Info rgarding detainees

[TEX <tex@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>]

Here is some more info regarding how the current detainees are being
treated (humanely), versus how they COULD be treated (inhumanely).


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2002/jan/29/012908818.html


> Today: January 29, 2002 at 10:39:40 PST
>
> U.S. Ex-POWs Say Guantanamo Is Fine
>
> LITTLE ROCK, Ark.- Don't tell retired U.S. Navy Lt. Stephen Harris about
the difficulties of being an Afghan war detainee in Cuba. He was tortured,
beaten and starved in North Korea - a far cry, he says, from what's
happening in Camp X-Ray.
>
> The 158 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters held at the Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base are being interrogated by American authorities seeking
information to help the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
>
> Some U.S. allies, as well as human rights groups, have criticized the
conditions under which the prisoners are being held and have pushed the
United States to designate the detainees as prisoners of war, which would
guarantee them greater protections under the Geneva Convention.
>
> U.S. officials have said the detainees are being treated humanely and
that they do not qualify as prisoners of war. The International Red Cross
has been allowed to visit the captives.
>
> Many former POWs say that, regardless of the prisoners' status,
conditions at Camp X-Ray are far different from those they were forced to
endure.
>
> They remember forced marches in freezing temperatures with little
clothing, minuscule food rations, regular beatings, torture, executions,
cramped cells with little or no light, no books or writing utensils,
nothing to keep their minds off the grueling conditions.
>
> "In the entire 6 1/2 years I was a prisoner of war, I never saw the Red
Cross," said retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Orson Swindle, now a federal
trade commissioner in Washington, D.C.
>
> Swindle, a former fighter pilot, was shot down over Vietnam in November
1966 and remained in captivity until March 1973.
>
> "I was taken into a cave, tied up, put in a pit and they'd bring people
in to see me ... they'd all have rocks and sticks ... and my main goal was
to keep my head down so I didn't get my eyes put out," Swindle remembered.
>
> In contrast, Swindle said, the detainees at Camp X-Ray are being held in
open-air cells with walls of chain-link fence in tropical temperatures
that hover in the low-80s. The detainees have been issued prayer (skull)
caps and are allowed to pray five times a day.
>
> Upon arrival in Cuba, they were allowed to mail a letter home to let
relatives know of their situation. Officials have said the prisoners will
be allowed to grow back their beards and long hair that many Muslim men
wear. They're also getting pita bread with their meals now, and officials
are considering requests to give them access to tea and books.
>
> The former POWs point out that designation as a prisoner of war does not
guarantee humane treatment.
>
> Retired Air Force Col. James Hughes of Magnolia, Ark., spent six years
in a North Vietnamese prison camp.
>
> "We had absolutely no rights over there. We were a commodity," he said.
"These people (in Cuba) are down there in warm country and they're dressed
appropriately. ... I was in solitary confinement three years out of the
six."
>
> Harris was an intelligence officer aboard the USS Pueblo when the boat
was attacked and captured off the coast of North Korea in 1968. He was
held by the North Koreans for 11 months without prisoner of war status,
but said he considered himself one.
>
> "What else would we be? We were captured in a combat situation between
two countries that are not friendly to each other," he said in a telephone
interview from his home in Melrose, Mass.
>
> Harris said the situation is different with the detainees in Cuba, who
are from 25 countries.
>
> To be prisoners of war, "you're assumed to be combatants on behalf of a
state," he said. "But these guys are stateless because Afghanistan was
ruled by the Taliban, which for all practical purposes doesn't exist
anymore. So if a day of repatriation were to come, where would they be
repatriated to?"
>
> John Klumpp, of Marble Falls, Texas, is the national commander of the
American Ex-Prisoners of War organization. He was a prisoner in Germany
during World War II.
>
> "I don't think these people should be considered POWs. We're dealing
with a bunch of killers, not military people," he said.


Clint "Tex" Payton
email: tex@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu