Lawmaker calls for hearings into "faked" Gitmo interrogations News
Lawmaker calls for hearings into "faked" Gitmo interrogations

[JURIST] US Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) [official website] Wednesday called on House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. to hold hearings to probe recent allegations that the military staged interrogations at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST report] to deceive visiting lawmakers. Schiff’s request comes one week after former Army Sgt. Erik Saar, who served as a Guantanamo Bay translator and recently published a book about his expertiences called Inside the Wire [book profile], told reporters that prisoner interrogations were staged to give politicians the impression that intelligence information was being gathered from detainees on a regular basis and in a civil manner. Schiff was a member of a congressional delegation that visited Guantanamo in May 2004 to witness interrogations of suspected Taliban or Al Qaeda prisoners, and stated that the questioning appeared to be civil. Now-released internal FBI memos from agents at Guantanamo have since indicated that detainees were shackled in painful positions and exposed to torture techniques before and during interrogation. AP has more.