Constitutional Law

More than 24,000 Guantanamo Interrogations Videotaped Since 2002

A report issued Friday by the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research reveals that more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, all of which have been videotaped. The interrogations were conducted by a plethora of federal agencies and private contractors. (ACS recently hosted a panel discussion on the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes.)

According to the report, some interrogations were "so violent as to 'shake the camera in the interrogation room' and 'cause severe internal injury.'" The report asserts that because the government kept logs of information related to interrogations, "it is ascertainable which videotapes documenting interrogations still exist, and which videotapes have been destroyed."

The report concludes as follows:

Combatant Status Review Tribunal procedures, the Military Commission Act and the Detainee Treatment Act all require that the reliability of the evidence against a detainee be evaluated. The reliability of hearsay evidence, in particular, must be evaluated.The taped interrogations recorded at Guantánamo Bay are equally as important to evaluating the reliability of the evidence against a detainee as were the two videotapes destroyed by the Central Intelligence Agency. Judge Roberts’s recent order [requiring the government to provide information regarding the destruction of the CIA interrogation videotapes] represents an important shift from the court’s reliance upon the Government’s self-investigation, but—like the investigation itself—it applies only narrowly. Judicial and perhaps congressional inquiry is necessary—not only into the publicized destruction of two videotapes, but with respect to the many other taped interrogations which either still exist or were destroyed.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 18, 2008 (boomark / email).