ways that the reputation of the camp, which was set up in early 2002, has been sullied by propaganda that has been deliberately spread by the prisoners.
Three themes that have been repeated frequently are respect for Islam, the Geneva Convention, and food. Each cell has an arrow pointing toward Mecca, and each prisoner has a Koran. The holy book of Islam is not taken away no matter what a prisoner does.
There are 385 prisoners, or "enemy combatants", and they are said to be members of the Taleban movement, the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation, or allies of al-Qaeda.
In different parts of the camp one runs up against Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, which is posted for the prisoners to read in Arabic and English. This is how the United States indicates that the international rules of war apply here as well.
Sam Scott, who is responsible for providing food for the detainees, says that the prisoners may choose from six different meals a day. "I love the food that the detainees get", Scott said, recommending a taste of a chicken dish.
The prisoners have gained an average of seven kilos, with a daily intake of up to 5,000 calories. "We spend three times more money on food for the detainees than for the soldiers", says the camp's PR officer.
However, instead of overeating, some prisoners have opted to go on a hunger strike. A couple of prisoners have refused food for more than 500 days. They are force-fed through gastro-nasal tubes, and a hospital with five doctors and 100 nurses care for them.
If a prisoner has an unusual disease, specialist doctors are flown in from the United States to care for him.
Visitors are also shown a library with 5,000 books in 19 languages. Works include the new constitution of Afghanistan. Among the prisoners' favourites are the Harry Potter books, as well as classical Islamic and Western literature.
In the outside world Guantánamo is better known as a place where prisoners are tortured, and where they have fallen into a legal black hole in the midst of the US war against terror.
The Deputy Commander of the camp, Brigadier General Cameron Crawford, says "we do not torture in Guantánamo, and we never have".
He has not read the report published in April 2006 by Human Rights Watch and two other human rights organisations claiming that there are "more than 50 convincing cases" of abuse and torture in the camp.
"I would question the veracity of that information", he says.
Not even the documents that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) managed to get released in 2004 will make the armed forces admit that torture had been practiced. The documents in question were correspondence within the FBI in which it was mentioned that detainees in Guantánamo were wrapped in flags of Israel and were subject to intimidation by dogs.
"A couple of times I went into interrogation rooms and saw that those who were arrested were tied by their hands and feet into a fetal position on the floor without a chair, food, or water. Usually they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours, for longer periods of time", one FBI agent described in 2004.
Crawford says that he had become acquainted with these cases, but in his view they did not meet the criteria of torture. According to him, "about a dozen" cases of suspected mistreatment had been investigated, and that in some cases "poor judgement" had been exercised.
According to press reports, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wanted to close down the Guantánamo prison camps because they hurt the reputation of the United States so much. Several institutions, including the United Nations, have demanded that the United States close the camps.
President George W. Bush has also expressed his desire to close down the camps, but he has not allowed his subordinates to take real action on the matter. Gates pointed out to Congress in March that the trials in the military commissions at Guantánamo could prove to be useless, because the outside world is not convinced that they would be impartial.
On the trials, he said: "...no matter how transparent, no matter how open the trials, if they took place in Guantanamo in the international community they would lack credibility."
Nevertheless, Deputy Commander Crawford says that history will vindicate the Guantánamo camps.
"In 30 - 40 years, when we sit and talk on a porch swing, we will look back and say that the United States made the right decision in a very difficult time, and under immense international pressure."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.5.2007
PEKKA MYKKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
pekka.mykkanen@hs.fi
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| 8.5.2007 - THIS WEEK |
 US military gives Helsingin Sanomat tour of Guantánamo facility |
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