Lieberman: No Facility More Humane Than Gitmo
Sen. Joe Lieberman believes that Guantanamo Bay's bad reputation isn't deserved. "You could not find a better, more humane facility for a detention ce
Over the past six years, Democracy Now! has closely followed the story of illegal detentions at Guantanamo Bay. We have interviewed former Guantanamo detainees and interrogators, dozens of attorneys, human rights activists and more. These are some their voices.
Torture Continues at Guantánamo Bay:
The "Black Shirts" of Guantánamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and "dousing" them with chemicals.
As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated ... through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.
More significantly, however, the investigation could for the first time place an intense focus on a notorious, but seldom discussed, thug squad deployed by the U.S. military to retaliate with excessive violence to the slightest resistance by prisoners at Guantánamo.