The inside story of Guantánamo, via WikiLeaks

The classified intelligence assessments released by WikiLeaks show a litany of errors, misjudgments, and abuses at the Guantánamo Bay prison.

What happened

A new trove of WikiLeaks documents on the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay this week revealed a damning litany of errors, misjudgments, and abuses since the Bush administration created the detention center for suspected terrorists in 2002. More than 150 innocent civilians, including teenage boys and illiterate Afghan shepherds and farmers, were detained for years after being deemed of little or no risk to the U.S., the 704 classified intelligence assessments obtained by WikiLeaks say, while hundreds of known terrorists were set free by mistake. The material also provided a grim picture of how some of the 779 detainees were interrogated and brutalized. One document revealed that the suspected “20th hijacker” in the Sept. 11 attacks, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated, and forced to urinate on himself. Some prisoners had their heads forced into toilets, while others were used as “human sponges” to wipe the floor. Many were beaten unconscious by interrogators.

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