U.S.: Religious Humiliation of Muslim Detainees Widespread

Reuters AlertNet - U.S.: Religious Humiliation of Muslim Detainees Widespread: "U.S.: Religious Humiliation of Muslim Detainees Widespread
19 May 2005 18:20:19 GMT
Source: Human Rights Watch
(New York, May 19, 2005)-U.S. interrogators have repeatedly sought to offend the religious beliefs of Muslim detainees as part of their interrogation strategy, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch said that the dispute over the retracted allegations in Newsweek that U.S. interrogators had desecrated a Koran at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, has overshadowed the fact that religious humiliation of detainees at Guant�namo and elsewhere has been widespread.

'In detention centers around the world, the United States has been humiliating Muslim prisoners by offending their religious beliefs,' said Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch.

On December 2, 2002, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized a list of techniques for interrogation of prisoners at Guant�namo, which included "removal of all comfort items (including religious items)," "forced grooming (shaving of facial hair, etc.)," and "removal of clothing." Each of these practices is considered offensive to many Muslims. These techniques were later applied in Afghanistan and Iraq as well.

The purpose of these techniques, Human Rights Watch said, is to inflict humiliation on detainees, which is strictly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Several former detainees have said that U.S. interrogators disrespected the Koran. Three Britons released from Guant�namo have alleged that the Koran was kicked and thrown in the toilet. A former Russian detainee, Aryat Vahitov, has reportedly made the same claim. A former Kuwaiti detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, has said that the throwing of a Koran on the floor led to a hunger strike at Guant�namo that ended only after a senior officer expressed regret over the camp's loudspeaker. Human Rights Watch also interviewed detainees who described a protest at a U.S. detention site at Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan in early 2002 that was set off by a guard's alleged desecration of the Koran.

Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guant�namo, has described a female interrogator wiping a detainee with what the prisoner was made to believe was menstrual blood.