Inside Guantanomo

[Ghazi]

Salaam

Inside Guantanomo

05 October 2003

A documentary by Andy Davies titled ‘Inside Guantanomo’ detailing the tortures dealt to Muslims was aired by BBC1 on its Panorama programme at 10.15 pm on Sunday 5th October 2003.


Inside Guantanomo

05 October 2003

A documentary by Andy Davies titled ‘Inside Guantanomo’ detailing the tortures dealt to Muslims was aired by BBC1 on its Panorama programme at 10.15 pm on Sunday 5th October 2003.

The reporter tracked down former Guantanomo Bay detainees


It started with a Red Cross official stating, ‘The US has put detainees beyond the law.’

The prison camp at Guantanomo Bay is a secretive place. There is no free press access. No interviews are allowed of the inmates. Guantanomo Bay itself is an enclave in Southern Cuba which is illegally occupied by the USA. Muslim men and boys have been kept in cages only 8 feet square for over two years.

The BBC reporter tried to ask the guards about how the captives were being treated. He was met with ‘No comment.’

The Americans refuse to call Guantanomo Bay a ‘prison’ to deprive the captives of basic rights. The prime purpose of the camp is to hold and interrogate captives without a time limit i.e. indefinite torture. As the detainees are not considered by the Americans as Prisoners of War, or even suspected criminals the men are being held away from international scrutiny.

The callous attitude of the Americans was typified when an American woman, Judy Steiner, living in the American family quarter said, ‘We don’t worry about the detainees.’

As Andy Davies walked along a line of cells he described into his microphone the scene, ‘Walking along a line of cells. Eight foot by eight-foot square metal grids. Detainees are not allowed to stalk to each other.’

One of the detainees called out, ‘It’s a long time we are not seeing anyone.’ Davies replies that he is from the BBC. At that point a guard barks out, ‘No talking!’ The desperate sound of the hapless detainee being hustled away was very audible. Davies was banned from going into the camp after that.

In Kabul on July 19th 2003 the first batch of released Guantanomo detainees arrived back to Afghanistan. They gave first hand witness accounts of life inside the camp. The BBC report made clear that America’s reasons for holding people were inexcusable as fighting a war is not illegal under international law. Nobody has yet been charged even after two years of captivity!

First-hand accounts from former captives:

Assadulla Mousera was in Guantanomo when Davies walking past the cells. He never again saw the prisoner who called out to Davies.

Here are comments by some former captives:

Asadulla, ‘We were imprisoned because we were Muslims.’

Nur Habibullah, ‘Is what you call human rights?’

Muhammad Akhbar, ‘Why did they take me to Cuba? Who will feed my wife and children? Nobody to look after them.’

According to Judge Richard Goldstone (Former Chief Prosecutor of the Human Rights Tribunal in Bosnia),

‘These people (the Guantanomo Bay captives) should never have been treated this way. Even suspected terrorists should never be treated in a manner which is unlawful. That describes the Guantanomo process.’

The Red Cross said, ‘The US has put detainees beyond the law. After 18 months of captivity the prisoners have no idea of their fate and no means of legal recourse.’

In Khost, the BBC located a man who had been imprisoned for over a year. His name was Syeed Abassin, a taxi driver. When he was arrested with a passenger in his taxi he tried to show papers to prove that he was just an innocent taxi driver. The irony is that Syeed admired the West. He even risked breaking Taliban law by keeping a television set and playing Western music in his taxi.

Syeed said, ‘I spent 13 months in jail. My life was ruined. I was just driving, arrested and put in prison. My hands were tied behind my back.’

Syeed’s passenger, Aleef Khan, was arrested too. While Aleef was in Guantanomo, his business rivals grabbed his property. One of his rivals handed his name to the Americans for a bounty’ it was a personal feud.

Aleef Khan described how he was transported,

‘They cuffed me, taped my eyes and ears and gagged me. They injected me to make me unconscious. When I got off the plane they injected me again and made me conscious. They put me on a trolley and then into a cage. It was like a zoo. I spent 13 months in jail. Nobody showed any evidence (of any crimes).’

In Guantanomo, Abassin asked for Western justice. Nobody listened to him. The detainees were subjected to repeated interrogations without a lawyer.

The detainees described their treatment as inhumane.

Syeed Abassin,

‘There was no room to pray in the cage. My joints were damaged. The lights were very bright and shone all the time and my eyes were damaged. If we spoke to people in the other blocks they would withdraw our bedding and blankets. I had problems with my knees. The doctor told me to exercise. When I did the exercises the guard locked me in a container for five days.’

The lights are kept on 24 hours a day. The detainees were not charged with any crime.

Judge Richard Goldstone, ‘Prolonged interrogation and detention without trial cannot be justified any more than torture without trial. In democracies certain measures are ruled out and it’s been ineffective. One has not seen any great results come out of Guantanomo Bay.’

Severe treatment of prisoners is dealt out at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. America does not bother to notify the Red Cross who only find out about detainees several weeks after they are taken, by which time they have either been released or moved to Guantanomo Bay. America makes every effort to hide the Muslim detainees from the outside world.

According to the detainees, Bagram was worse than Guantanomo Bay. They were kept in cages inside a hanger.

Aleef Khan said,

‘I was kept in Bagram for 45 days. They interrogated me for two or three times a day. The chains were on me all the time. They taped my eyes and the hood was on me. Talking was not allowed. The lights were kept on for 24 hours. They would not let us sleep. They were banging the doors and making lots of noise (to stop us from sleeping). We were made to kneel down with our hands over our heads for over an hour. One guard was standing over me and another pointed his gun at me. If we moved our faces to one side we were made to kneel for another two hours. If we moved even slightly we would become unconscious.’

Aleef’s hands remained permanently bruised. There were many accounts of stress and duress (torture) techniques.

Judge Richard Goldstone, ‘These techniques were forms of torture. I’m using torture in the technical and legal sense.’

Two men died at Bagram. An American pathologist certified them as homicides. One of the dead men was a 22 year-old farmer by the name of Dilawar. A member of his family, Aslodin Khan, commented, ‘Our son was martyred. Our son was innocent. Dilawar left a widow and a small child.’



The American pathologist certified that Dilawar had died by ‘blunt force injuries.’ In other words, he’d been beaten to death. He died within the first few days at Bagram. The Red Cross had no access to him!



Not all detainees were captured in Afghanistan. Some were taken from other countries with little respect for human rights. Moazem Begg, a British citizen, had been kept at Bagram for over a year. He went to Afghanistan with his wife and three children to do aid work at his own expense. He was staying in an Afghan village helping to bore tube wells for clean drinking water. When America started bombing he went to Pakistan with hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. He was staying in Islamabad. He was snatched by a combined group of Pakistani and American agents.



Moazem’s wife, Sally, said that they were woken up in the middle of the night. Two Pakistanis and two Americans snatched Moazem. That was in January 2002. The Pakistani authorities told Sally that Moazem would be freed after two days. Lawyers in Pakistan failed to get him released. They tried to get him in front of a court under the rule of Habeas Corpus (innocent until proven guilty). The Pakistani authorities unbelievably denied any knowledge of him! Moazem’s kidnapping was a violation of the Pakistani constitution.



America also illegally removed two suspects from Gambia and shipped them to Guantanomo. Jamal and Bishra Al Banna were brothers who went to Gambia on business. They were British residents. Their friend Wahhad Al Rawi was also taken but released. He suffered interrogation by Americans. He refused to talk. The interrogators told him that the British authorities told them to take him. Wahhad was imprisoned for 24 days! The questioning included implied threats of beatings and sexual molestation. The Americans would tell him that unless he told them what they wanted to hear then they would hand him over to the Gambians who would sodomise him amongst other tortures. According to a Gambian lawyer, the Al Banna brothers had been kidnapped.



The same happened in purportedly democratic Bosnia with a Human Rights Court where six Muslims were seized and taken to Guantanomo.



Judge Michelle Picard, President of the Human Rights Chamber, said,

‘The world is not safe because of the behaviour of the United States. When the USA feels it does not want to comply (with human rights conventions) it does what it wants.



The Bosnian Muslims were kidnapped contrary to the decision of the Human Rights Commission which ruled that the men could not be taken out of Bosnia.’



Guantanomo is a legal black hole. There have been 32 suicide attempts. Aleef Khan said that two men went crazy next to him. Christopher Girod from the Red Cross said, ‘It puts detainees under huge stress. We’ve seen deterioration of psychological health. There are three children who are being held too!



About America’s plan to try the detainees under their own rigged military tribunal: Judge Richard Goldstone commented, ‘Their commander in chief (George Bush) said that these men are ‘bad people’. It is impossible to get a fair trial. History will judge it to be a great injustice. A future American president will have to apologise for Guantanomo.’





BBC- by Andy Davies

[Ghazi]

Salaam

Brothers and Sisters, We need to put a stop to this.