The abuses at Guantanamo, uncovered

759 secret reports uncover the abuses at Guantanamo. “The documents reveal that the main purpose of the prison was” exploiting “all information of prisoners despite the acknowledged innocence of many of them. “The 60% was taken to the military base without being a threat,” probable “

MONICA Ceberio BELAZ / LUIS DONCEL / JOSÉ MARÍA IRUJO / FRANCISCO parsley

Picture of some of the prisoners at Guantanamo. –

Table: Assessment of U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo

Guantanamo created a police and penal system without guarantees where only imported two questions: how much information is obtained from prisoners, although they were innocent, and if they could be dangerous in the future. Elderly with dementia, young, serious psychiatric patients and school teachers or farmers with no connection to jihadwere taken to jail and mixed with real terrorists like those responsible for the 11-S. The country has had access, together with other international media and via Wikileaks , the secret military records of 759 of the 779 prisoners who have been through the prison, of which about 170 remain in detention. The guts of the prison are set out in 4,759 pages signed by the highest levels of the Joint Force Base and Southern Command directed the Department of Defense in Miami. X- a prison created by George W. Bush in 2002 regardless of the laws and international comes at a bad time for President, Barack Obama. Close the penalty was his first promise after taking office in January 2009 . The announcement, a month ago, that would resume military commission trials was the recognition of its failure.

The reports, dated between 2002 and 2009, which in most cases are intended to recommend whether the prisoner should remain in the prison, be released or transferred to another country, documented for the first time how the U.S. valued each of the internally and what they knew of them. Reveals a system based on accusations of other inmates, without clear rules, based on suspicion and conjecture, which needs no evidence to support a long -143 incarcerated people have been more than nine years, and provides three levels of risk defined with just one sentence. The highest single means that the person “probably” is “a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies” means that “maybe” I suppose, and the low level in which they appear listed eight prisoners who have been and nine years in prison, which is “unlikely” to be a risk to national security.

There are cases, as revealed in the secret reports, in which even the U.S. government knows the reasons why someone was sent to Guantánamo, and others where it has concluded that the detainee did not pose any danger: an old man of 89 years with dementia and depression who lived in a residential complex in which appeared a satellite phone, a father who went looking for her son to the Taliban front, a merchant who was traveling without documents, a man who was hitchhiking to buy medicine.

U.S. found that 83 prisoners posed no risk to national security , and 77 others recognized that it is “unlikely” to be a threat to the country or its allies. 20% of the prisoners was taken to an arbitrary criminal’s own assessments of the U.S. military. If this data is added for those who only “perhaps could pose a danger, 274 in total, we conclude that the U.S. has not thought seriously about the guilt or threat of almost 60% of its prisoners. The prisoners jailed primarily to “exploit” according to its own terminology, for if they knew anything that might be useful.

Guantánamo is a prison, but the priority is not to impose penalties for offenses. Only seven prisoners have been tried and convicted so far: six in the military commissions of the base and one in a civilian court in New York. What is essentially, as shown by the reports is to obtain information through interrogation. One of the two parameters that were used in deciding whether or not they can release a prisoner is its “intelligence value”, according to the terminology used in the secret files.

The prison serves as a huge police station without limit of stay and the duration of the punishment that is proportionate to the alleged act committed. The secret files show some inmates treated as suspects must demonstrate not only his innocence but his lack of knowledge about Al Qaeda and the Taliban to win freedom. The only crime that authorities blame on some of them have been to have a cousin, friend or sibling related to jihad, or live in a town that has seen major attacks by the Taliban, or travel routes used by terrorists and therefore, know them well.

Despite efforts to obtain information in the fight against terrorism, nine years and three months after the opening of Guantánamo secret reports show that only 22% of prisoners presented a high level of interest for intelligence U.S.. In the remaining 78%, the informational value of the prisoners was medium or low, according to them the military itself.

The detainees were the faces of many interrogators, military, CIA agents and police in their own countries who marched in secret by their cells, among them Spanish, and took statements were handcuffed and chained to a ring on the floor. Activity in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, the experiments with explosives, setting the jihadists to get the so-called dirty bomb, “the deal and close to Osama Bin Laden , Al Zahawiri orMullah Mohammed Omar were priorities. A Casio F91W on the wrist of a prisoner was considered sufficient evidence that he had received explosives training.

The documents reveal new details about the 16 high-security detention related to the 11-S. The brain of the slaughter, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in 2002 ordered another inmate of the prison a suicide attack against the then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. In reality it was only a test of their willingness to “die for the cause.”

The records do not specify what methods are used to obtain information on the criminal. The word torture barely appears in the almost eight hundred documents. However, it does appear are the accusations that most of them throw on their former comrades and join the hundreds. In each case there is usually a section under the heading “Reasons for continued detention.” If the prisoner himself admits no allegiance to Bin Laden or the United States have struggled in the mountains of Tora Bora, they are their own peers who appear with names and naming names and identifying him. The list of informers hierarchy ranging from highest to lowest extremists.

But at no time reporting the circumstances in which detainees have admitted their guilt or alleged offending others. Sometimes a prisoner torture states, but the writer of the report itself is responsible for asserting that this statement has no credibility. Some, however, there was no way to extract information. “I’m prepared to be in Guantanamo 100 years if necessary, but not disclose information,” snapped the Kuwaiti Khalid Abdullah Mishal Al Mutairi his interrogators.

The reports are texts cold civil service prose. Just stop at personal issues such as suicide attempts, the state of health or hunger strikes and, in the case of the string of prisoners with psychiatric illnesses, one of the most twisted faces Guantanamo to determine whether they are limited to Despite his condition (often accompanied by multiple suicide attempts), can be useful to continue asking questions.

The Afghan Kudai Dat diagnosed with schizophrenia, tried unsuccessfully to make a final interrogation even though he had been hospitalized with acute symptoms of psychosis.Improved when he was brought before the polygraph, again causing hallucinations in the patient, according to a psychiatric prison. Its long-term prognosis was “poor.” But despite the medical record, the military authorities asserted that the pretended attacks of nerves and recommended keeping it in the base. He spent four years locked.

The documents are extremely protocol, but under the administrative language information are emerging that provide a picture of living conditions in prison. When talking about the conduct of the detainee, first recorded disciplinary infractions and other attacks. Any incident is recorded with little details: “Inappropriate use of body fluids, unauthorized communications, damage to government property, inciting and participating in mass disturbances, attempted attacks, attacks, provocative words and acts, possession of food and contraband items are not weapons … ”

Everything is counted and recorded. But as only provides concrete information on the latest disciplinary incident. And that is precisely in the fleeting passage of only one line, which shows flashes of the hard life in Guantánamo: The majority of prisoners have been released urine and feces at guards. Never specified what the punishment suffered by those actions and in what context they occurred. Proceedings were brought against other inmates to cover the ventilation of his cell with toilet paper, return a library book underlined or trademarks, refuse food or refusing to leave the shower.

The cards also provide a brief biography of most men who have passed through the cells of Guantanamo. The range of motives that led them to participate in jihad or having links to Islamist networks is varied, ranging from the Saudi who was committed to the cause after watching a video which showed the Russians the outrages committed against Muslims in Chechnya through the French who traveled to Afghanistan to continue his studies of Islam and live in a purely Islamic state to the Saudi, eager to find a wife, he entered a training camp in hopes of losing weight. “In the summer of 2001, a man suggested the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to fulfill their religious obligations for two months. The physical training regimen will also be an opportunity to lose weight,” said the statement Khowlan Hussain Abdul Rahman Mohammed.

Documentation not only draw conclusions about the motivation which led many men to Kabul, Kandahar or the mountains of Tora Bora. It is also possible to draw a profile in common with the majority. Whether you have citizenship of any European country, Algeria, Yemen or the Philippines.

Before entering the U.S. prison, many traveled constantly throughout the Arab-Muslim world. Stories abound of men who cross the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan on foot or cited with other activists at a mosque in the Pakistani city of Lahore. The cards also explain how the Islamists are supported each other through a network of encounter-six of the seven French prisoners passed through a boarding house, which they call “the Algerians” in the Afghan city of Jalalabad – of the money they provide members of the network-mentioned documents that many detainees were arrested with $ 10,000, the typical amount that Al Qaeda activists-delivery, or charities such as Al Wafa, according to authorities United States, help finance terrorist activities.

But in many cases the fact of traveling through the area becomes a suspicious attitude to the prison ships without dozens of people. In a note of just two pages describes the passage of Imad Achab Kanouni Germany, Albania, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the section on reasons for their stay at Guantanamo, is accused of failing to explain the conditions of his trip to Afghanistan. There is not one shred of evidence that incriminated him. However, Major General Geoffrey Miller , also head of the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib-recommended stay in prison.

The reports also affect Spain , Hamed Abderrahman, the Taliban called Ceuta, the National Court convicted and then acquitted by the Supreme Court to disable the evidence obtained without any guarantee by Spanish police in criminal and Ikasrrien Lachen, a Moroccan resident in Spain, which suffered the same fate Hamed court and refused for five years in prison to admit links to Al Qaeda.

The three prisoners taken in by Spain in 2010, a Palestinian , a Yemeni and an Afghan , is a small sample of criminal pathology. One is mentally ill with serious problems that for years remained imprisoned and interrogated, another who was under the orders of Bin Laden in Tora Bora, was paid to cooperate with the U.S., and the third, against which failed to have never evidence, what qualifies as problematic. It is, however, the only one so far has managed to make a relatively normal life in our country.

The Pentagon has drafted a statement regretting the publication of secret documents for their sensitivity to U.S. security.

The country will continue developing the key issues of the secret reports of the Department of Defense on Guantánamo.