Topic: Poster Of Hussein At Guantanamo Draws Detainee Complaints

New York Times
February 2, 2007
Pg. 16

By David Rohde
Military officials have removed a poster of Saddam Hussein from the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after complaints from a detainee that it was intended to intimidate the prisoners there.
Lawyers for the detainee said the 7-by-3-foot poster, in a small recreation area for prisoners, featured images of Mr. Hussein being sentenced to death and a heading in Arabic that stated, “Because Saddam chose not to cooperate and not to tell the truth, because he thought by lying he would get released, for that reason he was executed.”
The chief military spokesman in Guantánamo, Cmdr. Robert Durand, said the lawyers’ description of the statement on the poster was inaccurate, but he declined to give its exact wording.
“A recent poster showed Saddam Hussein’s capture, court appearances and sentencing,” Commander Durand said in an e-mail message. “The intent of this poster was to show that the Iraqi people are making progress and have delivered justice.”
Commander Durand said that the poster had been removed and that the military regretted that the “language of this poster appeared insensitive.”
Lawyers for the detainee who complained, David Hicks, an Australian who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, said news articles about Mr. Hussein’s execution were also displayed in the recreation area. Other articles described the accidental decapitation of a Hussein co-defendant in a subsequent hanging.
“I have no doubt that those were put up for a particular reason,” said Joshua L. Dratel, one of Mr. Hicks’s lawyers. “For psychological warfare and for mental torture and intimidation.”
Commander Durand said the articles had not been intended to intimidate prisoners. “The news photos that appear in the stories are neither graphic nor sensational,” he said. “A BBC news article describing Saddam Hussein’s execution, with a photo of him prior to his hanging, was included in the camp news.”
Since the camp’s opening, American military officials have displayed posters they created in Arabic and other languages that conveyed news events. Lawyers for the detainees said they focused on the arrests of terrorism suspects and the deaths of Iraqi and Afghan insurgents. Military officials described the posters as balanced.
In the past, military officials barred lawyers for the prisoners from describing outside events to them or giving them news articles.
The articles on Mr. Hussein were displayed under a new policy in which the American military posts a weekly collection of news reports in recreation areas around the prison, Commander Durand said.