Sean Baker
|
|
Sean Baker, a native of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, is a United States Air Force veteran and former member of the Kentucky National Guard, who served during the first Gulf War, and as a member of the 438th military police at Guantanamo Bay.
In January 2003, Baker was asked by an officer at Guantanamo, to pretend to be a prisoner in a training drill. As per instruction, Baker wore an orange prison jumpsuit over his uniform, and crawled under a bunk in a cell, so that an "internal reaction force" consisting of four (or possibly five) US soldiers, could practice handling of an uncooperative inmate. However, the soldiers in the reaction force were operating under the orders that he was, in fact, a genuine detainee that had assaulted a sergeant.
During an interview with WLEX, a Kentucky television station, Baker stated that he was beaten severely, and that a soldier pressed his head down against the steel floor of the facility, to the point where he became unable to breathe. Although Baker shouted out the safeword he had been given to stop the exercise, the soldier continued beating Baker's head against the floor and choking him. Only after managing to state that he was a U.S. soldier did the other soldiers realise that Baker was wearing a battle dress uniform and government-issue boots under the prison jumpsuit.
Baker was transported to a military hospital for treatment of head injuries, and then transferred to a Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, where he was treated for six days, and given a two-week injury discharge. During that discharge, however, Baker began suffering major seizures indicative of traumatic brain injury, and was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he stayed for 48 days. Afterwords, he was transferred to light duty with an honor burial detail at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and received medical discharge in April 2004.
After Baker revealed his story to a Kentucky reporter, a spokeswoman for the Southern Command questioned the validity of Baker's injuries, and denied that his medical discharge was related to the training drill. However, the Physical Evaluation Board stated in a document on September 29 2003, that "the TBI was due to soldier playing role of detainee who was non-cooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise."
The Army has since recanted its denial of the relationship between Baker's injury and the training drill, although the spokeswoman continues to claim that the injury was due only in part to the incident. A military investigation concluded that there was no misconduct that led to Baker's injury; a videotape that should have been made of the incident for training purposes has yet to be found.
Due to the media coverage concerning American treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the treatment of a U.S. soldier posing as a prisoner could obviously pose some difficulties to the position of the U.S. military, which has consistently stated that the Guantanamo detainees, despite not having any rights, are still treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Conceivably, if Baker receives disability retirement pay due to injuries received in this incident, the cases of other U.S. military detainees would be strengthened.