SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — FBI agents witnessed “highly aggressive” interrogations of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in 2002, and warned the same questionable techniques could have been used in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, according to FBI documents obtained by The Associated Press and the American Civil Liberties Union.
- Beth Dykstra
- Army Spc. Charles Graner, right, with Military Police investigator Joe Willis, arrives for a hearing yesterday, at Fort Hood, Texas. Graner accused of assaulting and humiliating male detainees at the Baghdad prison in late 2003. (AP PHOTO)
In a letter obtained by the AP, a senior Justice Department official suggested the Pentagon didn’t act on FBI complaints about four incidents at Guantanamo, including a female interrogator grabbing a detainee’s genitals and bending back his thumbs, another where a prisoner was gagged with duct tape and a third where a dog was used to intimidate a detainee who later was thrown into isolation and showed signs of “extreme psychological trauma.”
One Marine told an FBI observer that some interrogations led to prisoners “curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying in pain,” according to the letter dated July 14, 2004.