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Report: Gitmo questioners used sex against Muslims

Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching and wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear, according to an insider's written account.

A draft manuscript obtained by the Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk.

It's the most revealing account so far of interrogations at the secretive detention camp, where officials say they have halted some controversial techniques.

"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the author, former Army Sgt. Erik R. Saar, 29, told the AP.

Saar didn't provide the manuscript or approach the AP, but confirmed the authenticity of nine draft pages the news service obtained. He requested his hometown remain private so he wouldn't be harassed. Saar, who is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent, worked as an Arabic translator at the U.S. camp in eastern Cuba from December 2002 to June 2003. At the time, it was under the command of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had a mandate to get better intelligence from prisoners, including alleged al-Qaida members caught in Afghanistan.

Saar said he witnessed about 20 interrogations and about three months after his arrival at the remote U.S. base he started noticing "disturbing" practices.

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren't their wives.

Beginning in April 2003, "there hung a short skirt and thong underwear on the hook on the back of the door" of one interrogation team's office, he writes. "Later I learned that this outfit was used for interrogations by one of the female civilian contractors ... on a team which conducted interrogations in the middle of the night on Saudi men who were refusing to talk."

Some Guantanamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by "prostitutes."

Events Saar describes resemble two previous reports of abusive female interrogation tactics, although it wasn't possible to independently verify his account.

In November, in response to an AP request, the military described an April 2003 incident in which a female interrogator took off her uniform top, exposed her T-shirt, ran her fingers through a detainee's hair and sat on his lap. A supervisor immediately ended the session, and the interrogator received a written reprimand and additional training, the military said.

Sexual tactics used by female interrogators have been criticized by the FBI, which complained in a letter obtained by the AP last month that U.S. defense officials hadn't acted on complaints by FBI observers of "highly aggressive" interrogation techniques, including one in which a female interrogator grabbed a detainee's genitals.

About 20 percent of the guards at Guantanamo are women, said Lt. Col. James Marshall, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command. He wouldn't say how many of the interrogators were women.

Marshall wouldn't address whether the U.S. military had a specific strategy to use women.

"U.S. forces treat all detainees and conduct all interrogations, wherever they may occur, humanely and consistent with U.S. legal obligations, and in particular with legal obligations prohibiting torture," Marshall said late Wednesday.

But some officials at the U.S. Southern Command have questioned the formation of an all-female team as one of Guantanamo's Immediate Reaction Force units that subdue troublesome male prisoners in their cells, according to a document classified as secret and obtained by the AP.

In one incident, dated June 19, 2004, "The detainee appears to be genuinely traumatized by a female escort securing the detainee's leg irons," according to the document, a U.S. Southern Command summary of videotapes shot when the teams were used.

The summary warned that anyone outside Department of Defense channels should be prepared to address allegations that women were used intentionally with Muslim men.

At Guantanamo, Saar said, "Interrogators were given a lot of latitude under Miller," the commander who went from the prison in Cuba to overseeing prisons in Iraq, where the Abu Ghraib scandal shocked the world with pictures revealing sexual humiliation of naked prisoners. Several female troops have been charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Saar said he volunteered to go to Guantanamo because "I really believed in the mission," but then he became disillusioned during his six months at the prison.

After leaving the Army with more than four years' service, Saar worked as a contractor briefly for the FBI.

The Department of Defense has censored parts of his draft, mainly blacking out people's names, Saar said. He needed permission to publish because he signed a disclosure statement before going to Guantanamo.

The book, Inside the Wire, is due out this year from Penguin Press. Guantanamo has about 545 prisoners from some 40 countries, many held more than three years without charge or access to lawyers and many suspected of links to al-Qaida or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.

[Last modified January 28, 2005, 00:22:07]