A former guard at the detention facilities in the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba has given a rare interview to the Associated Press describing abusive treatment of prisoners who were detained in Afghanistan and other parts of the world after the 9/11 attacks (on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington), and then transferred to the isolated and off-shore detention facility.
On the suspicion that they might have belonged to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, these men — and some boys — found themselves classified as “illegal combattants”, a new legal status invented by the Bush administration as part of its open-ended “war on terror”, and facing indefinite imprisonment in a legal limbo.
The AP said that the interview with Pvt. Brandon Neely — one of the first by a former guard describing abuses at Guantanamo — recounted “a litany of cruel treatment by his fellow soldiers, including beatings and humiliations he said were intended only to deliver physical or psychological pain”.
U.S. Army prison specialist Neely, 28, told the AP that “The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong”.
Newly-inaugurated U.S. President Barak Obama promised before his election that one of his first acts in office would be to close the Guantanamo detention facilities. He has recently ordered their shut-down within a year.
Continue reading U.S. Army guard at Guantanamo speaks out about abuse of detainees