Guantánamo, USA

Brig guards were instructed by their commanders to apply the standard operating procedures down in Guantánamo up here in the United States. Over time, the brig officers themselves became frustrated at the restrictions they were ordered to enforce.

Most people know about the deplorable treatment of detainees down at Guantánamo.

But three detainees—including two U.S. citizens—faced similar treatment right here in the United States, according to documents just released by the ACLU.

Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri were held at naval brigs in Virginia and South Carolina, in isolation, for months at a time without access to lawyers or communication to the outside world.

This was no accident.

The brig guards were instructed by their commanders to apply the standard operating procedures down in Guantánamo up here in the United States.

That’s ironic, to say the least, because the Bush Administration had argued before the Supreme Court that its treatment of detainees in Cuba was beyond the reach of the court because they weren’t on U.S. soil.

The documents consist of e-mails between brig officers and others up the chain of command. Over time, they show the increasing frustration of the brig officers themselves at the restrictions they were ordered to enforce.

One of the first documents, dated April 17, 2002, said: “As I’m sure you understand, DOD does not want this detainee to have any privileges that the detainees at Camp X-Ray don’t have, so all are treated essentially the same way.” (DOD stands for Department of Defense, and Camp X-Ray is in Guantánamo.)

Another document, dated April 20, 2002, shows that one of the detainees was denied the use of a soccer ball because it was not “SOP for Camp X-Ray.”

That same e-mail noted that an attorney at the Federal Public Defenders Office had sent a fax to the brig indicating that “he was interested in determining weather [sic] the detainee seeks to have counsel appointed and requested that I contact his office immediately. I made no calls to the inquiry and forwarded the letter” up the chain of command.

A June 17, 2002, e-mail said, “The detainees are not permitted visits from legal counsel, family members or others, unless specified by SECDEF or his designee.”

A June 28, 2002, e-mail states: “He is continuing to question how much longer he is going to be here and why he has not been afforded to meet with a lawyer.”

The brig officer sympathized with the detainee: “After eight months of incarceration in detention facilities (Kandahar, Camp X-Ray, Norfolk Brig) with no potential end in site and no encouraging news and isolated from his countryman, I can understand how he feels.”

The officer added that the detainee had requested pinochle cards and a gameboy, but those requests had not been answered. Nor was the detainee allowed to send or receive mail to and from his family. And the officer acknowledged holding on to “seven letters that appear to be correspondence for the detainee from the Clerk’s Office U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia.”

Worried about the detainee’s morale, he added: “Know these items are working through the upper levels of government and that they are only small issues by comparison, but here at the deckplate level, I am seeing a morale issue developing and any help with resolving some for the above issues would help in this area.”

A superior officer responded: “No one thinks these are small issues—quite the contrary—which is why we are seeing the very highest levels of Government considering answers.”

The brig officer was also worried about P.R. “I am trying to keep this individual in the box and lessen the potential for any foolish action on his part (I am speaking of the potential for a hunger strike),” he wrote on June 27. If that happened, the officer said,“don’t know for certain we could control what got outside the wire. Trying to stay ahead of as many potential problems as possible, but sometimes I feel like I’m in a minefield.”

(The detainee got his playing cards, but no gameboy or letters.)

Another e-mail, dated September 13, 2002, noted: “On a number of occasions the detainee requested to see a lawyer. . . . My fear now is the detainee will go through a state of depression because of today’s negative feedback.”

The brig officer couldn’t even get the detainee shoes and socks, at least for several months because they weren’t allowed at Guantánamo. “With the warmer climate of GITMO, this is probably not an issue, but here in an old facility, built on a concrete slab and limited heating, shoes and other than sandals or shower shoes are needed,” the officer wrote on October 23, 2002. (A similar request had been made six months previously.)

The brig officer in charge of Hamdi got increasingly worried about his mental state. “He feels very stressed due to the incarceration and being here for almost 14 months, with no news pertaining to his future. . . . He feels as if he has been forgotten and that no one is working on getting him freed. . . . I know I cannot give him any false hope, but I fear the rubber band is nearing its breaking point here and not totally confident I can keep his head in the game much longer.”

Some of the restrictions were incomprehensibly petty. Al-Marri, who was fluent in English, had asked for an English dictionary. It was refused.

One frustrated officer wrote on June 27, 2005: “I thought the stated GTMO concern (that we used to justify this denial) was that detainee access to dictionaries ‘will permit them greater understanding of the English language, and enhance their ability to gather intelligence on the JTF-GTMO operation.’ . . . If the detainee (Al-Marri) is already fluent in English, how would having access to an (English) dictionary potentially further the knowledge/understanding of brig operations/related INTELL stuff?”

The documents also reveal a back-and-forth about whether to post the Geneva Conventions in the brigs, or to even have them in the brig library.

One of the brig officers had asked for confirmation: “Charleston Navy Brig needs to follow whatever GTMO does, so just need to know if they do it or not.”

The answer, on September 12, 2005, came back: “Looks like GTMO has NOT posted. . . . This may affect our thinking on the adding of the Geneva Conventions to the NAVCONBRIG library.”

One of the officers who had asked about this included a quote from Sophocles at the bottom of his e-mail: “Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.”