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Level -> Inside Guantanamo (6/23/2007 5:23:42 AM)
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WASHINGTON - Documents obtained by NBC News offer the first inside look at the operations of the team charged with enforcement at Guantanamo Bay, a team that human rights groups have accused of brutality.
The documents, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, are statements to investigators by members of the Immediate Reaction Force, or IRF, and summaries of about 40 incidents. In almost every incident, the IRF was called to remove a detainee from his Guantanamo cell. Taken together, the documents allege that detainees frequently refused verbal commands until they were violently manhandled by the IRF. A pattern of biting, punching, eye-gouging and other assaults are cited in the documents.
In one dramatic incident on July 19, 2005, a guard writes that he bit a detainee during a scuffle, when the prisoner allegedly tried to fend off the IRF. "The cell was slippery with what appeared to be toothpaste and water," the solder wrote. Then, he said, the detainee "got a hold of my headgear and started to scratch my face and poke my eyes, after that he went to choke me at which point his finger went in my mouth and since I had a hold of his right leg I could not do anything to stop him from choking me but to bite his fingers."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19375486
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