"What
else do I want to say? [REDACTED]. Many things happened. There were doing
so many things. What else did they did? [REDACTED]. They do so many things.
So so many things. What else did they did? [REDACTED]. After that another
method of torture began. [REDACTED]. They used to ask me questions and the
investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that
I knew. And, if I didn't reply what I heard, he used to [REDACTED]. So many
things happened. I don't in summary, that's basically what happened."
-Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri “They snatched my seventeen-year-old son for a bounty payment. They took him to Guantánamo and held him prisoner for five years. They tortured him. Then they killed him and returned him to me in a box, cut up.” -Talal Al-Zahrani
"They're very well treated down there. They're living in the tropics." -Dick Cheney
The facility at Guantanamo is a concentration camp, placed in a faraway no man's land altogether fitting to its dark reality. People are being strapped down and kept alive there with feeding tubes, having given up hope of justice from a nation once seen as a model for it. It is shameful. Shameful.
But not too shameful for Congressman Inglis.
Here's what a public trial for accused enemy combatants looked like in WW II,
back when we had such things.
A voice from Gitmo's darkness
By Jumah al-Dossari
JUMAH AL-DOSSARI is a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain. This article was excerpted from letters he wrote to his attorneys. Its contents have been deemed unclassified by the Department of Defense.
January 11, 2007
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba — I AM WRITING from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.
In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.
At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.
What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.
During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen.
I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States. And I have to say that not all American soldiers stationed in Cuba tortured us or mistreated us. There were soldiers who treated us very humanely. Some even cried when they witnessed our dire conditions. Once, in Camp Delta, a soldier apologized to me and offered me hot chocolate and cookies. When I thanked him, he said, "I do not need you to thank me." I include this because I do not want readers to think that I fault all Americans.
But, why, after five years, is there no conclusion to the situation at Guantanamo? For how long will fathers, mothers, wives, siblings and children cry for their imprisoned loved ones? For how long will my daughter have to ask about my return? The answers can only be found with the fair-minded people of America.
I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.
If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.
Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
additional links:
- Andy Worthington's Webpage -
American Gulag
The Hard Core
'I will never leave Guantanamo'
Diary of a Guantanamo Attorney
addendum:
(3/11/08) Another doleful, shameful tale from Guantanamo.
addendum2:
(3/28/08) Another doleful, shameful tale from Guantanamo.
addendum3:
(3/29/08) Close Gitmo, five secretaries of state say.
addendum4:
(5/1/08) Al-Jazeera cameraman freed from Guantanamo after 6 years. Shameful shameful shameful.
addendum5:
(5/29/08) A Kinder, Gentler Torture -H. Candace Gorman.
addendum6:
(9/6/08) "Donald Rumsfeld announced that the detainees were the "worst of the worst," and General Richard Myers warned they "would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down." But as early as 2002, the commander at Gitmo, Maj. General Michael Dunlavey, complained that he was receiving too many "Mickey Mouse" prisoners. A 2004 New York Times investigation found numerous officials who said that of the 595 detainees then held at Gitmo, maybe two dozen possessed any useful information. In 2006, a study of Pentagon filings on 517 detainees led by Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux quantified it with hard numbers: Only 5 percent of the men at Gitmo had been scooped up by US forces, and only 8 percent were fighters of any kind."
addendum7:
(3/4/09) Andy Worthington's definitive prisoner list. It's worth noting that although the prisoners at Guantanamo were the "worst of the worst", 76% of them have now been released or cleared for release. So Rumsfeld lied.
addendum8:
(4/15/09) "This treatment started about 20 days before Obama came into power, and since then I've been subjected to it almost every day," he told Al Jazeera.
"Since Obama took charge he has not shown us that anything will change."
