Guantanamo Bay: Torture Kingdom Made in USA

Havana, Jan 20 (Prensa Latina) – Persistent criticism of documented abuses and atrocities against prisoners at the US naval base in Guantamano, Cuba, in the name of the global war on terrorism, have turned human rights into a dead letter.

The more than 500 prisoners caught worldwide during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been illegally flown into eastern Cuban occupied territory, tortured and humiliated without the least concern from the UN Human Rights Commission.

The prisoners are taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, aboard flights for torture or 'rendition,' or sending suspected Al Qaeda supporters captured overseas to prisons at U.S. military bases. Those whom Washington considers 'enemy soldiers' are in fact hostages.

A CIA source said the flights are operated by the Joint Special Operations Command, a coordinator of counter-terrorist operations together with the CIA and special military forces. This is why they enjoy the Pentagon's blessing to land in military airports.

The practice, even prescribed by US military doctors, has been rejected by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) whose director Robert Mueller has called on his agents to not participate in prisoners' interrogations to avoid involvement in such crimes.

Many testimonies from ex prisoners detail the brutal methods used in this concentration camp, first named X-Ray, then Camp Delta, and later Camp Five, sanctified by the White House following main land maximum-security prisons' regimes.

The prisoners, whom Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez denies POW status, are submitted to strenuous physical and psychological pressures. They are called by a number not by their names, which are only registered in files.

They are kept in cage-like cells like animals, are barely given 90 minutes a week outside and are submitted to successive interrogations, food and water deprivation and forced to remain in uncomfortable positions.

They remain handcuffed and hooded, are given savage beatings, threatened with rape, forced to watch while other prisoners are tortured, urinated or defecated upon, with the aim of annihilating their morale.

The above is considered to be just the tip of the iceberg within the many atrocities the released prisoners have described of the infamous conditions at 'Camp Five', later on copied in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and at many other US-run clandestine prisons worldwide.

The issue attracted global attention in spite of US efforts to silence the prisoners' conditions, many of them jailed for over two years without legal counsel.

They are flown to places away from the mainland to keep them even out of reach of US laws. The victims of this global 'anti-terrorist crusade' are from about 40 nations and include children and teenagers.



--From Prensa Latina