Judge Halts Groin Searches at Guantánamo, Calling Them Abhorrent to Muslims

[Ichingcarpenter]

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday ordered the military to stop touching the groins of detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, when they are moved from their cells to speak with lawyers. The procedure had led some prisoners to stop meeting with or calling their lawyers.


In a 35-page opinion, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, called the searches — which included guards wedging their hands between the genitals and thighs of the detainees as many as four times when moving them to a meeting and back to their cells — “religiously and culturally abhorrent” to Muslims. He portrayed the procedure as unnecessary and intended to “actively discourage” meetings with lawyers.

He said the warden, Col. John Bogdan, must return to a longtime procedure in which guards shake the underwear of detainees by the band to dislodge any contraband, but do not to touch their buttocks or genitals.

He also directed the military to allow detainees who are weak from hunger strikes to meet with their lawyers in the same buildings in which they are housed, and to stop using new transport vans that have low roofs that detainees had said required them to be painfully crouched while shackled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/us/judge-halts-groin-searches-at-guantanamo-calling-them-abhorrent-to-muslims.html?_r=0


Well this news out to help middle east relations.........

good grief..... give this place back to the Cubans

[Kolesar]

1. And you thought your job sucked

Job Opening: Genital searching guard
Rate: GS-4
Requirements: Non allergy to latex
HS degree or equivalent
Travel is required

[bemildred]

4. Indeed, my first thought, what a shitty job.

Probably literally shitty, too. I'l bet they go through boxes of gloves.

Edit: I mean, you have to ask, who is being degraded more, the guard or the prisoner?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

15. I suspect that the answer is the prisoners. The guards can obtain transfers and not re-enlist.

[bemildred]

17. I get what you mean, but I'm not sure if I had to pick, I'd choose to be the guard.

Either, if you see?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

20. I have no sympathy for these Army guards. If they had any honor and sense of decency, they'd refuse

[bemildred]

22. That's what I'm saying. nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. The Stanford Prison Guard experiment

shows that guards can get off on abusive behavior so I wouldn't joke about it.


The guards have it pretty easy off work.



A guard with four years in the Navy, with the rank of petty officer 3rd class, gets $2,985.84 a month, including the same hazardous duty pay as they’d pull in Kabul. A Navy commander with 15 years but no kids gets $7,840 a month, including hazardous duty pay.

But Guantánamo’s a place where today an Army colonel can talk about “the battle rhythm” of the camps, have his family on the base and his kids in the base’s school system, which currently has 247 students.

Prison staff have their own gym, housing and newsletter, dining rooms and first-run movie theater at “Camp America,” adjacent to the camps. They have their own chapel, mental health services and mini-mart that was recently peddling a $99.99 SCUBA “bodyglove” and tacky souvenirs such as Cuba Libre-Gitmo fridge magnets and a full aisle of protein supplements.

Guards and other staff also cross over to the larger Navy base for the programs of any sailor or contractor pulling permanent duty on the base — a golf course and deep-sea diving, beach parties and fishing trips.

They can hit the Irish pub, which was built after the al-Qaida airlifts began, take classes over the Internet, which were established once the prison was opened, and can grab McDonald’s drive-through on their way to work.

And that’s just for the guards.

Both captives and captors also have their own kitchen, health services, transportation and security services all fueled by a steady supply line.

In their cellblocks, cooperative captives get satellite television with sports, news and religious programming as well as Arabic soap operas. Pentagon contract workers maintain a 24,000-title book, video and magazine library and are building yet another soccer field for cooperative captives. Unless they’re hunger strikers fed Ensure through tubes tethered through their nose into the stomach, each detainee is offered up to 4,500 calories a day — including lamb certified as halal, Islam’s version of kosher.

“We are running a five-star resort and not a detention facility for terrorists,” says Florida Republican Rep. Allen West, the fiscal conservative and former Army lieutenant colonel who toured the facility in March. “For example, why do they need 24 cable TV channels?”

Soldiers and sailors consistently gripe that the Internet is slow inside their private quarters, which mostly range from trailer parks to townhouses.

But, unlike in Afghanistan, some prison camp staff officers have brought their families, gotten suburban-style housing and put the kids in the Navy base school. Sailors said it is better than ship duty. Sure it’s surrounded by water. But you get private quarters, scuba diving and can check in on weekends at guest housing complete with big-screen TVs and backyard patio with barbecue grill.

“This is great. You get the opportunity to serve your country and nobody’s shooting at us. Plus, there’s no mortars coming in,” said Army Staff Sgt. Fred Plimpton, 55, who was a New York state trooper who was dispatched to Ground Zero on 9/11 and later deployed to Baghdad.

And, it’s close enough to home that members of the New York Army National Guard infantry unit now patrolling the prison camps’ perimeter can race home if there’s an emergency.

“Peter’s wife just had a baby and we got him right home,” Plimpton said in September. “Moffit’s wife went into labor and we got him out of here right away. It’s good to see the guys get out of here when a baby’s born.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/08/v-fullstory/2493042/guantanamo-bay-the-most-expensive.html#storylink=cpy

[warrant46]

2. Thank the powers that be for this primitive cult ritual

Any wonder why outsiders see the keeping of this gulag differently than the average sheeple

Training marines for their civilian jobs in the nations prisons

[AnotherMcIntosh]

18. You falsely say "Training marines." The only guards are ARMY guards.

To the extent that there is any Naval personnel at the camp, none of them are Marines. All of them Navy medical staff.
http://www.military1.com/army/article/403016-guantanamo-prison-getting-guard-reinforcements

No Marines are either guards or in the medical staff.

[warrant46]

25. Well I stand corrected by you

It doesn't matter what branch they are in they are still

"Only Followink Orders"

Imagine your whole life grabbing and fondling some guys "Junk" for a living

[AnotherMcIntosh]

27. If "It doesn't matter what branch they are in," why did you falsely say that they were Marine guards

[warrant46]

29. Well maybe this will help--- Maybe you were there Eh?

Since I grew up in Canada I have a different view of Cuba and the U.S. Marines than you do.




http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1214628/us-marine-guards-fire-rubber-bullets-guantanamo-inmates-during-unrest


US Marine guards fire rubber bullets on Guantanamo inmates during unrest

US Marine guards use 'less-than-lethal' force to quell inmates 'armed with improvised weapons'

Guards at Camp Delta prison at the Guantanamo Bay naval base fired several non-lethal shots to quell prisoner unrest as they relocated inmates into individual cells, US military officials said.

Weeks of mounting tensions between the military and detainees escalated into violence on Saturday during a raid in which guards forced prisoners living in communal housing to move to individual cells.

reporting by McClatchy Tribune, Agence France-Presse

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-06-guantanamo_x.htm?POE=click-refer

Marine statement indicates Guantanamo guards bragged about beatings


CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) — The Pentagon said Friday that it will investigate a Marine's sworn statement that guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as a common practice.

The Marine, a paralegal who was at the U.S. Navy station in Cuba last month, alleges that several guards she talked to at the base club said they routinely hit detainees.

"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others' stories of beating detainees."

The woman's name was blacked out of a copy of a two-page affidavit provided to The Associated Press by a civilian defense attorney working with Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps' defense coordinator for the Western United States and based at Camp Pendleton.

http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/85389:guant%C3%A1namo-bay-the-inside-story

Guantánamo Bay: the Inside Story

Guantánamo Bay: the Inside Story
A Marine guards the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. (Photo: watchingamerica.com)


http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/national/BO30421/



Military investigators said in July 2005 they confirmed abusive and degrading treatment of a suspected terrorist at Guantanamo Bay that included forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog.

However, the chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, said "no torture occurred" during the interrogation of Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Read more: http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/national/BO30421/#ixzz2YvydqSlo

[AnotherMcIntosh]

31. No, I was not there. I'm just a person who likes the truth.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

32. The most recent information is that any guards from the Naval Dept "were replaced by Army MPs."

This was noted in the response to your post #2 at #18.

http://www.military1.com/army/article/403016-guantanamo-prison-getting-guard-reinforcements

[warrant46]

26. approximately $150 million.

At the Pentagon, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said the Defense Department did not have a specific figure but said the detention center’s annual operating budget had been “relatively steady at approximately $150 million.”

President Barack Obama in a policy speech at the National Defense University last month crunched the same operating costs this way: “During a time of budget cuts, we spend $150 million each year to imprison 166 people — almost $1 million per prisoner.”

The U.S. Southern Command said Wednesday it has requested additional guards for the prison camps at Guantánamo, with the goal of reaching a 2,000-strong staff at the detention center of 166 captives.

Time to cut food stamps for the poor !! there is a deficit you know </sarcasm>

[WinkyDink]

3. How about "abhorrent to all human beings"?

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. +1 n/t

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. saw this sarcastic comment

What a shame! Depriving the detainees that special feeling that air passengers are privileged to receive every time we board a commercial airline.

[pnwmom]

13. +1. n/t

[KoKo]

7. There is still human torture going on in GITMO ....only now it is not called torture it's excused as

We have nowhere to send these people who have not been found guilty of any wrongdoing so we will Force Feed them, Groin Search them and keep them Shackled as an example of how powerful we are.

It's inhumane what is going on in Gitmo and even in our own Prisons here in the USA. Who knows what other places around the world that the "torture" is still going on. It wasn't just Bush/Cheney. We know that now.

[GeorgeGist]

8. Maybe I'm wrong ...

but I'm guessing groin searches are done BECAUSE they are offensive to Muslims.

[Bay Boy]

9. Being checked for a DUI is abhorrent to...

...the religion that I just made up. So if I'm weaving down the road and a cop pulls me over I don't want him to make me walk a straight line or take a breathalyzer either, and of course no blood alcohol testing either.

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Wow next time ask to get your balls groped

you must be missing something, don't forget to cough.

[malaise]

10. No country operating a war crimes prison can expect to

be viewed as the beacon of freedom, democracy, rule of law or basic decency.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

14. The groin searches are obviously abhorrent.

Both at Gitmo and at our airports.

Even Obama knows this.

[Ichingcarpenter]

16. Obama couldn't stop it because?

He has a private jet?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

19. because no one who has made a signifigant campaign contribution has asked him to stop.

Small contributors don't count.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

21. because no one who may be a future employer has asked him to stop.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

23. because there is no one within his circle of friends who have the decency to ask him to stop.

[Solly Mack]

24. K&R

[Ino]

28. If only they'd stop the groin searches at the airport

which are abhorrent to EVERYONE.

[ForeignandDomestic]

30. They just want to know...

If there are any Jihadist hiding in your pants at the airport, so they send them to Syria with money and weapons to fight a proxy war there on behalf of the French, British, United States and Saudi governments.

[cali]

33. Makes me feel physically ill and horribly angry