"These documents are the first clear confirmation of what we've suspected all along, that the brig was run as a prison beyond the law. There was an effort to create a Gitmo inside the United States," Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU's National Security Project in New York said, using the slang word for the U.S. naval facility in Cuba.
The paperwork shows uniformed officials at the military brigs growing increasingly uncomfortable and then alarmed that they were being directed to handle their prisoners under Guantanamo rules.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, October 10, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 54 words Type of Material: Correction
Detainees: An article in Wednesday's Section A about harsh treatment of American detainees in U.S. military brigs said documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act provided evidence that the Bush Administration had violated the 5th Amendment's protections against cruel treatment. In fact, it is the 8th Amendment that bars cruel and unusual treatment.
The authors and recipients of the e-mails are censored from the documents. They appear to be directed to either military or Pentagon legal counsel and policy offices.
An officer was still raising alarms about Hamdi's mental state after 14 months behind bars with no contact with lawyers, family or other prisoners.
"I told him the last thing that I wanted to have happen was to send him anywhere from here as a 'basket case,' of use to no one, to include himself," the officer wrote in an e-mail to undisclosed government officials in June 2003. "I fear the rubber band is nearing its breaking point here and not totally confident I can keep his head in the game much longer."
Scores of pages of once-secret legal opinions regarding detainee rights and treatment have been released under the Freedom of Information Act. At least two apparently crucial memos about enemy combatant treatment inside the U.S. have yet to be made public.
Hamdi eventually was released to Saudi Arabia on condition that he renounce his American citizenship.
Padilla, arrested in 2002 on suspicion of plotting to set off a "dirty" radioactive bomb in the U.S. and held as an enemy combatant, was tried on different charges in civilian court. He was convicted of supporting terrorism in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya.
Al-Marri, arrested in 2001 as a material witness to the 9/11 attacks, remains in a military brig. He is appealing his detention to the Supreme Court.
