Thousands of Guantanamo interrogations were taped: report
WASHINGTON (AFP) — More than 24,000 interrogations of suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo prison camp were videotaped, though the US military has not confirmed the videos exist, a report said Thursday.
A spokesman for the "war on terror" camp told AFP that while officials monitor interrogations, the prison was not required to videotape them and did not do it on a routine basis.
But professors and students at Seton Hall University School of Law released a report which cites officials documents that they said provide new evidence that the government has recorded interrogations at Guantanamo.
They cite a May 2005 internal report from Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley in which he wrote: "All interrogations are videotaped."
A month later, Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt issued another report saying that 24,000 interrogations took place at the US naval base in the southeast tip of Cuba between 2002-2005, they said.
"Records indicate that an infrastructure for videotaping exists at Guantanamo," the Seton Hall Law report says. "Cameras are positioned in every interrogation room, and each room is monitored from elsewhere."
But Guantanamo spokesman Rick Haupt said Kiley's statement "is erroneous," adding that his report was by a medical authority, not intelligence services.
"JTF (Joint Task Force) Guantanamo is not required to videotape interrogations and did not routinely do so," Haupt said.
"That said, we always monitor interrogations, in accordance with DoD (Department of Defense) Directives for the purpose of interrogation oversight and to ensure safe and humane treatment of detainees," he said.
In December, the CIA sparked outrage when it acknowledged that it had destroyed videotapes showing the interrogations of two suspected terrorists.
"The two CIA tapes that were destroyed were only a tiny fraction of perhaps 24,000 recorded interrogations," the report's authors said.
The report was written under the direction of Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux, who represents several Guantanamo detainees.
The school of law report was released the same week the Pentagon announced that military prosecutors were seeking the death penalty against six Al-Qaeda detainees on murder and conspiracy charges in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"Our students proved that Guantanamo interrogations were videotaped, which impacts the impending trials of the six detainees," Denbeaux said in a statement.
"We all want to see the perpetrators of 9/11 punished," he said.
"But if the tapes of those interrogations still exist, it is imperative that we understand, before these trials start, whether the information was obtained through standard interrogation procedures or through torture."
