Guantanmo interrogators trained by torture school instructors

SALON has learned that interrogators working at Guantanamo Bay were given instruction in tactics and technique from a US Army school that trains soldiers to survive torture.

Salon magazine uncovered evidence of the link between the two military entities in documents turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union. The report shows that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay received instruction from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school at Fort Bragg, N. C.. The Army declined a request for an interview, and commented that “We do not teach interrogation techniques.”

Excerpts from the registation restricted article follow…

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A March 22, 2005, sworn statement by the former chief of the Interrogation Control Element at Guantánamo said instructors from SERE also taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba.

“When I arrived at GTMO,” reads the statement, “my predecessor arranged for SERE instructors to teach their techniques to the interrogators at GTMO … The instructors did give some briefings to the Joint Interrogation Group interrogators.”

“This is the missing link,” declared Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights. “It is proof that the SERE training was in fact used, for a time at least, as a basis for interrogations at Guantánamo.” “That is what I inferred had happened,” agreed retired Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis, former commanding general of the Southeast Regional Army Medical Command, “but I have never seen this documented anywhere.” The sworn statement suggests that Fort Bragg was the incubator of the abuse that later migrated from Guantánamo to Abu Ghraib, and is further evidence of the systematic nature of torture in the war on terror.

The interrogations chief, whose name is redacted, but who is listed as serving at Guantánamo from December 2002 until June 2003, asserts that instructors from the SERE school taught techniques to interrogators at Guantánamo sometime before his arrival, a period when the Department of Defense was developing some of the aggressive and controversial interrogation protocols that later surfaced in Iraq. The statement was produced as part of an investigation by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt into alleged “degrading and abusive” treatment of prisoner Mohammed al-Khatani, the so-called 20th hijacker.

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http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Salon__Guantanmo_interrogators_trained_by_0629.html