Pop stars tell the U.S. military to stop using their songs to torture detainees

Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp: One of the Concentration Camps (detention centres) where the US has been using popular American music to torture detainees. Song under the photograph is Bruce Springsteen’s, "Born in the USA;" which is on the US torture music list.

10 December 2008
By Daily Mail Foreign Service

Musicians and pop stars are joining forces with British human rights activists to stop U.S. military interrogators from using their songs to torture detainees.

The campaign has brought together groups including Massive Attack and musicians such as Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.

It will feature minutes of silence during concerts and festivals, said Chloe Davies of the law group Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Military contractor Donald Vance told how he was subjected to blaring rock music for 20 hours a day when he was held in Iraq.

The auditory assault went on for days, then weeks, then months at the U.S. military detention centre in Baghdad.

At least Vance, who says he was jailed for reporting illegal arms sales, was used to rock music.

For many detainees who grew up in Afghanistan - where music was prohibited under Taliban rule - interrogations by U.S. forces marked their first exposure to the pounding rhythms, played at top volume. The experience was overwhelming for many.

Binyam Mohammed, now a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, said men held with him at the CIA's 'Dark Prison' in Afghanistan wound up screaming and smashing their heads against walls, unable to endure more.

'There was loud music, (Eminem's) 'Slim Shady' and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this nonstop over and over,' he told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.

'The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night for the months before I left. Plenty lost their minds.'

Rear Adm. David Thomas, the commander of Guantanamo's detention centre, said the music treatment is not currently used at Guantanamo but added that he could not rule out its use in the future.

'I couldn't speculate and I wouldn't speculate but I can tell you it doesn't happen here at Guantanamo and it hasn't happened since I've been here,' Thomas, who has been at Guantanamo for a half-year.

The spokeswoman for Guantanamo's detention centre, Navy Cmdr Pauline Storum, wouldn't give details of when and how music has been used at the prison.

FBI agents stationed at Guantanamo Bay reported numerous instances in which music was blasted at detainees, saying they were 'told such tactics were common there.'

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According to an FBI memo, one interrogator at Guantanamo Bay bragged he needed only four days to 'break' someone by alternating 16 hours of music and lights with four hours of silence and darkness.

Ruhal Ahmed, a Briton who was captured in Afghanistan, describes excruciating sessions at Guantanamo Bay.

He said his hands were shackled to his feet, which were shackled to the floor, forcing him into a painful squat for periods of up to two days.

'You're in agony,' Ahmed, who was released without charge in 2004, told Reprieve.

He said the agony was compounded when music was introduced, because 'before you could actually concentrate on something else, try to make yourself focus on some other things in your life that you did before and take that pain away.

'It makes you feel like you are going mad,' he said.

Not all of the music is hard rock. Christopher Cerf, who wrote music for 'Sesame Street,' said he was horrified to learn songs from the children's TV show were used in interrogations.

'I wouldn't want my music to be a party to that,' he said.

Bob Singleton, whose song 'I Love You' is beloved by legions of Barney fans, wrote in a newspaper opinion column that any music can become unbearable if played loudly for long stretches.

'It's absolutely ludicrous,' he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. 'A song that was designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point?'

Morello, of Rage Against the Machine, has been especially forceful in denouncing the practice. During a recent concert in San Francisco, he proposed taking revenge on President George W. Bush.

'I suggest that they level Guantanamo Bay, but they keep one small cell and they put Bush in there ... and they blast some Rage Against the Machine,' he said to whoops and cheers.

Some musicians, however, say they're proud that their music is used in interrogations. Those include bassist Stevie Benton, whose group Drowning Pool has performed in Iraq and recorded one of the interrogators' favorites, 'Bodies.'

'People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down,' he told Spin magazine.

'I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.'

The band's record label said Benton did not want to comment further.

Instead, the band issued a statement reading: 'Drowning Pool is committed to supporting the lives and rights of our troops stationed around the world.'

Vance, in a telephone interview from Chicago, said the tactic can make innocent men go mad. According to a lawsuit he has filed, his jailers said he was being held because his employer was suspected of selling weapons to terrorists and insurgents.

The U.S. military confirms Vance was jailed but won't elaborate because of the lawsuit.

He said he was locked in an overcooled 9ft by 9ft cell that had a speaker with a metal grate over it. Two large speakers stood in the hallway outside. The music was almost constant, mostly hard rock, he said.

'There was a lot of Nine Inch Nails, including 'March of the Pigs,'' he said. 'I couldn't tell you how many times I heard Queen's 'We Will Rock You.''

He wore only a jumpsuit and flip-flops and had no protection from the cold.

'I had no blanket or sheet. If I had, I would probably have tried suicide,' he said. 'I got to a few points toward the end where I thought, 'How can I do this?' Actively plotting, 'How can I get away with it so they don't stop it?''

Asked to describe the experience, Vance said: 'It sort of removes you from you. You can no longer formulate your own thoughts when you're in an environment like that.'

He was released after 97 days. Two years later, he says, 'I keep my home very quiet.'

Further Information

The Tipton Three, a trio of British Muslims who were held and tortured in Guantanamo Bay for two years:

One of the methods of torture that was recounted in interviews and the movie by the Tipton Three was the use of loud music and being put in contortion type positions, while being handcuffed to the floor; to further having to defecate in there jumpsuit style clothing, while being in this position for extreme amount of hours at a time.

Interview with Ruhal Ahmed

The Road To Guantanamo (A movie about the Tipton Three)