Incidents of uncooperative and beligerent behavior by Gitmo detainees towards military personnel have risen sharply since December. Several defense lawyers are suspected to have suggested to their clients to “pass the word” to gradually increase assaults, verbal abuse, and hunger strikes in an effort to pressure President Barck Obama into making good on his campaign promise to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay.
An investigation into this allegation is unlikely as lawyer-client conversations are not audibly monitored due to legal privilege.
A source close to a well-known legal defense group said, “They are hoping for one ‘Abu Ghraib’ moment, a single incident where a guard is charged after striking back. It is believed that is all it will take to seal the deal, for Gitmo to surely close.”
Recent press reports have been ripe with defense lawyers quoted as saying their clients had been assaulted by guards and medical personnel from as far back as seven years ago and, more recently, detainees beaten who resisted force feedings. So far, none of those reports has provided a single piece of evidence to back up their claims.
The source explained, “The world was an easy sell; ‘hate America’ campaigns overseas have been around for decades. The lawyers need only allege something and the press will report it. This is a battle for the hearts and minds of America that its military is nearing a state of open revolt.”
One news report today seems to bear out the source’s statements:
LONDON (Reuters) — Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards “get their kicks in” before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.
Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.
The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions at Guantanamo, but had concluded that all prisoners were being kept in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
“According to my clients, there has been a ramping up in abuse since President Obama was inaugurated,” said Ghappour, a British-American lawyer with Reprieve, a legal charity that represents 31 detainees at Guantanamo.
“If one was to use one’s imagination, (one) could say that these traumatized, and for lack of a better word barbaric, guards were just basically trying to get their kicks in right now for fear that they won’t be able to later,” he said.
“Certainly in my experience there have been many, many more reported incidents of abuse since the inauguration,” added Ghappour, who has visited Guantanamo six times since late September and based his comments on his own observations and conversations with both prisoners and guards.
He stressed the mistreatment did not appear to be directed from above, but was an initiative undertaken by frustrated U.S. army and navy jailers on the ground. It did not seem to be a reaction against the election of Obama, a Democrat who has pledged to close the prison camp within a year, but rather a realization that there was little time remaining before the last 241 detainees, all Muslim, are released.
The Leftists’ propaganda campaign continues.
