A US soldier has revealed shocking new details of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in the first high-profile whistleblowing account to emerge from inside the top-secret base.
Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantanamo. It will prove a damaging blow to a White House still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
In an exclusive interview, Saar said that prisoners were physically assaulted by "snatch squads" and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the US military.
He also said that soldiers staged fake interrogations to impress visiting administration and military officials. Saar believes that the great majority of prisoners at Guantanamo have no terrorist links and little worthwhile intelligence information has emerged from the base despite its prominent role in the US war on terror.
Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners have spiralled out of control, doing massive damage to the US' image in the Muslim world.
Saar said events at Guantanamo were a disaster for US foreign policy.
"We are trying to promote democracy worldwide. I don't see how you can do that and run a place like Guantanamo Bay. This is now a rallying cry to the Muslim world," he said.
Saar arrived at Guantanamo Bay in December 2002, and worked there until June 2003. He first worked as a translator in the prisoners' cages. He was then transferred to the interrogation teams, acting as a translator.
Saar's book, Inside the Wire, provides the first fully detailed look inside Guantanamo Bay's role as a prison for detainees the White House has insisted are the "worst of the worst" among Islamic militants. His tale describes his gradual disillusionment, from arriving as a soldier keen to do his duty to eventually leaving believing the regime to be a breach of human rights and a disaster for the war on terror.
Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners.
Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for confessing.
In one session a female interrogator took off some of her clothes and smeared fake blood on a prisoner after telling him she was menstruating.
"That's a big deal. It is a major insult to one of the world's biggest religions where we are trying to win hearts and minds," Saar said.
Saar also describes the "snatch teams," known as the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), who remove uncooperative prisoners from their cells. He describes one such snatch where a prisoner's arm was broken. In a training session for an IRF team, one US soldier posing as a prisoner was beaten so badly that he suffered brain damage. It is believed the IRF team had not been told the "detainee" was a soldier.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
SHARED VALUES: The US, Taiwan and other allies hope to maintain the cross-strait ‘status quo’ to foster regional prosperity and growth, the former US vice president said Former US vice president Mike Pence yesterday vowed to continue to support US-Taiwan relations, and to defend the security and interests of both countries and the free world. At a meeting with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Pence said that the US and Taiwan enjoy strong and continued friendship based on the shared values of freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Such foundations exceed limitations imposed by geography and culture, said Pence, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time. The US and Taiwan have shared interests, and Americans are increasingly concerned about China’s
RSS