clipped from: english.aljazeera.net   

The US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was disorganised and dysfunctional in its early years, documents released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit have shown.

The first commander of the detention centre in Cuba said in the documents that US interrogators had practically no experience, while the military linguists "were worthless".

However, Major-General Michael Dunleavy denied that detainees were tortured, saying that he treated them "as human beings, but not like soldiers".

The documents do, however, detail the use of controversial interrogation techniques by US officers, such as disrupting sleep patterns, exploiting phobias and issuing verbal threats.

Clara Gutteridge from Reprieve International, an organisation campaigning for the fair treatment of prisoners, said the documents confirmed previous knowledge about the "systematic nature of abuse at Guantanamo Bay".

One thing that is striking about the documents is that so much has been redacted from them