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Prison Abuse Continues
Hmmm...didn't the Bush administration say that the prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib was just an isolated incident perpetrated by a few low-level individuals? So doesn't that mean that prisoners are being properly treated everywhere else? From the Center for American Progress:
Guardsman Posing As Prisoner Brutally Beaten
Guardsman Sean Baker's experience raises serious questions about the charges of abuse in U.S.-run prisons. Sean Baker was a member of the Kentucky National Gaurd unit "assigned to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." While at Guantanamo, Baker "volunteered to put on an orange prison jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee in a training drill." But a five man "immediate response force" was not told of the exercise and Baker was "choked and beaten by fellow [military police] on the steel floor of a 6-by-8 prison cell." Despite yelling the code word ("red") and repeatedly telling his assailants he was a U.S. soldier the beating continued "until the jumpsuit was yanked down in the struggle, revealing his military uniform." Baker suffered serious injuries requiring a 48-day stay at Walter Reed Hospital. According to a September 2003 physical evaluation, "TBI [traumatic brain injury] was due to [the] soldier playing [a] role of [a] detainee who was noncooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise." Baker also suffers from "seizures caused by the beating."
June 18, 2004 in Current Affairs | Permalink


