Coming to a theater near you: Gitmo tapes?
When foreign intelligence agents and law enforcement teams arrived at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to talk to their countrymen held there, a third party was likely listening in on the interrogations, according to a report published today: U.S. officials operating via sound and video recording equipment.
The Washington Post says the policy, revealed in documents it obtained, suggests that the U.S. government could have thousands of hours of taped conversations recorded between detainees and representatives of nearly three dozen countries.
Which opens these questions: Do the tapes still exist? Will the recordings -- sound and video -- surface?
And if so, will they show misbehavior? Threats? Useful intelligence? Or information exonerating a detainee who remains in captivity?
The Post noted:
Should such videotapes exist, they would reveal how representatives from countries such as China, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia treated detainees in small interrogation booths at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba--sessions that some detainees have said were abusive and at times contained threats of torture or even death.
But, the newspaper also said, while defense attorneys have long sought such evidence, the Bush administration has not indicated the tapes exist.
Nonetheless, even as the Pentagon has said it did not "regularly videotape interrogations" at Gitmo, it acknowledged last month that it had recorded at least seven hours of Canadian officials interrogating terrorism suspect Omar Khadr. It acknowledged having the tapes after the Canadian Supreme Court ordered Canadian officials to release them.
-- James Gerstenzang
Pool photo: Randall Mikkelson / Getty Images
