[Peace-discuss] Obama - talk, no action

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama
	Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:48am EST
	By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply 
since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" 
before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.

Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer 
Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, 
spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet 
paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.

The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner 
abuse during a recent review of conditions at Guantanamo, but had concluded that 
all prisoners were being kept in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

"According to my clients, there has been a ramping up in abuse since President 
Obama was inaugurated," said Ghappour, a British-American lawyer with Reprieve, 
a legal charity that represents 31 detainees at Guantanamo.

"If one was to use one's imagination, (one) could say that these traumatized, 
and for lack of a better word barbaric, guards were just basically trying to get 
their kicks in right now for fear that they won't be able to later," he said.

"Certainly in my experience there have been many, many more reported incidents 
of abuse since the inauguration," added Ghappour, who has visited Guantanamo six 
times since late September and based his comments on his own observations and 
conversations with both prisoners and guards.

He stressed the mistreatment did not appear to be directed from above, but was 
an initiative undertaken by frustrated U.S. army and navy jailers on the ground. 
It did not seem to be a reaction against the election of Obama, a Democrat who 
has pledged to close the prison camp within a year, but rather a realization 
that there was little time remaining before the last 241 detainees, all Muslim, 
are released.

"It's 'hey, let's have our fun while we can,'" said Ghappour, who helped secure 
the release this week of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident freed from 
Guantanamo Bay after more than four years in detention without trial or charge.

"I can't really imagine why you would get your kicks from abusing prisoners, but 
certainly, having spoken to certain guards who have been injured in Iraq, who 
indirectly or directly blame my clients for their injuries and the trauma they 
have suffered, it's not too difficult to put two and two together."

FORCE-FEEDING

Following a January 22 order from Obama, the U.S. Defense Department conducted a 
two-week review of conditions at Guantanamo ahead of the planned closure of the 
prison on Cuba.

Admiral Patrick Walsh, the review's author, acknowledged on Monday that reports 
of abuse had emerged but concluded all inmates were being treated in line with 
the Geneva Conventions.

"We heard allegations of abuse," he said, asked if detainees had reported 
torture. "And what we did at that point was to go back and investigate the 
allegation... What we found is that there were in some cases substantiated 
evidence where guards had misconduct, I think that would be the best way to put it."

Walsh said his review looked at 20 allegations of abuse, 14 of which were 
substantiated, but he did not go into details. Generally he said the abuse 
ranged from "gestures, comments, disrespect" to "preemptive use of pepper spray."

Ghappour said he had spoken to army guards who, unsolicited, had described the 
pleasure they took in abusing prisoners, whether interrupting prayer or physical 
mistreatment. He said they appeared unconcerned about potential repercussions.

He also saw evidence of guards pulling identity numbers off their uniforms or 
switching them once they were on duty in order to make it more difficult for 
them to be identified.

Ghappour said he had filed two complaints of serious detainee abuse since 
December 22 but received no response from U.S. authorities. In one case his 
client had his knee, shoulder and thumb dislocated by a group of guards, 
Ghappour said.

In one of the six main camps at Guantanamo, the lawyer said all the detainees he 
knew were on hunger strike and subject to force-feeding, including with 
laxatives that induced chronic diarrhea while they were strapped in their 
feeding chairs.

"Several of my clients have had toilet paper pepper-sprayed while they have had 
hemorrhoids," Ghappour said.

Another area of concern was evidence that detainees were being abused on the way 
to meetings with their lawyers -- sometimes so badly that they no longer wanted 
to meet with counsel for fear of the beatings they would receive, he said.

"Some detainees are convinced they are going to be locked up there forever, 
despite the promises to close the camp," he said.

(Additional reporting by Randall Mikkelsen and Andrew Gray in Washington, 
editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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