Monday, Nov. 09, 2009

Video highlights life in brig

Newly declassified surveillance videos and logs give the most vivid look yet at how terrorism detainees were treated inside a super-secret wing of the Charleston Naval Consolidated Brig, the same facility reportedly under consideration to house some of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainees.

These videos show one of the detainees, Ali Saleh al-Marri, struggling with his six years of solitary confinement, hiding under a metal bed without a mattress and circling his tiny windowless cell for hours.

Other videos later in al-Marri's incarceration show him bantering easily with brig staff as they place blackout goggles, earmuffs and chains on him before taking him out of his cell.

Al-Marri's lawyers provided the videos and logs to The Post and Courier. The videos were classified until a month ago, when the Defense Department released them for al-Marri's criminal case. Portions were shown in a courtroom in late October, when al-Marri made a tearful apology about his connections to senior al-Qaida leaders and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The videos provide a window into the brig's "Special Housing Unit," a wing that was set aside for al-Marri and two other detainees after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They're coming to light as the Obama administration reportedly is poised to decide where to put detainees in the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility, with some reports suggesting that the brig in Hanahan is a leading contender to take at least a handful.

A key date is Nov. 16, the target set by the Department of Justice and Pentagon to make a decision on the Guantanamo detainees. "We're hoping to get an answer on that date," said Maj. Tanya Bradsher, the Pentagon's press officer for detainee affairs.

The videos also are notable because of the brig's secretive past. While officers at Guantanamo have given hundreds of tours and interviews, the Pentagon has nixed media requests to interview staff and tour the brig. These videos are believed to be the first images of a Charleston brig detainee inside his cell.

The Navy built the brig in 1989 near the southern end of the Naval Weapons Station as a medium-security facility. Its primary mission has been to incarcerate military prisoners serving sentences shorter than 10 years. It has 10 triangular units, each with cells lining a common area, a design similar to some college dormitories. It has an array of rehabilitation programs with a heavy emphasis on helping inmates overcome substance abuse problems.

Its mission changed when Yaser Hamdi arrived in 2002 after being captured in the basement of a fortress in Afghanistan. The Bush administration designated Hamdi an enemy combatant and put him in military custody without formal charges. Two other designated enemy combatants, Jose Padilla and al-Marri, soon followed. Brig officials set aside one of the 10 triangular units and dubbed it the brig's Special Housing Unit.

Of the three detainees, al-Marri seemed to have been treated the harshest. When he arrived in June 2003, he was placed in a tiny concrete cell with windows that were covered and a metal bed without a mattress. Surveillance videos taken during this period show him pacing circles around his cell hour after hour.

Logs show that while other enemy combatants were given entertainment materials and recreation time, al-Marri's cell remained devoid of anything but a sink, toilet and bed. One video shows him hiding under the sink and the bed to escape the surveillance camera and glaring light. Other videos show him sleeping on the metal bed without a blanket. The din from a fan placed outside his cell can be heard. Al-Marri's attorney, Andy Savage, said he believes the buzzing fan was a tactic to soften him up before interrogations. When al-Marri was moved to his cell and taken to an interrogation cell, guards put goggles on his eyes to blind him and chained his legs and arms so he couldn't touch anyone. "It was all part of the isolation," Savage said. "That was the worst part."

One video shows guards taking him to the interrogation room to see an eye doctor. At one point, the eye doctor asks him to cover his eyes even though his arms and legs are chained.