The letter says US soldiers have used “highly aggressive interrogation techniques” on prisoners

WASHINGTON, December 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - FBI agents saw military interrogators use abusive tactics on prisoners at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, US officials said.

The account of abuses and tortures in 2002 involving detainees was contained in a July letter from FBI counterterrorism official Thomas Harrington, to Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, and was confirmed Monday, December 6, by Pentagon and Justice Department officials, Reuters news agency reported Tuesday, December 7.

Harrington, who headed a group of investigators which visited the base, detailed incidents including one in which a female Army interrogator grabbed a male prisoner's genitals and bent his thumbs backward.

Lt. Col. Gerard Healy, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, declined to identify the woman interrogator but said the allegations about her conduct were being examined by Army criminal investigators.

Two other incidents he described included a prisoner who was menaced by a dog and placed into isolation and another detainee whose mouth was covered with duct tape.

The US military held about 550 non-US citizens at the Guantanamo base, nearly all without charges or access to lawyers.

More than 200 have either been released or transferred to the control of their own governments since the American Supreme Court endorsed the right of Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their captivity in American courts.

“Highly Aggressive”

In his letter, Harrington referred to the incidents as examples of “highly aggressive interrogation techniques” and asked Ryder, the Army's senior criminal investigator, to take “appropriate action.”

Harrington wrote that the FBI told Pentagon lawyers in January 2003 about the abusive treatment, but the matter had not been addressed.

“We take all allegations seriously and investigate each one fully,” Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the Guantanamo prison, said in a statement provided by the US military.

“The appropriate actions were taken, and some allegations are still under investigation. Immediate and appropriate action is always taken upon all verified allegations. Once investigations are completed, we report them immediately up the chain of command,” Hood added.

The New York Times revealed October 17 that uncooperative detainees in Guantanamo were regularly tortured by US guards and subject to coercive treatment.

Some men who have been released from the prison have stated they were tortured there.

Moazzam Begg, a British detainee, said in a letter to his lawyer that he was abused  in Guantanamo and witnessed the deaths of two other detainees at the hands of US military personnel.

In August, Martin Malaga, another British detainee, unveiled the ill-treatment  of prisoners at the infamous camp, accusing his US jailers of sexual assault and physical violence in his 8ft-by-6ft cell.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the United States of committing “war crimes” in Guantanamo.