(AP)
Updated: 2007-09-12 10:43

Some prisoners said their enemies inside the prison have lied to gain favor with interrogators or settle old scores.

One detainee bluntly informed his panel that he lies to interrogators and that others do as well.

"Why do you feel you have the right to lie to the interrogators?" a surprised panel member asked the detainee, Abdennour Sameur, an Algerian who was a resident of Britain.

"I was lying so that I can get my medical (treatment)," Sameur said. "Every interrogation that I have gone to I had to lie, because that was the only way I could get medical attention. ... They were giving me some kind of medical pills, but the interrogators stopped it. Every time they get a new interrogator the interrogator stops it."

Responding to questions from AP, military officers denied that detainees were deprived of medicine.

A Guantanamo spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Edward Bush, said no officials at Guantanamo had ever heard of a detainee being prevented from taking medicine.

Navy Capt. Bruce Menele, commander of the Joint Medical Group at Guantanamo, said that "interrogators have no authority over medical personnel administering medicine, or over any other aspect of detainee medical care."

"I would be highly disturbed and feel obligated to take significant actions if I discovered that this had ever occurred," Menele added.

Asked whether prayers are being interrupted and whether interrogators have withheld medicine, Bush said he was checking with appropriate commands at the base.

A letter signed by physicians and published Friday in the British medical journal Lancet compared the role of doctors at Guantanamo to the South African doctors involved in the case of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who was beaten and tortured to death in 1977 in police custody.

The letter, signed by some 260 people from 16 countries - most of them doctors - accused the US medical establishment of turning a blind eye to the role of military doctors at Guantanamo.

It did not allege doctors were involved in withholding any medicine from detainees, but took serious issue with the involvement of medical personnel in force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo.

The detainees' accounts also described a few lighter moments in the prison, set on an arid bluff overlooking the Caribbean Sea.

"There was a time when the guards opened my cell by mistake and I joked with them by asking 'Can I help you?'" said Abdul Aziz Alsuwedy. "They laughed and apologized. The same guard thanked me later for not causing any problems."

Alsuwedy, whose account was contained in a statement sent to his Administrative Review Board, did not say whether the guards belonged to the Immediate Reaction Force that carries out forced cell extractions and suppresses disturbances.

Another detainee described how interrogators said he resembled Cuba Gooding Jr., and later brought him photos of the star because the detainee had never heard of the actor.

Several detainees said some guards and interrogators treat them with respect, while others do not.

"Who treats me good, I treat them good," said Sameur, the Algerian detainee. "Who treats me like a dog, I give them the same treatment."

Sameur then described what he did to guards he doesn't get along with: "I threw feces and I have spit on them."

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