More than three years after the ACLU filed a freedom of information request with the FBI, the agency has finally released documents giving official, first hand accounts of detainee abuse at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. More than two dozen FBI agents describe the treatment they witnessed -- detainees chained hand and foot to the floor for 18 hours or more in the fetal position with no food or water and forced to urinated or defecated on themselves. A detainee left nearly unconscious on the floor next to a pile of his own hair. Another gagged with duct tape that covered much of his head. Earlier today I spoke with ACLU attorney Amrit Singh about the significance of these new documents.

Singh: “These documents provide further detail on the responses from FBI personnel to a special inquiry initiated by the FBI inspection division. They provide more detail, they also show the scope and scale of the abuse. One document describes an FBI agent’s observation that a prisoner's fingers appeared to have been broken and when he inquired as to why the prisoner’s fingers were broken he was told the prisoner had been non-compliant with a prison guard and a rapid reaction team had brought him into compliance subsequently. So it shows that excessive force was being applied to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. And what’s significant is these are FBI eyewitness accounts, they can't be discounted or dismissed by the Bush Administration. They need to be taken seriously and they only underscore the need for an independent investigation.

Singh said the details of the FBI accounts are shocking and reflect unlawful torture and abuse.

Singh: “I think no one would argue the breaking of fingers and physical injury would amount to extreme and excessive use of force that is not permitted under domestic or international law. So I think the records really speak for themselves. We have previous accounts by prisoners who have been released already in which prisoners describe their abuse in detail but the Administration has on several occasions discounted these accounts. These documents show that the FBI’s own agents witnessed some of the abuse and they cannot be discounted.”

The new FBI documents could be used as evidence in pending lawsuits against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other US government officials. Both the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU are representing plaintiffs in suits charging the US with mistreatment of detainees.

The ACLU wants to use these documents to push for an independent investigation into the widespread and systemic abuse of detainees. Sigh said their litigation will continue as the both the CIA and Defense Department are continuing to withhold information.

Singh: “There are a number of Defense Department documents for example that relate to interrogation techniques applied in Afghanistan that we still have not received. There are a number of CIA documents relating to interrogation techniques authorized by the Justice Department for use on detainees held in CIA custody and there is an executive order signed by President Bush apparently that authorizes setting up detention centers abroad and possibly the use of interrogation techniques."

Amrit Singh is an attorney with the ACLU. The FBI has posted the eye-witness accounts of detainee abuse on the agency’s website.