Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama

[balantz]

Published on Friday, May 15, 2009 by Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/story/140022/

Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama

The 'Black Shirts' of Guantanamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and 'dousing' them with chemicals.

by Jeremy Scahill



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 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.

The force is officially known as the the Immediate Reaction Force or Emergency Reaction Force, but inside the walls of Guantánamo, it is known to the prisoners as the Extreme Repression Force. Despite President Barack Obama's publicized pledge to close the prison camp and end torture -- and analysis from human rights lawyers who call these forces' actions illegal -- IRFs remain very much active at Guantánamo.

IRF: An Extrajudicial Terror Squad

The existence of these forces has been documented since the early days of Guantánamo, but it has rarely been mentioned in the U.S. media or in congressional inquiries into torture. On paper, IRF teams are made up of five military police officers who are on constant stand-by to respond to emergencies. "The IRF team is intended to be used primarily as a forced-extraction team, specializing in the extraction of a detainee who is combative, resistive, or if the possibility of a weapon is in the cell at the time of the extraction," according to a declassified copy of the Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta at Guantánamo. The document was signed on March 27, 2003, by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the man credited with eventually "Gitmoizing" Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons and who reportedly ordered subordinates to treat prisoners "like dogs." Gen. Miller ran Guantánamo from November 2002 until August 2003 before moving to Iraq in 2004.

When an IRF team is called in, its members are dressed in full riot gear, which some prisoners and their attorneys have compared to "Darth Vader" suits. Each officer is assigned a body part of the prisoner to restrain: head, right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg. According to the SOP memo, the teams are to give verbal warnings to prisoners before storming the cell: "Prior to the use of the IRF team, an interpreter will be used to tell the detainee of the discipline measures to be taken against him and ask whether he intends to resist. Regardless of his answer, his recent behavior and demeanor should be taken into account in determining the validity of his answer."The IRF team is authorized to spray the detainee in the face with mace twice before entering the cell.


- Read the rest at link above -

[balantz]

1. More from the article of actions by the "goon squad" which is still operating at Gitmo.

- clip -

ERF-ing Omar -- The Feces Incident
On one of the ERF-ing incidents where Omar was abused, the officer in charge himself came into the cell with the feces of another prisoners and smeared it onto Omar's face. While some prisoners had thrown feces at the abusive guards, Omar had always emphatically refused to sink to this level. The experience was one of the most disgusting in Omar's life.

ERF-ing Omar -- The Toilet Incident
In April or May 2004, when the Guantánamo administration insisted on taking Omar's English-language Quran, he objected. The ERF team came into Omar's cell and put him in shackles. He was not resisting. They then put his head in the toilet, pressed his face into the water. They repeatedly flushed it.

ERF-ing Omar -- The Beating
In one ERF-ing incident, Omar was shackled by three American soldiers in their black Darth Vader Star Wars uniforms. The first was going to punch Omar, but before he could, the second kneed Omar in the nose, trying to break it. The third queried this, and the second said, "If his nose is broken, that's good. We want to break his ******* nose." The third soldier then took him to hospital.

ERF-ing Omar -- The Drowning
The ERF team came into the cell with a water hose under very high pressure. He was totally shackled, and they would hold his head fixed still. They would force water up his nose until he was suffocating and would scream for them to stop. This was done with medical staff present, and they would join in. Omar is particularly affected by the fact that there was one nurse who "had been very beautiful and kind" to him to took part in the process. This happened three times.

ERF-ing Omar -- Tango Block
Omar was out on the Tango block rec yard when 15 ERF soldiers came, with two other soldiers in the towers, armed with guns. They grabbed him (and others) and sprayed him.
They then pulled him up into the air and slammed his face down, on the left side, on the concrete. They had someone from the hospital there, and she just watched. She then came up to him and asked whether he was OK. He was taken off to isolation after that.
A medical examination cited in the Spanish investigation confirmed that Deghayes suffered from blindness of the right eye, fracture of the nasal bone and fracture of the right index finger, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and "profound" depression.

- clip -

[bonnieS]

2. thank you for posting

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. How utterly shocking and depraved! And that's just keeping quiet about it, instead of putting

a stop to it. Wake up, Barak.

[libodem]

4. I hate hearing this

I wonder how many have ben killed and permanently damaged. I still think that the story of the soldier beaten at Gitmo shows how brutal the beatings have been for minor infractions.
http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=1891343

[pleah]

5. K&R Sadly.

[Vidar]

6. I'm not at all surprised.

[ima_sinnic]

7. this is horrifying. I am beyond outraged. obama can take his kumbaya and shove it

--it appears that what he tells We The People is one thing, and what is really going on is another.
I suppose he can justify his statement that "we no longer torture" by pointing out that these abuses are not "officially" regarded as torture in some goddam "legal code."
Keep turning your back on this kind of thing and lying about it, emperor O, along with transferring our hard-earned tax dollars to your bankster buddies and insurance company thugs, and see, really, how much longer We The People stand behind you.