By C1 Staff
GUANTANAMO BAY — One Guantanamo detainee is getting his way when it comes to complaints about female corrections officers escorting him to and from meetings with his legal defense.
BND reports that Navy Capt. J.K. Waits issued an order for the prison to temporarily stop using female escorts for Abd al-Hai al-Iraqi, who is accused of serving as commander of al-Qaida’s army in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004.
The change in soldier escorts for prisoners from men to women has been a source of controversy since it was first initiated, as religious tenants prevent physical contact between the prisoners and women.
Al-Hadi was confronted for the first time with the possibility of a female soldier touching him by attaching his shackles and asked for a male soldier rather than a woman. He was declared noncompliant and subjected to a forced cell extraction.
Waits agreed to hear an emergency motion on the conflict at a hearing next week. It’s unclear whether the Pentagon would seek to prevent the public from watching because censors blacked out the words “male” and “female” in al-Hadi’s lawyer’s filing.
The prison’s commander, Rear Adm. Kyle Cozad, said there has never been a policy of preventing female soldiers from touching male detainees in the facility’s most reclusive lockup, Camp 7.
The admiral said he was unaware of defense lawyers’ claims that women soldiers had not handled the so-called high-value detainees for years out of respect for their religion and tradition. He did say that he was opposed to discrimination in his guard force.