Camp X-Ray Caged as wild animals and deprived of sight, hearing, smell and touch, Al Qaeda terrorists knelt before the guards at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. These were the first and shocking images of prisoners, and no doubt will increase the international outrage at the conditions in which custody of prisoners is maintained and the treatment given to them. Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have compared this treatment that used torture in the camps of Eastern Europe and have expressed concern that the U.S. deliberately subjected to convicts to 24 hours of sensory deprivation to confuse and mislead before locking them in narrow cages in the open. The guards at Camp X Ray force the captives to wear black blinkers preventing them from seeing, earplugs that prevent them from hearing, surgical masks that restrict the sense of smell and thick gloves that prevent them from touching what that surrounds them; and all of this at 30 degrees under a blazing sun. The inmates have no idea about where they are and almost all are convinced that have been led to the United States. Jim West, head of medical affairs for Amnesty International, said he was shocked by the photographs, which revealed the terrible conditions under which the prisoners have. "My immediate reaction to the first picture I remembered a similar method that was used as torture or ill-treatment in the 1970"s in Eastern Europe. The prisoners could not see, hear or touch anything, and kept in painful positions for long periods. It is a form of abuse that simply constitutes a violation of human rights ". According to West, in the shocking photographs, first made public by the U.S. Defence Department, clearly demonstrate that the inmates are subjected to sensory deprivation. Helen Bamber, director of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, said that prisoners of Camp X-Ray must feel destabilized and probably collapsed. They will also be suffering horrific hallucinations, loss of balance and may think they are going crazy. They "probably would have panic attacks, mood swings, terrible nightmares and feel very unbalanced”. However, the U.S. Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, justified the methods used in Guantanamo: "Obviously, anyone will be concerned if they say that the treatment is inadequate, but the fact is that the treatment is appropriate, "he stressed. |
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