Many detainees at Guantanamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases.
The people, military guards, intelligence agents and others, described a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive occurring over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who coop-erated with interrogators.
One regular procedure that was described by people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility, was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underpants, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air conditioning was turned up to maximum levels, said one military official who witnessed the scene.
Such sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks, said the official.
"It fried them," the official said, explaining that anger over the treatment was the reason for speaking with a reporter after being contacted by The Times.
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