Taxi to the Dark Side

The procedures adopted to try Hamdan also violate the Geneva Conventions. The D. C. Circuit dismissed Hamdans challenge in this regard on the grounds, inter alia, that the Conventions are not judicially enforceable and that, in any event, Hamdan is not entitled to their protections. Neither of these grounds is persuasive... Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, decided by the United States Supreme Court on June 29, 2006

On December first, 2002 ...

Dilawar, a young Afghan taxi driver, took three passengers for a ride.

He never returned home.

TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] When the sun started to go down, the sand started blowing.

It was like a big dust bowl. And I'm thinking,

"Boy, is it gonna be like this every night?"

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, Mil-Intel, Bagram] I remember walking in to there for the first time:

The smell...the smell is the first thing that hits you,

And being from D.C., if you've ever been to the National Zoo

When you walk into the elephant house there, that's the best way to describe it.

There were a few of us that lived in the prison, and I was one of them.

They built it up to be a big, scary place to the prisoners.

After the invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. Forces occupied Bagram,

An old Soviet airbase as a place to collect and interrogate thousands of detainees

captured throughout Afgan and Pakistan.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] These were suspected Taliban.

They were being caught by Special Forces throughout the countryside, brought to Bagram to be held,

interrogated, determined if they were a high-value prisoner.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] These were not nice people at all.

They were very evil people who, you know, definitely had violent intentions.

On December 5, 2002 ...

Dilawar, the taxi driver, was brought to Bagram.

He was designed a PUC: Person Under Control, No. 421.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] He was something to do with a trigger man for a rocket attack.

And that's about all I know.

Five days after his arrival, he was dead.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] I would say this was around about 05:00 in the morning.

As I walked by Dilawar...I think that's his name, Dilawar

Walked by Dilawar's cell,

I noticed that he was just kind of hanging there with his head down.

But he was being too still to be, you know, just hanging there and sleep.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] SGT. Curtis opened up the door, and we went in.

He was unresponsive. And we started CPR.

[PFC. Willie Brand, Mil-Pol, Bagram] I was downstairs in general population.

Then I heard a call come in asking for Cammack to come upstairs.

He was a medic, and we carried him downstairs on a stretcher.

And the Cammack was still on top of him while we're carrying him down, still trying to get him back going,

all the way down the stairs. We got him through the front door and they kept working on him,

kept working on him until the doctor got there and pronounced him dead.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] I don't know if it was an injury that was aggravated by something,

or whether he was just sick coming in.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, Mil-Intel, Bagram & Abu Ghraib] They are very frail people,

And I was surprised that it had taken that long for one of them to die in our custody.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] There was a definite sense of concern, because he was the second one.

Just a week before Dilawar's death, another detainee at Bagram had died.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] You know, you wonder: Is this something we did?

Or did somebody kill him or something? But I just didn't know.

According to the medical examiner, the first detainee to die, Habibullah,

had a preexisting pulmonary condition.

But it was the beatings he sustained at Bagram that led to the cause of his death:

A bloodclot that traveled to his lungs.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, Mil-Intel, Bagram & Abu Ghraib] When the second one died a week later,

That's when it was like, "Oh, crap! Something's going to happen now."

That's two prisoners dying within a week of each other. That's bad.

A preliminary investigation into Dilawar's death, revealed deep bruises all over his body.

But it did not conclude that his treatment at Bagram was to blame.

[SGT. Thomas Curtis, Mil-Pol, Bagram] The next day, they said, "Draw out how he was shackled up here."

And I made that crude drawing.

The ceiling of these isolation rooms was just a simple metal grate,

And it was thick enough you could put handcuffs, you know, through the wires of that ...

[Military Investigation Reenactment] And you just kind of chain them up like that, out to the sides, like this.

Forced standing for long periods had inflamed tissue damage from blows to Dilawar's legs.

But the initial Bagram press release failed to mention overhead shackling and beatings.

It declared that both detainees had died of natural causes.

[SGT. Anthony Morden, Mil-Pol, Bagram] My opinion is that the military wanted to get this over,

and get this done quickly, before it really got noticed.

Soon after Dilawar's death, the officer in charge of interrogation at Bagram,

Captain Carolyn Wood, was awarded the bronze star for valor.

Following the Iraq invasion, Wood and her intelligence unit,

were given a new assignment:

Abu Ghraib.

A FEW BAD APPLES

[Eric Lahammer, Mil-Intel, Bagram & Abu Ghraib] The only thing I can really remember about Abu Ghraib was the heat.

It was like 148 degrees(58 C) or so there and it was all concrete.

Abu Ghraib also had the infamous torture chambers and stuff left from Saddam's era.

I remember walking through those and seeing like fingernail marks on the walls,

And bloodstains, and guillotines and stuff like that.

It was a pretty surreal feeling.

We went to Abu Ghraib, I believe in July. July or August of 2003 to start that prison.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, Mil-Intel, Bagram & Abu Ghraib] You put people in crazy situations, and people do crazy things.

And Abu was getting mortared every night.

These 120 mm. mortars killing prisoners.

The first time that happened, they should have evacuated those prisoners to somewhere else,

Because the prisoners weren't safe.

[SGT. Ken Davis, 372nd MP Company, Abu Ghraib] People were being told to rough up Iraqis that wouldn't cooperate.

We were also told that they were nothing but dogs.

Then, all of a sudden, you start looking at these people as less than human.

And you start doing things to them you would never dream of.

And that's where it got scary.

[US Chief of Staff, Richard Myers] It was only the night shift. There's always a few bad apples.

[Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense] It's been a body blow for all of us.

[Lt. General Ricardo S. Sanchez] This is clearly an isolated incident.

[General Geoffrey D. Miller] The conduct of a very, very small number of our leaders and soldiers.

In the wake of media attention surrounding Abu Ghraib,

the military began a series of investigations.

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