The Guantanamo Whistleblower

In an interview with the Guardian about his upcoming book Inside the Wire, Guantanamo translator Erik Saar details just how far, dangerous, and strange the abuses and torture at Guantanamo became:

Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantánamo. 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 told The Observer 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.
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Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners have spiralled out of control, doing massive damage to America's image in the Muslim world.

Saar said events at Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo Bay. This is now a rallying cry to the Muslim world,' he said.
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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 unco-operative 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.

Saar also talks about the faked interrogations of prisoners when foreign leaders or press were at the camp, some of the specific brutal beatings and incidences, and how he and other intelligence officers at the base were told that Guantanamo fell outside the dictates of the Geneva Convention.

The article closes with these comments:

Saar was an enthusiastic supporter of George Bush in the 2000 elections but he has changed his world view after being exposed to Guantánamo Bay. 'I believe in America and American troops,' he said, 'but it has drastically changed my world view and my politics.'

Saar left the army and has become a hate figure for some right-wing groups which say he and his book are unpatriotic. But Saar believes exposing the abuses of Guantánamo will lessen the damage done to America's reputation in the long run. 'The camp is a mistake. It does not need to be that way. There should be a better way, more in line with American morals,' he said.

This is another indictment of the miserable attempts at detainment in the War on Terror, and the systemic problems of torture and abuse within it.