A Nightmare World of Torture and Prison Guard Suicides At Gitmo

[babylonsister]

Gitmo Tortures the Guards Too
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2008-02-27 15:25. Media

A Nightmare World of Torture and Prison Guard Suicides
Confessions of a Gitmo Guard
By DEBBIE NATHAN, www.counterpunch.org


A psychiatrist who has treated former military personnel at Guantánamo prison camp is telling a story of prisoner torture and guard suicide there, recounted to him by a National Guardsman who worked at Guantánamo just after it opened.

Dr. John R. Smith, 75, is a Oklahoma City psychiatrist who has done worked at military posts during the past few years. He is also a consultant for the University of Oklahoma's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Services, and is affiliated with the Veteran's Affairs Administration Hospital in Oklahoma City. The court-appointed psychiatric examination of Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, was conducted by Smith. A few years ago, he became a contract physician, treating active duty members of the US military in need of psychotherapy.

Smith spoke on February 22, 2008, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, held in Washington DC. His presentation dealt with the psychological impact on guards of working at Guantánamo. He focused on a chilling case history, of a patient he called "Mr. H."
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Smith described Mr. H as a blue-collar Latino in his 40s who had done routine service in the National Guard for years before being called up to Kuwait. Then, shortly after 9/11, he was diverted from Kuwait to Guantánamo . The detention camp had just opened. Mr. H was deployed there to work as a guard.

Untrained for the job, Mr. H was taken aback by the detainees. They threw feces and urine on him, said Smith, and tried to get him to sneak letters out, telling him that if he didn't, "they would see to it that his family suffered the consequences." The prisoners also mocked Mr. H, that his being in the military made him "a traitor" to Latinos and other minorities. Mr. H was confused and terrified.

Meanwhile, according to Smith, "this good Catholic man with a family who had pretty much always followed the rules" was called on to participate in torture. One of his jobs was "to take detainees to certain places and see that they were handcuffed in difficult positions, usually naked, in anticipation of interrogation." Mr. H often watched the questioning. He saw prisoners pushed until they fell down, then cut. They responded to the torture with "defecation, vomiting, urinating," and "psychotic reactions: bizarre screaming and crying."

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