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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (45400)	5/6/2004 8:14:50 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 89467

U.S. Disciplines 2 Guantanamo Bay Guards By PAISLEY DODDS Associated Press Writer May 5, 2004, 6:46 PM EDT SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Promising a broader investigation, the U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that two guards at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had been disciplined over allegations of prisoner abuse. Air Force Capt. Laurie Arellano, a spokeswoman at Southern Command in Miami, also said a third U.S. guard faced abuse allegations but was cleared of wrongdoing. The two guards were given administrative punishments, which often range from letters of reprimand to base restrictions, Arellano told The Associated Press. She said it was not clear what type of abuse allegedly occurred or whether any of the three guards were still at Guantanamo, where some 600 detainees are being held on alleged links to Afghanistan's Taliban regime or al-Qaida network. Military officials were still investigating the three cases, which had not been submitted to a court, and whether any other complaints of prisoner abuse had been made. The revelations came as Guantanamo's former commander, Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, apologized Wednesday for the "illegal or unauthorized acts" committed by U.S. soldiers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Photographs showed Iraqi prisoners being abused by smiling American guards at the notorious Saddam Hussein-era prison. Miller has taken charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq. He was the commander of Guantanamo from October 2002 to March 2004 and has said he was able to increase the amount of valuable intelligence tips gleaned from detainees during interrogations. The hard-nosed general attributed the success to a system of rewards given to detainees and said officials were working to make the detainees' incarceration more comfortable. When the first batch of detainees arrived at the prison camp in eastern Cuba in 2001, the world reacted angrily to pictures of the detainees hooded, shackled and kneeling outside of the chain-link cells of Camp X-ray, a temporary open-air prison that has since been replaced by the sprawling Camp Delta, which has more than 1,000 cells. Criticism from human rights groups lessened when the detainees were moved into their permanent cells but spiked again after a rash of suicide attempts. There have been at least 34 suicide attempts since the mission began in January 2001. In its strongest public rebuke, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in October it found "a worrying deterioration" in mental health among many prisoners. Some Afghan detainees recently released from Guantanamo complained that they had been subjected to sleep deprivation and not provided with Qurans in their cells but none of the allegations were as severe as those being raised in Iraq. The criticism came as Miller, who had planned to stay in Guantanamo for two years, came under more scrutiny over a string of arrests of U.S. military officials and contractors. U.S. Air Force translator Senior Airman Ahmad Al Halabi was the first to be arrested last year and charged with 17 counts, including espionage. His court martial is set for April 27. A naturalized American born in Syria, Al Halabi, 25, was accused of attempting to deliver more than 180 e-mail messages from detainees to Syria and of failing to report contacts with the Syrian Embassy to his superiors. Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press newsday.com