New details released on GITMO abuses

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, June 17 (UPI) -- Even as the European Union joined other countries around the world to accept Guantanamo Bay detainees, U.S. government transcripts made public Monday laid bare new information on the treatment of terrorism suspects during the George W. Bush administration and how accused terrorists told lies to their CIA interrogators during times of abusive treatment.

The European Union told U.S. representatives Monday that they would help the Barack Obama administration put Guantanamo behind them, with European nations deciding on an individual basis whether to take inmates from the prison.

Some 240 detainees remain in Guantanamo. The detention center, which was set up in 2002, once held 775. A number of countries around the world have already taken in detainees.

According to sections of those documents, self-proclaimed Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he made up stories when he was tortured by the CIA.

Newly released sections of transcripts show that Mohammed told a military panel at Guantanamo that under interrogation about the location of Osama bin Laden: "I make up stories." (The interrogator would ask) "'Where is he?' 'I don't know.' Then, he torture me. Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.'"

Mohammed was captured in 2003 and held at secret CIA sites before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. He was repeatedly subjected to "waterboarding," a simulated-drowning technique.

In a very rare admittance by a Guantanamo detainee, Mohammed said to avoid abuse he named people as being al-Qaida operatives even without knowing if they were.

Most of the transcripts had been previously released, but the Bush administration blacked out extensive sections of them. Even the documents released Monday by Obama contained lengthy classified sections.

But a new section detailed suspected al-Qaida member Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and was thought to be very highly ranked in the group.

Zubaydah told a military tribunal in 2007 that he was physically and mentally tortured for months, the transcripts say. They eventually realized, he said, "that I am not number three in al-Qaida."

A Justice Department memo released in April 2009 supports his allegations of harsh treatment or torture. It said that Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times by CIA interrogators in August 2002 after he stopped cooperating with them.

The transcripts were released after the American Civil Liberties Union successfully went to the court for their release under the Freedom of Information Act.

"The public has a right to know what took place in the CIA's secret prisons," the director of the ACLU's National Security Project, Jameel Jaffer, said.

The ACLU asserts that the new information raised further doubts about the effectiveness of the CIA's methods and "underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture," Jaffer said.

The organization intends to push for the release of all the remaining documents from the Guantanamo Bay tribunals.

Obama has signed an executive order to close Guantanamo on Jan. 22, 2010.