US probe uncovers Guantanamo Bay prisoner abuse

A US military investigation has found evidence of degrading and abusive treatment by interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, which is being used as a prison for terrorist suspects.

The top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee Carl Levin said the investigation, which looked into FBI allegations of abuse of prisoners, showed that the purpose of the abuses recorded was to gather intelligence – and indicated that the problem was not an isolated one.

“It is clear from the report that detainee mistreatment was not simply the product of a few rogue military police in a night shift,” said Mr Levin.

Bush administration officials have sought to portray the previous excesses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison as just that.

But the armed services committee’s chairman John Warner, a Republican, did not agree.

He said investigators had found only three instances out of thousands of interrogations in which military personnel violated Army policy.

He did not immediately describe those incidents.

Senators also reported that the military investigators had called for the former prison commander at Guantanamo Bay to be admonished over the treatment of one terror suspect, but a top general had rejected their call.

Looking into FBI reports of abuse at Guantanamo Bay, the military investigators found multiple instances, including the use of duct tape on at least one prisoner’s face, a threat to kill another prisoner’s family and inappropriate touching by female interrogators.

But the investigators said in their report to the Senate committee they had decided that that behaviour did not reach the necessary level of torture or inhumane treatment.

Investigators said that the Guantanamo Bay interrogators had violated the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations three times.

They also recommended that Army Major General Geoffrey Miller be reprimanded for failing to oversee the interrogation of a high-value detainee, which was found to have been abusive.

But General Bantz J. Craddock, commander of US Southern Command, instead referred the matter to the Army’s inspector general.

Craddock then concluded that Miller did not violate any US laws or policies.

The military investigation was conducted after the FBI agents’ reports of abuse at Guantanamo surfaced last year.

Craddock and the two investigators were to testify about their findings at today’s Senate armed services committee hearing.