What's Going On At Gitmo?

What's Going On At Gitmo?
By DANIEL EISENBERG, TIMOTHY J. BURGER

Even as allegations of Koran abuse at the U.S.'s naval base in Cuba were still making headlines, the Pentagon was bracing for a new storm as reporters last week sorted through several thousand pages of transcripts from tribunals in which detainees challenged their designation as enemy combatants. Earlier, as the government prepared to release the transcripts, as required by a Freedom of Information Act filing, military officials reviewed them, looking for "potentially controversial and embarrassing items" about which their superiors should be notified in advance, according to a Pentagon memo that TIME has seen. To make sense of the latest Gitmo controversies, here is a look at Guantánamo during the war on terrorism. -By Daniel Eisenberg and Timothy J. Burger

WHO IS HELD THERE? Since the first 20 prisoners were taken there from Afghanistan in January 2002, the U.S. has used its naval base in Cuba as its main holding area for suspected members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Some 750 detainees have passed through its gates at one time or another. Today it houses about 520, with the majority hailing from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Yemen. The most recent batch of new prisoners arrived last September.

WHAT IS THEIR STATUS? The U.S. considers none of the detainees prisoners of war, which means they do not enjoy rights under the Geneva Convention, which protects POWs from indefinite imprisonment and aggressive interrogation. Because the detainees allegedly targeted civilians and did not belong to a conventional army-or, in the case of the Taliban, did not serve under a legitimate government, in the U.S.'s view-Washington classifies them as unlawful or enemy combatants, a decision that numerous critics vehemently disagree with.

CAN THEY APPEAL? Because Guantánamo is on foreign soil-leased from Cuba since 1903-the U.S. has argued that the detainees are beyond the reach of U.S. law. Last June, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners have the right to challenge their captivity in federal court. Since then, some 150 detainees have filed petitions doing just that. The government has argued that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals-panels of three military officers that have been in place since last July-have given detainees all the due process to which they are entitled. Earlier this year a federal judge strongly disagreed, citing the fact that detainees were not allowed to have lawyers present at the review tribunals and were not privy to much of the evidence used against them. Another federal judge came down on the government's side. A case before a court of appeals in Washington is expected to decide the issue. Meanwhile, a recently declassified letter to military authorities obtained by TIME raises a new question about the tribunals. In the April 30 letter, lawyer Marc Falkoff, who represents Yemeni inmate Abdulmalik Abdulwahab Al-Rahabi, says statements made by an important witness against his client "appear to have been obtained by use of torture." Falkoff's letter says the witness is the same detainee whom FBI agents at Gitmo, in internal e-mails disclosed earlier this year, called #63 and who they said was intimidated with a dog and showed signs of "extreme psychological trauma" after being subjected to "intense isolation for over three months."

WHO HAS BEEN RELEASED? Over the past three years, 234 detainees have been permitted to leave Gitmo, but 67 were released on the condition that they be held by their home governments, including Pakistan, Britain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. At least 12 of those set free are believed to have resumed terrorist activities, according to the Defense Department. The vast majority of those released were deemed to be no longer a threat or of any intelligence value. Since the U.S. started the review tribunals last fall, about 40 detainees have been or will be freed because they were found not to be enemy combatants after all.

HAVE DETAINEES BEEN ABUSED? In its recently issued annual report on human rights, Amnesty International said Guantánamo had become the "gulag of our times." While disputing many of the detainees' allegations of beatings, sexual taunts and other mistreatment, the U.S. is nonetheless investigating them. One of those inquiries, the findings of which are expected to be issued soon by Air Force Lieut. General Randall Schmidt, was spurred by eyewitness accounts from FBI agents at Gitmo from mid-2002 to mid-2004. According to just-released memos, agents reported seeing captives shackled in a fetal position for 24 hours without food or water and left in their own excrement, another gagged with duct tape that covered much of his head and another who had torn out his hair after being chained all night in a hot room. Former Army Sergeant Erik Saar, who served at Gitmo and wrote Inside the Wire with TIME correspondent Viveca Novak, has described an instance in which a female interrogator smeared fake menstrual blood on a captive's face. It may have been a measure of how detainees are treated that when Army Specialist Sean Baker played the role of an inmate in a 2003 training exercise, he says he was beaten so badly by MPs, who did not know he was one of them, he now has seizures. The Army is investigating the incident, and Baker has filed suit against the government, seeking damages for his injuries.

HAVE ANY DIED THERE? Although the U.S. military has recently acknowledged that more than 30 detainees died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan from August 2002 to November 2004, there have been no reports or allegations of detainee deaths at Guantánamo. According to the Pentagon, prisoners there have attempted suicide 34 times and have committed several hundred acts classified by the military as "self-injurious manipulative behavior," but none have died as a result. A Saudi man who tried to hang himself in 2003 ended up in a coma for several months but ultimately regained consciousness and learned to walk again.

HAS THE KORAN BEEN DESECRATED? The U.S. has been investigating allegations of mishandling of the Koran, including the charge by at least one detainee that U.S. personnel threw the holy book in a toilet. As of last week, the inquiry, led by Brigadier General Jay W. Hood, had found five instances in which a guard or interrogator mishandled the Koran-although Hood would not explain exactly how-all but one before January 2003, when explicit rules about the Koran were established. But Hood's team found no credible evidence that one was ever tossed in a toilet. Three incidents were probably deliberate and two inadvertent, Hood said late last week. He added that his team had reinterviewed a detainee who had previously told FBI agents he had witnessed a Koran toilet episode but now has denied firsthand knowledge of any Koran desecration.

WHAT ARE LIVING CONDITIONS THERE LIKE? The best-behaved detainees are held in Camp 4, a medium-security, communal-living environment with as many as 10 beds in a room; prisoners can play soccer or volleyball outside up to nine hours a day, eat meals together and read Agatha Christie mysteries in Arabic. Less cooperative detainees typically live and eat in small, individual cells and get to exercise and shower only twice a week. A new, $16 million maximum-security facility can hold up to 100 of the most dangerous detainees.

WHAT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE HAVE DETAINEES PROVIDED? The military's official position is that some inmates continue to provide valuable information, ranging from how al-Qaeda raises funds and recruits members to how it plans attacks and builds explosives. Detainees, officials say, have helped identify new prisoners, from Osama bin Laden's bodyguards to rank-and-file militia fighters; late last year, according to officials, a few detainees helped uncover a previously unknown al-Qaeda cell in another country. Still, earlier this year the civilian head of intelligence at Guantánamo admitted in newspaper interviews that the majority of detainees were no longer of much intelligence value and were not even being regularly interrogated.

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