Two new cases of abuse have surfaced at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, including one in which a US military commander failed to properly investigate a prison guard who threw cleaning solvent on a terror suspect.
The guard threw the solvent in January and was demoted and reassigned in June, a month after Navy Inspector General Vice Admiral Albert Church visited the remote outpost to investigate claims of abuse. The guard's commanding officer also was reprimanded, military officials said.
Another incident involved a guard in October who hit a detainee after he allegedly spit on the guard and tried to bite him. The guard was demoted and reassigned the same month.
"We have a process in place to review all allegation reports. Each report that alleges mistreatment at Guantanamo is taken seriously," said Army Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, a spokesman.
The commander who mishandled the solvent incident was an Army captain and the highest known ranking officer to be disciplined in an abuse case at the outpost, Sumpter said. The company commander is generally in charge of more than 130 soldiers.
After the scandal broke at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where US troops were photographed abusing detainees, military officials at the US Southern Command in Miami told reporters there were three substantiated abuse cases at Guantanamo.
The military last week provided details of eight substantiated cases of abuse by personnel from prison guards to a barber. The information came nearly two months after reporters asked for details of cases in an August report by James Schlesinger, who headed a US congressional committee to investigate abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
"This problem won't be solved by dribbling out bits of information over a period of months. The US government needs to stop hiding behind closed doors and create an independent commission to look into all charges of abuse," said Jumana Musa of Amnesty International.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese