Two Guantanamo guards punished for prisoner abuse

Two Army guards at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have received “administrative punishments” for abusing prisoners since the base’s maximum-security military prison was created in late 2001.

Military officials yesterday said the incidents, which involved Army reservists quarreling with angry prisoners, occurred more than a year ago and were unrelated to the widely publicized abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq.

The abuses at Guantanamo, where U.S. forces are holding about 600 “enemy combatants,” most of whom were captured in Afghanistan in 2001, were handled swiftly with both of the reservists receiving reductions in their rank, said a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command.

Six complaints of abuse have been raised by prisoners at Guantanamo, said Raul Duany, a spokesman at Southern Command headquarters in Miami, which overseas the prison. He said three of the complaints were unsubstantiated and one involved a guard who was exonerated for using pepper spray on a prisoner.

Of the two cases that were resolved with disciplinary action against prison guards, one in April 2003 involved a reservist who hit a prisoner on the head with a radio to break up a fight between the prisoner and another guard, Mr. Duany said. The prisoner then bit the reservist, who in turn hit the prisoner again.

The other case involved a reservist who sprayed a prisoner with a water hose after the prisoner had thrown toilet water at him during a protest in one of the cellblocks, Mr. Duany said. Both reservists were punished with rank reductions from specialist to private first class.

The punishments involved Article 15 proceedings, meaning the two guards did not face courts-martial, but were reprimanded by their immediate supervisors. An official at the Pentagon said the cases had been “resolved” but still were being regarded carefully because of the accusations in Iraq.

“People are thinking that because of the Iraq issue that this is something recent, but this is different,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “I don’t want people to think that there is a similar situation at Guantanamo.”

Military officials said that widely publicized abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib has prompted an inspector general’s review of the way prisoners are treated at other facilities, such as Guantanamo and Navy brigs in Charleston, S.C.

Two U.S. citizens who have been deemed enemy combatants are held at the brigs. During a televised briefing Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said “the U.S. Navy inspector general was asked to assess detainee operations” at the brigs and at Guantanamo.