http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/2004/06/28...
Grenada 17 says US torture of POWs not new
by Leroy Noel

Monday, June 28, 2004
ST GEORGE‘S, Grenada: The 17 persons convicted in Grenada for the death of former Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his cabinet colleagues say reports of the humiliation and torture of prisoners of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, by their US military captors are nothing new.

A statement from the Grenada 17 says official US spokespersons have sought to portray these horrible abuses as recent, isolated incidents by out-of-control individual soldiers, and not the result of official US policy but those who lived through the US invasion of Grenada know the truth.

The prisoners added that in the months following the October 1983 US invasion of Grenada, 2,800 Grenadians out of a total adult population of 60,000 were detained, most of them at a prisoner of war camp set up at Point Salines International Airport. Many of the prisoners were kept in small ‘sweat boxes’ designed so that they had to crawl on hands, knees and stomachs like dogs in order to get in and out.

The Grenada 17 indicated that guard-dogs were set halfway into the sweat boxes to terrorize them; abuse, including racist abuse, was screamed at them day and night by the soldiers; and the boxes were constantly beaten at night so as to deprive the detainees of sleep. They were kept in those boxes on the asphalt tarmac for days or weeks, in the sun, in the stifling daytime heat. Leaks in the boxes let in the heavy October night rains, so that they shivered in their wet clothes night after night, many becoming ill they claimed.

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