JURIST : Prostitutes used in Gitmo torture, lawyer for Australian detainee says.
A Personal Blog
by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
My Publications | e-mail
All opinions on this blog are those of the author(s) and not their employer(s) unelss otherwise specified.
Who Reads Discourse.net?
Readers describe themselves.
Please join in.Reader Map
Recent Comments
- Brooks Fudenberg on I Voted
- Jermaine Chad Ingram on Some Thoughts about the Downballot (Voters’ Guide Part II: Judicial Retention Elections)
- C.E. Petit on I Voted
- Jane Moscowitz on I Voted
- Ally Figueroa on Some Thoughts about the Downballot (Voters’ Guide Part II: Judicial Retention Elections)
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 52 other subscribers
This is the “ugly gitmo allegation,” according to the article you link to: “Habib allegedly told his lawyer that a prostitute stood over him naked while he was strapped to the floor and menstruated on him.”
Now, that does sound ugly. After all, who wants to be menstruated on? But it does sound a little bit implausible. Think of the logistical challenge of finding a prostitute at the right time of the month (it’s not as if women who have periods are constantly bleeding as from a wound).
Anyway, would menstrual blood even drip down from this alleged prostitute rather than going down her leg? He doesn’t say that the woman squatted over him, but that she stood over him.
Frankly, this sounds like the fantasy of a sexually repressed and twisted guy who knows very little about women.
js: Consider this story that just came out on the AP:
“SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man’s face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider’s written account. (…)
The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner’s reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn’t wash.
Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man’s wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean.
“The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength,” says the draft, stamped “Secret.”
The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes.
“She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee,” he says. “As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, ‘Who sent you to Arizona?’ He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred.
“She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward” so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle.
“He began to cry like a baby,” the draft says, noting the interrogator left saying, “Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself.””
About the manuscript’s author: “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.”
It just gets worse and worse. And the only hope we’ve got that this gang of criminals will get what’s coming to them is a German court’s possible orders of extradition that some Bush-appointed judge will laugh at and then use for toilet paper.
Does anybody else get the feeling that we’re living in Germany ca. 1937?