Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama: lawyer

Says guards want to "get their kicks in" before camp is closed

LONDON (AlArabiya.net, Agencies)

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-force-feeding 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.

Ahmed Ghappour

"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.

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.

"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."

In line with Geneva Conventions

Admiral Patrick Walsh

Following a Jan. 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.

Ghappour said he had filed two complaints of serious detainee abuse since Dec. 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.

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.

Rights groups disagree

Center for Constitutional Rights

The Defense Department review was met with criticism by rights groups, who cited the report and other policy moves as proof that President Barack Obama had failed to make a clean break with the previous administration on the treatment of "war on terror" suspects.

Guantanamo detainees "continue to be held in inhumane conditions that violate U.S. obligations under Geneva conventions, the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law," said the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

At Guantanamo "the majority of detainees are being held in condition of solitary confinement," the group said.

"Sensory deprivation, environmental manipulation and sleep deprivation are daily realities for these men and have led to the steady deterioration of their physical and psychological health."

The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday called the review a "whitewash," demanding an independent review of conditions at Guantanamo instead of one carried out by the same U.S. military that runs the prison.

Rights groups last week expressed dismay after the Obama administration argued that inmates held at a prison in Bagram, Afghanistan did not have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.