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More Torture Documents Released

The AP has received a second batch of documents from its FOIA request regarding the detainees at Guantanamo, consisting of 1,000 additonal pages of transcripts of the detainee's tribunal (status review) hearings. Several detainees told the hearing officers of torture and abuse. The officers did not believe it was their job to investigate the claims. In several instances, they just changed the subject. Here's an example:

Another man alleged that U.S. troops stripped the prisoners of their clothes in Afghanistan and bullied them into saying things the Americans wanted to hear. "Americans were beating us really hard, and they had dogs behind us and they said if we didn't say this, they would release the dogs," he said.

The tribunal president made no comment and moved on to the next question: Where were you born?

Another example:

"Americans hit me and beat me up so badly I believe I'm sexually dysfunctional. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep with my wife or not," he said. "I can't control my urination, and sometimes I put toilet paper down there so I won't wet my pants." "I point to where the pain is. ... I think they take it as a joke and they laugh."

The tribunal president promised to take up the man's medical complaint, but in five pages of questioning, never brought up the alleged abuse.

The Navy's official response? Freddie Prinze, redux: "It's not my job."

The panel members were charged with determining whether the men were enemy combatants — not with investigating abuse allegations, said a military spokeswoman, Navy Capt. Beci Brenton. She said tribunal members are supposed to forward abuse allegations to the Joint Task Force running the detention mission, which then forwards them to U.S. Southern Command in Miami.

More allegations by the detainees:

"When I was in the Kandahar prison, the interrogator hit my arm and told me I received training in mortars," a man said, referring to the U.S. detention camp in western Afghanistan where the Taliban rose to power.

"As he was hitting me, I kept telling him, no I didn't receive training. I was crying and finally I told him I did receive the training. My hands were tied behind my back and my knees were on the ground and my head was bleeding. I was in a lot of pain. ... At that point, with all my suffering, if he had asked me if I was Osama bin Laden, I would have said yes.

"What is my crime? B