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Insider book to reveal torture in Guantanamo
The Australian has reported that an insider book exposing Guantanamo bay torture is to be released later this year. The book is written by Erik Saar, a former Seargent in the US Army who served as a translator in Guantanamo in the first 6 months of the opening of that camp, and is to be titled "Inside the Wire".
Nine pages of the manuscript have been leaked, and they describe the use of sexual torture designed to attack the faith of Guantanamo inmates. Importantly, the manuscript confirms some of the allegations made by Habib, who returned home to Sydney last night.
The fact that particular allegations made by Habib have been confirmed significantly increases the reliability of his testimony. In other words, it makes it far more likely that the other allegations are true. Together with confirmation that the Bush administration obtained and passed on legal advice with a bizarrely constrained definition of torture, with corroborating evidence from other Guantanamo captives, and with the confirmed torture undertaken in Abu Ghraib, it is now difficult for even the most obstinate to deny that torture takes place at Guantanamo and that Habib would have been subjected to that torture.
Even if there were not all this corroborating evidence, the circumstances of the incarceration - being held in an isolated location where conditions cannot be effectively monitored by third parties, and for the explicitly stated purpose of preventing the prisoners from having access to the United States system of justice - raises a presumption in favour of accepting the allegations.
Even some members of our own police forces have in the past been known to beat suspects, to verbal them (that is, create fabricated confessions), and engage in other tortures. This was done even with the shadow of the law being ever-present, and has resulted in changes to evidence rules in an attempt to eradicate the practice. But Guantanamo has been established beyond the jurisdiction of the US law. It is a lawless zone where the jailors have nothing to fear from engaging in torture. In such circumstances, torture is not just possible - it is the most likely outcome.
Given that the leaked pages must constitute only a small portion of Behind the Wires, we have to wonder what revelations will appear in the rest.