US:The Pentagon has dismissed an FBI report of possible mistreatment of inmates at Guantánamo Bay as nothing new, claiming that all appropriate disciplinary action had already been taken.
FBI documents released this week identify 26 cases of mistreatment by guards and interrogators, including at least one in which an interrogator squatted over a copy of the Koran. In another incident, interrogators wrapped a prisoner's head in duct tape because he would not stop quoting from the Koran.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the allegations were familiar and had already been fully investigated.
"The idea that this is new is misguided and misleading. These are things the department has thoroughly investigated and where allegations have been substantiated, disciplinary action has been taken," he said.
The documents are based on an internal FBI survey in 2004 which asked almost 500 agents who had served at Guantánamo to report incidents of mistreatment by military personnel. Some of the cases have already been reported, including the sexual taunting of prisoners by female staff and shackling inmates to the floor for extended periods.
The FBI report says that interrogation techniques included wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag, subjecting others to extreme heat and cold, and aggressively using strobe lights on others.
One interrogator told an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to "Satanic black metal music for hours", then dressed as a Catholic priest and pretended to baptise him.
After a report of Koran abuse at Guantánamo prompted riots in some Muslim countries in 2005, the US authorities admitted that soldiers and interrogators had kicked the Koran, stood on it and, in one case, accidentally sprayed urine on a copy.
The FBI report said that some interrogators believed the techniques they used were allowed under new guidelines introduced by former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Pentagon adopted new rules last September, forbidding harsh interrogation techniques at Guantánamo and at US detention facilities overseas.
"The Department of Defence policy is clear - we treat detainees humanely. The United States operates safe, humane and professional detention operations for enemy combatants who are providing valuable information in the war on terror," the Pentagon said in a statement this week.
The FBI documents were released as part of a case the American Civil Liberties Union is taking against the US government on behalf of some Guantánamo inmates.
The union's Jameel Jaffer said the documents highlight the need for more thorough investigation of allegations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay.
"More comprehensive investigation is needed, not only into the scope of abuses but into the root causes and policies that led to those incidents," he said.
The Bush administration has said it wants to close the detention centre at Guantánamo and is negotiating with a number of countries over the repatriation of prisoners. It said some inmates will be tried before military tribunals that human rights groups say provide inadequate safeguards for those accused of involvement in terrorism.