The frequent flyer program is a controversial technique used by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. [1] Guards deprived detainees of sleep by moving them from one cell to another, multiple times a day, for days or weeks on end. [1]
The technique was used to "soften up" detainees prior to interrogation. Guantanamo guards were ordered to discontinue the use of the technique in March 2004, although the practice persisted until at least later that year. [1]
Major David Frakt, USAF, defense counsel to a recipient of the program, Mohamed Jawad, said:
No one actually knows the full scope of the abuses at Guantanamo [and that] all of these allegedly comprehensive investigations were whitewashed. This is only the tip of the iceberg. This program was approved at the highest levels.... It suggests that people had simply lost their ability to distinguish right from wrong. [1]
In August 2008, in testimony at Jawad's Guantanamo military commission trial, Army officers confirmed the existence of the frequent flyer program. [2] At least 17 detainees were subjected to the program. [1]
In May 2012 Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer for detainee Shaker Aamer, said his client alleges the frequent flyer program was still being used as a punishment technique in the isolation block known as Camp Five Echo. [3]
Mohammed Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani is a Saudi citizen who was detained as an al-Qaeda operative for 20 years in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba. Qahtani allegedly tried to enter the United States to take part in the September 11 attacks as the 20th hijacker and was due to be onboard United Airlines Flight 93 along with the four other hijackers. He was refused entry due to suspicions that he was trying to illegally immigrate. He was later captured in Afghanistan in the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.
Camp Delta is a permanent American detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between 27 February and mid-April 2002 by Navy Seabees, Marine Engineers, and workers from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root. It is composed of detention camps 1 through 6, Camp Platinum, Camp Iguana, the Guantanamo psychiatric ward, Camp Echo and Camp No. The prisoners, referred to as detainees, have uncertain rights due to their location not on American soil. There are allegations of torture and abuse of prisoners.
Camp Echo is one of seven Guantanamo Bay detention camps associated with Camp Delta, the prisoners' camp, at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, run by the United States military. The maximum-security facility is used to hold detainees in solitary confinement, as well as for interrogations by the military.
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith is a British attorney who specialises in the areas of civil rights and working against the death penalty in the United States of America. He worked to overturn death sentences for convicts, and helped found the not-for-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. By 2002 this was the "largest capital defence organisation in the South." He was a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, based in Houston, Texas.
Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer is a Saudi citizen who was held by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for more than thirteen years without charge.
Ghassan Abdallah Ghazi al-Sharbi is a Saudi citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 682.
Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, also known as Allal Ab Aljallil Abd al Rahman, was a Yemeni citizen imprisoned at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from January 2002 until his death in custody there, ruled a suicide.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Of the roughly 780 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 740 have been transferred elsewhere, 31 remain there, and 9 have died while in custody.
The Tipton Three is the collective name given to three British citizens from Tipton, England who were held in extrajudicial detention by the United States government for two years in Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba.
Mohamed Jawad, was accused of attempted murder before a Guantanamo military commission on charges that he threw a grenade at a passing American convoy on December 17, 2002. Jawad's family says that he was 12 years old at the time of his detention in 2002. The United States Department of Defense maintains that a bone scan showed he was about 17 when taken into custody.
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) had stopped reporting Guantanamo suicide attempts in 2002. In mid-2002 the DoD changed the way they classified suicide attempts, and enumerated them under other acts of "self-injurious behavior".
Ahmed Rashidi is a citizen of Morocco who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. Rashidi's Guantanamo ISN was 590. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on March 17, 1966, in Tangier, Morocco.
The Behavioral Science Consultation Teams are groups of psychiatrists, other medical doctors and psychologists who study detainees in American extrajudicial detention.
In 2006, after charges were laid against a number of detainees held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, a boycott against the judicial hearings was declared by Ali al-Bahlul. The boycott gained momentum in 2008 when more detainees faced Guantanamo military commissions
David Frakt is an American lawyer, law professor, and officer in the United States Air Force Reserve.
United States v. Mohamed Jawad is one of the military commissions convened under the authority of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Camp No is an alleged secret detention and torture facility related to the United States detainment camps located in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. On January 18, 2010, Scott Horton asserted in an article in Harper's Magazine, the result of a joint investigation with NBC News, that such a facility was maintained outside the regular boundaries of the Guantanamo Bay detention camps.
Guantanamo Bay homicide accusations were made regarding the deaths of three prisoners on June 10, 2006 at the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp for enemy combatants at its naval base in Cuba. Two of the men had been cleared by the military for release. The United States Department of Defense (DOD) claimed their deaths at the time as suicides, although their families and the Saudi government argued against the findings, and numerous journalists have raised questions then and since. The DOD undertook an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, published in redacted form in 2008.
Camp Five Echo is a once secret "disciplinary block" built as part of the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. The press first reported on the existence of the camp in December 2011 when attorneys for Shaker Aamer, who had been held at the camp for extended periods of time, complained that conditions there were inhumane.
In the lawyer's notes Mr Aamer states that he was held in solitary confinement from July to December 2011 in Camp 5 Echo block, a punishment block for "non-compliant" detainees. He was confined to his cell for 24 hours a day and subjected to sleep deprivation methods by guards.