A number of newly released FBI files give detailed accounts of abuses at the U.S. detention facilities for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, CNN reported Wednesday.

The documents showed that at least 26 FBI employees witnessed aggressive mistreatment of prisoners and harsh interrogation techniques by other government agencies or outside contractors at the prison, according to the report.

"On several occasions witnesses saw detainees in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor with no chair/food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves and were left there 18, 24 hours or more," according to one FBI account.

One FBI witness saw a detainee "shaking with cold," while another said a detainee in a sweltering unventilated room was "almost unconscious on a floor with a pile of hair next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out through the night)."

Another witness saw a detainee "with a full beard whose head was wrapped in duct tape."

One file said that an interrogator squatted over the Quran and that a German shepherd dog was ordered to "growl, bark and show his teeth to the prisoner."

The documents also said the detainees told FBI agents that they had been beaten and one detainee complained that a female guard had rubbed up against him, fondled him and wiped menstrual blood on his head.

Agents reported seeing detainees with facial injuries, such as black eyes and cuts, and broken fingers.

The temperature of detention rooms was also kept either extremely hot or cold and loud music was played to deprive detainees of sleep.

A few agents said they had seen prisoners wrapped with Israeli flags.

The FBI said none of its agents were involved in the mistreatment, which it said was carried out by civilian security contractors or military personnel.

At times, its agents were told that the treatment, which they were told was approved by the Pentagon or was the policy of one of its departments, which included sleep deprivation and interviews with strobe lights and loud music, it said.

One agent said former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved of a technique in which detainees were kept in dark cells and interrogated for 24 hours straight.

The 26 FBI agents were among the 493 agency personnel assigned to Guantanamo since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

The FBI released the documents in response to a Freedom of Information request by the American Civil Liberties Union, but stressed that most of the findings had already been reported elsewhere.

The United States opened the detention facility at its naval base in Guantanamo in January 2002, to hold terror suspects and Taliban members mainly captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

Some 395 prisoners are still held there.

Source: Xinhua