Guantanamo Bay Questioning Practices
July 13, 2005 – 4:14 pmAccording to this news article, United States interrogators are using some pretty odd techniques to get prisoners to speak at Guantanamo Bay. In one particular case, they were attempting to get information from Mohamed al-Qahtani, the self-proclaimed 20th hijacker who was planning on boarding United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania.
From the article, we learn:
Schmidt said that to get al-Qahtani to talk, interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra, forced him to wear a thong on his head, forced him to dance with a male interrogator, told him he was homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it.
This article from Reuters is quick to point out that no torture was involved, according to military investigators. But read that above quote again. Does that sound like the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, or your junior high school circa grade 7? I remember a couple of guys getting similar treatment in gym class.
5 Responses to “Guantanamo Bay Questioning Practices”
I know a number of people who would like to visit your “gym class”.
By Kristjan on Jul 13, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Wow… good point Jeff. Toss in some wedgies, noogies, wet-willies, etc. and you do indeed have junior high school. Maybe that’s what we should do with the terrorists that we capture. Put them in junior high school for a little while. Then they’ll realize that we already do worse to ourselves than they can ever do.
But somewhat more seriously, while it’s one thing to torture someone who may or may not be a terrorist, I consider it completely different when someone is a self-proclaimed terrorist. Granted, this is more of a mile-high cliff than a slippery slope, but I pretty much feel that someone like that has given up whatever human rights they ever had.
By Adam on Jul 14, 2005 at 12:51 am
But when one responds to a terrorist attack by saying that it will not destroy the principles upon which a democracy is built, what priniciples are those if they include torture?
By paul.za on Jul 14, 2005 at 6:25 pm
Hence the “slippery slope” comment. The ideas expressed in the first half of my last comment (the junior high stuff) was intended to be somewhat silly. The second half of my comment was an expression of my emotions, not an expression of how things should actually be carried out.
However, regarding the treatment of that prisoner, I wouldn’t consider that torture. I realize that there is such a thing as psychological torture, but this falls fall short.
By Adam on Jul 15, 2005 at 12:24 am
Adam, If someone made me put underwear on my head, made me dance with men, called me a “homosexual” (does anyone else really think that’s the word they used?), and told me my relatives were whores, I’d think they were… jerks (not sure of the language rating you’ve got going here, jjk). I would not think they were torturing me.
If, on the other hand, I held the deeply ingrained moral belief that homosexuality and everything it touches is fundamentally unclean, if I were a person coming from a culture where cleanliness and sexuality were intimately tied, I could be seriously screwed up because of what they did. I have no idea if this person had this belief or came from such a culture, but none of us can discount the possibility. The rest of the article mentions some equally creepy treatments (fake menses, for example).
[The] main point I want to make clear is that things that you might be completely okay with, others might find completely and utterly reprihensible.
The only thing that matters is “is the person being tortured”, not “do the interrogators think they are torturing the person”. How can anyone make that judgement? I don’t know. But the prisoner in question and the context of his or her beliefs need to be addressed. I don’t have a solution; I recognize the need to obtain information from both suspects and convicts but am also very concerned for the rights of prisoners.
As a side note, the Geneva Conventions allow for the exclusion of certain people in certain circumstances from the protection the treaties typically provide (and I assume other international agreements do as well). Again, I don’t know if this particular prisoner fits the bill (though I’m sure many in the U.S. government would argue he does). Regardless, that’s a completely separate issue.
By MDA on Jul 15, 2005 at 11:21 am