GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – Sliding a knight into attack mode, a terror suspect teaches his interrogator chess, pausing briefly to look at a manual U.S. officials believe holds key intelligence.
Next door, a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit pours tea from a thermos and smokes a cigarette while he laughs with a female interrogator who hands him a mug shot of a man with piercing ebony eyes.
A two-day tour of Guantanamo Bay afforded the most extensive access ever allowed independent journalists, allowing views of 50 detainees, including those in maximum security.
The Associated Press witnessed three interrogations through mirrored glass with the sound turned off. One was in the part of camp reserved for problem detainees and prisoners believed to be holding important information.
No armed guards were present at interrogations, and officers said they were never used during sessions. They said each detainee is generally questioned twice a week, with sessions usually lasting two to four hours for a maximum 15 hours a day.
The scenes were vastly different from those at Abu Ghraib, the U.S.-run prison in Iraq where some troops are accused of abusing detainees. But interrogation techniques used here were recommended for Abu Ghraib by the Guantanamo center’s former commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, and critics have questioned whether that is an indication abuses happened here, too.
Miller and other officials have denied that any Guantanamo detainee has been mistreated.
“This is a wholly different environment,” said Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, who succeeded Miller in March.
Getting them to talk
Two of the interrogation sessions observed were at Camp Delta’s normal detention center. The other session viewed was at Camp 5, where alleged leaders, problem detainees and prisoners believed to have high intelligence value are held.
One problem detainee asked to see his interrogator. Although the detainee appeared silent much of the time, the interrogator viewed the session as a success, saying the man finally talked.
After the interrogator and linguist left the room, the bearded young man laughed and talked to what could have been another detainee, next door in the shower.
“Sometimes this detainee is very funny; other times he is not funny at all,” said a female interrogator, who often brings the prisoners mint tea and Fig Newton cookies. “Sometimes they are very pleasant at one moment, and then they tell you calmly and proudly about how they killed someone.”
The senior interrogator, who along with other interrogators spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “We’ve learned about recruiting, how terror cells are financed, their capabilities and plans that have been sitting on the table for attacks.”
Last month, one prisoner unwilling to talk for more than a year opened up, the interrogator said. The burly chess player has been steadily cooperative.
“He often tells his chess opponents, ‘Attack, attack, attack!’ You learn an awful lot about some of these people from very simple methods,” said the interrogator, who occasionally brings the prisoner hot fudge sundaes from the McDonald’s on the base.
The manual near the board was thought to contain prime intelligence information that officials want the suspects to help interpret. Interrogators refused to describe it further.
Before moving to Abu Ghraib, Miller instituted a reward system to encourage more cooperation from detainees.
One is a field trip held in medium-security Camp 4, where detainees can exercise every day and keep more items, including letters and books, in their cells.
About five of the 100 prisoners at Camp 4 are taken out about twice a week. Interrogators say the trips build trust and prompt detainees to divulge more information.
The rights of detainees
The first detainees arrived strapped into a cargo plane 21/2 years ago, shackled, bound and blindfolded. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, accused of links to the fallen Taliban regime or al-Qaida.
Officials believed the base’s remote location on foreign soil would deny prisoners U.S. constitutional protections, but the Supreme Court ruled last week that the 595 prisoners from 42 countries – all but three held without charge and denied lawyers – can challenge their detentions in U.S. courts.
Military lawyers are trying to determine how the ruling could affect operations here as well as a panel reviewing individual detentions and future tribunals.
Three prisoners – an Australian, a Sudanese and a Yemeni – have been charged with crimes ranging from conspiracy to commit war crimes to aiding the enemy, and they will be tried by military tribunals hoped to begin before Dec. 31.
But lawyers plan a flurry of challenges to the Supreme Court ruling.
The Guantanamo camp was criticized when it opened after pictures showed shackled prisoners being locked into hastily constructed metal enclosures that rights activists compared to animal cages.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only independent group allowed to visit detainees, publicly rebuked conditions in October, contending the prolonged detention harmed detainees’ mental health.
Disputing reports that few detainees here still retain any value as sources of intelligence about terrorist activities, two interrogators said most prisoners have either killed someone or helped in an operational capacity.
Different prisoner camps
Associated Press reporters were allowed inside a room with four prisoners during a trip to an area called Camp Iguana after the lizards that amble around the complex.
The area is screened from view by green netting, and the detainees are allowed to sit on a hilltop and look at the Caribbean or play soccer. Most opt for air conditioning against the 100-degree heat and watch movies in a trailer that also has a pingpong table.
One prisoner asked a commander in perfect English if the visitors were journalists and if he could speak to them. When told the visitors were reporters but he could not talk to them, he smiled and said that he and his friend were journalists. The Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera has said that one of its cameramen is wrongfully detained at Guantanamo.
The mood was less relaxed in the other camps, where open-air cell blocks made of chain-link fences allow detainees to see each other and chat. Most prisoners turned their backs to avoid being photographed. Some looked curious or nodded in greeting.
When a prisoner began criticizing American journalism, an officer hurried the visitors away from the cells, where angry detainees have been known to throw feces at guards.
Detainees in Camp 5 – which holds about 50 of 100 detainees considered uncooperative or high-intelligence value – stay in an air-conditioned concrete building in cells closed with metal doors and a strip covering an internal window.
A commander peeled back the tape to give a glimpse. In one cell, a man was curled up asleep, a prosthetic leg lying below his mattress.
The commander said the men – many with unkempt black beards – have developed their own cell routines. Many read and reread letters from home or study the Quran, Islam’s holy book. Most observe the call to prayer that crackles over the loudspeaker five times daily.
A few look at the sunlight shining into cell windows, reaching their arms up and looping their fingers around the metal mesh.
One such photograph was censored by military officers who reviewed the Associated Press portfolio. They also would not allow publication of others they said might reveal the identities of detainees.
“The mission is, of course, more sensitive because we are under a microscope,” said Army 1st Lt. Romel Santos, a 25-year-old guard from San Jose, Calif. “But as long as we keep doing the right thing, we’re good to go. I think we’re doing that already.”
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