Citing documents, interviews and megamedia reports, this article discusses "harrowing details" of the "torture inside and outside Guantánamo" as uncovered by the Spanish investigation:

Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated ... through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding.

A March 2005 memo written by a lawyer who visited prisoner Omar Deghayes at Guantánamo describes torture of threatening to leave Deghayes in a room with large snakes that were shown to him and recounted how Deghayes witnessed one prisoner sodomized at Bagram:

"One day they took me to a room that had very large snakes in glass boxes. The room was all painted black-and-white, with dim lights. They threatened to leave me there and let the snakes out with me in the room. This really got to me, as there were such sick people that they must have had this room specially made." ...Deghayes was eventually moved to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he was beaten and "kept nude, as part of the process of humiliation due to his religion." U.S. personnel placed Deghayes "inside a closed box with a lock and limited air." He also described seeing U.S. guards sodomize an African prisoner and alleged guards "forced petrol and benzene up the anuses of the prisoners."

The memo includes more accounts of Deghayes’ torture, including smearing the feces of another prisoner onto his face, beatings by a knee to his nose, forcing water up his nose with a high pressure hose until he was suffocating and forcing pepper spray into his eyes and pushing a finger into his eye.

A medical examination cited in the Spanish investigation confirmed that Deghayes suffered from blindness of the right eye, fracture of the nasal bone and fracture of the right index finger, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and "profound" depression.

The articles also discusses how the Spanish investigation may "for the first time place an intense focus on a notorious, but seldom discussed, thug squad deployed by the U.S. military to retaliate with excessive violence to the slightest resistance by prisoners at Guantánamo."

The Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) teams are called the "Black Shirts of Guantánamo" by human rights lawyers representing prisoners. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the "man credited with eventually "Gitmoizing" Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons", issued a Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta at Guantánamo in 2003.

The IRF teams, on paper, are supposed to be emergency response teams of 5 military police officers used as a "forced-extraction team" to extract a prisoner from a cell who is combative or resistant. The team members are "dressed in full riot gear" that prisoners and their attorneys describe as "Darth Vader" suits and "each officer is assigned a body part of the prisoner to restrain: head, right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg."

However, in reality, according to prisoners and lawyers, the IRFs can not be separated from the torture. The "'Black Shirts' of Guantanamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and 'dousing' them with chemicals."

While much of the "torture debate" has emphasized the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" defined by the twisted legal framework of the Office of Legal Council memos, IRF teams in effect operate at Guantánamo as an extrajudicial terror squad that has regularly brutalized prisoners outside of the interrogation room, gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner's head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them -- sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end.

According to General Miller’s SOP memo, all of the actions of the IRF teams should be videotaped. In 2005, there were "reportedly 500 hours of video; the ACLU attempted to force their release, but they never have been produced." A former IRF member stated that cameras were present for IRFing, but usually the camera was not turned on or was pointed at the ground. However, one lawyer, Stafford Smith, who also represents Binyam Mohamed, says that he can "confirm that there is photographic evidence."

A US soldier, Sgt. Sean Baker, was ordered to participate in IRF training drill in January 2003 as an uncooperative prisoner. However, IRF members believed that he was a real prisoner. Sgt. Baker described the IRF physical assault:

They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and, unfortunately, one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he -- the same individual -- reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn't breathe. When I couldn't breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was 'red.' ... That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: 'I'm a U.S. soldier. I'm a U.S. soldier.' Sgt. Baker said his head was slammed once more, and after groaning "I'm a U.S. soldier" one more time, "I heard them say, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa,' you know, like ... he was telling the other guy to stop."

CBS and the New York Times later reported that while all such drills are routinely videotaped, the military can not find the tape. "Baker was soon diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. He began suffering seizures, sometimes 10 to 12 per day."

In April of this year, a 21-year-old Guantánamo prisoner called Al-Jazeera and described in an interview a recent IRF assault of beatings and tear gas.