Rumsfeld Defends U.S. Treatment of Detainees in Cuba

 



  WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - Frustrated by an international outcry over 
the American treatment of prisoners in Cuba, Secretary of 
Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the United States' conduct 
at length today and dismissed the criticism as breathless 
armchair hyperbole.

  "I am telling you what I believe in every inch of my body to be 
the truth, and I have spent a lot of time on secure video with 
the people down there," he told reporters, referring to the 
United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 158 
prisoners from the war in Afghanistan are being jailed. "I 
haven't found a single scrap of any kind of information that 
suggests that anyone has been treated anything other than 
humanely."

  Mr. Rumsfeld spoke in an unusual briefing that stretched over an 
hour in an attempt, he said, to "tap down some of this 
hyperbole." It was prompted by a rising tide of international 
criticism after the Defense Department released photographs over 
the weekend that showed some of the prisoners kneeling before 
their captors, their legs in shackles, their hands bound in 
manacles, their mouths covered by surgical masks and their eyes 
blinded by large goggles with black tape.

  His comments came as criticism swelled from abroad. Critics said 
the United States was using sensory deprivation and other 
psychological control techniques to weaken the prisoners so that 
interrogations would be more fruitful. The International 
Committee of the Red Cross, in a rare break with its code of not 
publicly criticizing detaining governments, said the United 
States might have violated Geneva Convention rules against 
making a spectacle of prisoners by distributing the pictures, 
which were published worldwide.

  Amnesty International sought access to the prisoners in 
Guantanamo and said they should be allowed to have lawyers.

  "Keeping prisoners incommunicado, sensory deprivation, the use 
of unnecessary restraint and the humiliation of people through 
tactics such as shaving them are all classic techniques employed 
to break the spirit of individuals ahead of interrogation," the 
organization said.

  Several governments joined the chorus, saying the prisoners 
should be granted prisoner of war status under the Geneva 
Convention. Such status would accord them the highest level of 
protections.

  Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, said 
that despite the Sept. 11 atrocities, "changing our values and 
our way of life would be terrorism's first victory." The 
Netherlands also urged Washington to recognize the detainees as 
prisoners of war, saying, "In the fight, we need to uphold our 
norms and values."

  While debate raged elsewhere, Britain and Spain supported the 
United States. Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said the three 
British prisoners at the detention center, called Camp X-Ray, 
"had no complaints about their treatment." Spanish Foreign 
Minister Josep Pique said the Spanish government "does not have 
the slightest doubt regarding the position of the U.S. 
government."

  The warden at Camp X-Ray, Col. Terry Carrico, said he was 
determined at all times to maintain what he called "positive 
control" over the prisoners. Bill Nash, a retired Army major 
general and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 
said this amounted to "imposing on them a psychological sense of 
isolation, domination and futility, and trying to establish the 
conditions by which you can then reward them for information, as 
oppose to punish them."

  Mr. Rumsfeld said it was "probably unfortunate" that the 
photographs were released, at least without an explanation. He 
said the prisoners had been photographed in a holding area just 
before their restraints were removed and they were put in their 
cages.

  "If you want to think the worst about things, you can," he said. 
But he argued that whenever prisoners, especially those who are 
dangerous and suicidal, are transported, it only makes sense to 
lock them in restraints. "When they are being moved from place 
to place, will they be restrained in a way so that they are less 
likely to be able to kill an American soldier? You bet. Is it 
inhumane to do that? No. Would it be stupid to do anything else? 
Yes."

  It is not clear why the United States has not officially 
designated the detainees as prisoners of war, especially since 
Mr. Rumsfeld said they are essentially being treated as such.

  "They're in legal limbo," said Michael F. Noone, professor of 
military law at Catholic University. "The United States has to 
get moving on screening these people and determining whether or 
not they're P.O.W.'s. There is no explanation for the delay."

  Mr. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon's clear priority with the 
prisoners was to extract information from them to prevent future 
attacks. "These people are committed terrorists," he said. "We 
are keeping them off the street and out of the airlines and out 
of nuclear power plants and out of ports across this country and 
across other countries."

  And yet, officials at Guantanamo have said that no interrogation 
has taken place on the base and that the prisoners do not have 
lawyers.

  Asked what benefit the United States gets by not classifying the 
captives as prisoners of war, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I don't know 
enough of the legal technicalities to answer your question. I 
know that the process of gathering the intelligence information 
has not been concluded."

  Mr. Rumsfeld said one of the complicating factors was that the 
Geneva Conventions give protection to prisoners from countries 
but not from terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda, to which 
some of the prisoners apparently belong. "To give standing under 
a Geneva Convention to a terrorist organization that's not a 
country is something that I think some of the lawyers who did 
not drop out of law school as I did worry about as a precedent," 
he said.

  Officials have said the prisoners come from a range of 
countries, - Britain, Yemen, China, Saudi Arabia and Australia 
among them - and that has also complicated the legal picture.

  In Los Angeles, a federal district judge questioned today 
whether he had the authority to consider a challenge to the 
detention of the prisoners in Cuba.

  "I have grave doubts about whether I have jurisdiction," said 
the judge, A. Howard Matz. He spoke at a hearing on a petition 
filed on Sunday by a group of lawyers, clerics and professors 
who demand that the detainees be identified, taken before a 
court and told of the charges against them.



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