Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Tuesday, May 10, 2005 |
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Paul Harris
NEW YORK: An American soldier has revealed shocking new details of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in the first high-profile whistleblowing account to emerge from inside the top-secret base. Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantanamo. It will prove a damaging blow to a White House still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. In an exclusive interview, Mr. Saar said prisoners were physically assaulted by "snatch squads" and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the U.S. military. Fake interrogations He also said soldiers staged fake interrogations to impress visiting administration and military officials. Mr. Saar believes that the great majority of prisoners at Guantanamo have no terrorist links and little worthwhile intelligence information has emerged from the base despite its prominent role in America's war on terror. Mr. Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners have spiralled out of control, doing massive damage to America's image in the Muslim world. He said events at Guantanamo were a disaster for U.S. foreign policy. "We are trying to promote democracy worldwide. I don't see how you can do that and run a place like Guantanamo Bay. This is now a rallying cry to the Muslim world," he said. Mr. Saar arrived at Guantanamo Bay in December 2002, and worked there until June 2003. He first worked as a translator in the prisoners' cages. He was then transferred to the interrogation teams, acting as a translator. His book, Inside the Wire, provides the first fully detailed look inside Guantanamo Bay's role as a prison for detenus the White House has insisted are the "worst of the worst" among Islamist militants. His tale describes his gradual disillusionment, from arriving as a soldier keen to do his duty to eventually leaving believing the regime to be a breach of human rights and a disaster for the war on terror. - Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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