SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The U.S. Southern Command on Friday launched an investigation into "credible allegations" that guards at Guantanamo Bay abused detainees.

The Pentagon's inspector general's office told the Associated Press that it had ordered the Miami-based Southern Command to investigate after Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, who represents a detainee at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, filed a "hotline" complaint last week.

Vokey attached a sworn statement from his paralegal, Sgt. Heather Cerveny, 23, that several guards in a bar at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice.

Cerveny visited the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba last month and said she spent an hour with the guards at the military club. The guards quit discussing beating detainees after learning she works for a detainee's legal team.

"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the statement said. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others' stories of beating detainees."

Asked Thursday if the conversation could have been exaggerated bar talk, she said, "I don't think that they were trying to impress me in any way. They were already in a discussion in there when I walked into a group."

She said she filed the complaint because "I don't think it's right for us to be allowing these prisoners to be treated poorly . . . I think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard."

Gary Comerford, spokesman for the Pentagon's inspector general's office, told the AP that in the past two days, the case "has been referred to Southcom for action. They're going to have to look into this."

Gen. John Craddock, the commander of the Southern Command, said later Friday that he had ordered the investigation, headed by an Army colonel, to begin.

The military Joint Task Force that runs the detention camps at Guantanamo Bay pledged to work with investigators from the Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The inspector general receives 14,000 tips on misconduct each year via the hotline and opens 3,000 cases each year as a result, Comerford said.

There are now 454 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, according to Vincent Lusser, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross.

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