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Posted on Tue, Jun. 14, 2005 Guantanamo methods include urination, barking
PENTAGON SAYS TOUGH TREATMENT YIELDS INFORMATION
By Drew Brown
KNIGHT RIDDER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has acknowledged using harsh interrogation techniques on a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, providing the first look at how an approved and supervised interrogation plan worked at the prison camp.
The Pentagon said interrogators used "approved and monitored interrogation approaches" on Mohammed al-Qahtani, who the Sept. 11 commission said may have been the would-be 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It said Qahtani's interrogation was guided by "an unequivocal standard of humane treatment" and yielded valuable intelligence information.
The two-page statement from the Pentagon came Sunday after Time magazine published excerpts from a classified, 84-page log detailing U.S. questioning of Qahtani during a 50-day period from November 2002 to early January 2003.
The revelation comes as criticism is rising over the treatment of prisoners who have been at the camp for several years without charges.
Details of interrogation techniques from the log, which the Pentagon authenticated, included forcing Qahtani to urinate on himself after he was given large amounts of intravenous fluid, telling him to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists, and interrogating him for a 12-hour all-night session.
The story also detailed how interrogators played on Qahtani's Muslim beliefs by placing him close to a woman and by having him wear pictures of scantily clad women around his neck.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, acknowledged that officials believed the harsh techniques were responsible for the detailed information that Qahtani provided under questioning.
The Time story said the log was unclear about what methods produced information. It quoted unidentified Pentagon officials as saying some of Qahtani's most valuable confessions came when he was presented with evidence given by other prisoners and that this didn't occur during the period the log covered.
The Pentagon revoked some of the more coercive interrogation measures in January 2003, after military lawyers questioned them.
Qahtani attempted to enter the United States in August 2001 with $2,800 in cash and a one-way airline ticket, but U.S. immigration officials turned him back at Orlando International Airport. American officials think he was supposed to be the fifth hijacker aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
He was captured on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border after fleeing the U.S. bombing at Tora Bora in late 2001 and was transferred to Guantanamo in February 2002.
The Pentagon statement said Qahtani at first gave various cover stories, including being in Afghanistan to buy hunting falcons.
It said Qahtani said he'd been sent to the United States by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the lead planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; had met Osama bin Laden "on several occasions"; had trained at two terrorist camps; and "had been in contact with many senior al-Qaida leaders."
The statement said he provided information on roughly 30 bin Laden bodyguards, who also are being held at Guantanamo.
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