2005-03-28 - 8:04 p.m.
CAMILO MEJIA: When we first got to Iraq, first we went to the Baghdad International Airport and then we went to another place, which is also part of this complex, which is called Al-Assad. And Al-Assad was was pretty much an air force base for Saddam's army. And in one of those bunkers, one of those jet bunkers, they had an improvised detention camp for the detainees. And pretty much what it was was, you know, areas made by concertina wire, which is worse than barbed wire, and they had military police units bringing in detainees. And then you had what we call spokes in the military, which are people that no one knows who they are or where they come from. They wear no unit patch or anything. And they pretty much made an initial assessment, and they decided who was or who wasn't an enemy combatant, and then we separated these people into groups. Those who were deemed enemy combatants were kept on sleep deprivation. And the way we did that was when we arrived there, we relieved another unit, and then they told us the easiest way to do that is just by, you know, yelling at these people, telling them to get up and to get down. They were hooded prisoners. Yell at them, tell them to get up and get down. Let them sleep for five seconds, so they will get up disoriented. Bang a sledgehammer on a wall to make it sound like an explosion, scare them. And if all of that fails then, you know, cock a .9 millimeter gun next to their ear, so as to make them believe that they’re going to be executed. And then they will do anything that you want them to do. In that manner, keep them up for periods of 48 to 72 hours in order to soften them up for interrogation. These were the kind of things that they were asking the infantryman to do.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/28/1434222
