Imagine that you are walking on the street with your friends. It’s an ordinary day. Something happens, and then you wake up in a maximum security jail in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Statistics show that 8 percent of the Guantnamo detainees are listed as fighters for a terrorist group, 30 percent are considered members of a terrorist group and 60 percent were just „associated with” terrorists. Over more than half of the detainees are considered „enemy combatants” for the simple reason of being Islamic. What do they have to endure for that? Different torture techniques were used to obtain confessions from the detainees, but many of them turned out to be false. Torture and abuse, including sexuality, sleep deprivation, being shocked with electrodes, beaten, urinated on, these are only a few from a much longer list. Medical examinations show that these caused serious injuries and mental disorders which would turn into lasting sufferings.
Most of the detainees declared the the most traumatic experience was the sexual humiliations. Religion and culture make these abuses even harder to endure. It’s the case of an Iraqi prisoner who was identified only as Yasser; he declared that he was sodomized with a stick, but he would not allow a full rectal exam. Another Iraqi, identified as Rahman, was stripped naked, forced to wear women’s underwear and paraded in front of the guards. This caused him post traumatic stress disorder and he later had sexual problems related to his humiliation.
However, not only sexual abuses let deep sufferings to the detainees. For example Omar Deghayey was blinded by pepper spray, during his detention, and Juma Al Dossary was tortured with broken glass, barbed wire and burning cigarettes, not to mention sexual assaults.
People seem to use their imagination on negative purposes. Their education is equal to a child’s when torturing a poor dog. This way of percepting the prisoners was common through the Guantanamo jail, where torturing weakens mental but also physical ability to resist and reduces the detainees to „animal level” concerns. Due to Jom Philips’ opinion (from Heritage Foundation), „some of these terrorists who are not recognized as soldiers don't deserve to be treated as soldiers."
While creating new games for themselves, old ones were also in their attention. Chinese Communist torture techniques used during the Korean War weren’t abandoned even if we are in the 21st century, ruled by the great civilization of the USA.
In a world where religion acceptance is thought as being accepted, in Guantanamo Bay, the Qur’an is banned , and flushed down the toilet. The Pakistani politician Imran Khan highlighted the abuse, but this won’t solve the problem. The US government simply denies it.
Choosing the easy way
Another tragic effect of Guantanamo’s jail was the deaths and the suicidal attempts of the prisoners. In August 2003, at least 1000 detainees had attempted suicide in protest, but hey! no wonder, considering their treatment! However, the Pentagon saw on this just a „manipulative self-injuries behaviors”. Even so, this was not the case of Shah Muhammad, a Pakistani who explained „I was trying to kill myself....I tried four times, because I was disgusted with my life”. I wonder though what did the Pentagon see on the case of Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al-Hanashi, who was the fifth detainee to successfully commit suicide. Did he see a manipulation, a suicidal attempt, or a homicide (an idea that we can find in a study: „Death in Camp Delta”, published by Seton Hall Law’s Center for Policy and Research, but this idea could also be found in the press)
In 2008, a video was released into the public’s attention, where the detainee Omar Khadr says while being interrogated something that could be either „help me”, kill me” or calling for his mother, in Arabic.
Looking from outside the jail’s cells, lawyers like the law professor Mark Denbeaux from the Seton Hall University in New Jersey turned their attention on Guantanamo Bay. Also, human rights organizations but not only, criticized the military jail.
Children and Bin Laden’s personal stuff
It was a shocking surprise for me to find out about detainees who were under 16. In 2002 and 2003, Camp Iguana housed three children under 16. Guantanamo Bay is organized in different camps. The most frequently mentioned in the press are Camp Seven (which has a secret location, where „high value detainees” are held), Camp X-Ray (it has already been closed), Camp Delta/Echo (isolation cells, where detainees meet their lawyers) and Camp Iguana. The last one captured my attention, because this is the one that used to hold child detainees, and now only holds „men determined to be innocent”. How can such a place exist in a jail?! Also, I found out in the press that „In late January 2004, U.S. officials released three children aged 13 to 15 and returned them to Afghanistan”. I wonder how old the youngest child detainee at Guantanamo Bay was?
Along with these children, Guantanamo also held prisoners that were accused of extremely important and negative facts. Among them, David Hicks was found guilty of „providing material support to terrorists”, and Salim Hamdan „accepted a position on Bin Laden’s personal stuff as a chauffeur”. Also, Khalid Seikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Walid Bin Attash were charged for the September 11 attacks under the military commission system. I wonder how could they put children in the same jail with these detainees?
Chinese Issues
Seventeen of two dozen Uyghur detainees were found not to be „enemy combatants” on August 25, 2005. Despite being cleared of links to terrorism, they are were still held in prison, after they had already been there for seven years. Being Muslims from north-western China, the US Government fears that they will face persecution when being returned to their home country, although they were proved to be innocent. So, my question, why not releasing them in USA, as this was its mistake, and the innocent detainees were already held for nothing for 7 years in prison, and more: tortured! However, a spokesman for Kevin Rudd says that the Government will consider the request on a case-by-case basis. However, once the guilty was found null in those cases, keeping them in jail even more turns into total barbarism.
On the 5th of May, 2005, fie Uyghurs were transported to refugee camps in Albania, but as one of the Uyghurs’ lawyers said, the sudden transfer was an attempt „to avoid having to answer in court for keeping innocent men in jail”. However, Federal Government is considering a request by the United States for Australia to resettle detainees from the Guantanamo Bay.
However, Australia isn’t the first country to be a destination for the detainees. In December 2009, it was listed that since 2002, more that 550 prisoners have departed from Guantanamo Bay for other destinations, including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Chad, Denmark, Egypt, France, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Palau, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom and Yemen.
On the 22nd of January 2010, the Guantanamo Review Task Force issued in a Final Report (published only on 28th of May 2010, that they would recommend releasing 126 current detainees to their homes or to a third country. Therefore, 30 Yemens were approved for release if „security conditions in their home country improve”.
Returned to the battlefield
Among those of the detainees who were released and being thought to be innocent villagers, turned out not to be so harmless. According to Dick Chenley, these prisoners managed to trick the interrogators creating themselves identities as „harmless villagers”. However, after being released, they were able to „return to the battlefield”.
In 2005, Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi was repatriated from Guantanamo and transferred to Kuwaiti custody. On March 25, 2008 he committed a successful suicide attack in Mosul and was later acquitted of terrorism charges.
In Russia we have other cases. In December 2001, Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhmayarov were captured in Afghanistan and released from Guantanamo in 2004. he was then arrested by the Russian authorities in Moscow on the 27th of August, 2005, for preparing a series of attacks in Russia. As the authorities sustain, Vakhitov was using a local human rights group as a cover for his activities. How strange to use a human rights group as coverage while planning your attacks and how to kill people. Couldn’t he find something else for backup, like a campaign for saving the whales? Anyhow, they were both released on the 2nd of September 2005 and no charges were pressed.
Peter Bergen, a national security expert and CNN analyst said that some of the released detainees that are suspected of having returned to terrorism are doubted of their harmless identity after they publically made anti-american statements, but that’s not that surprising considering their captivity period in an US prison camp.
Shut down
Guantanamo Bay hosted its first twenty captives on January 11, 2002. It is located in Cuba and it used to be an ordinary jail. Since the war in Afghanistan began (October 7, 2001), the jail turned into a detainment facility of the United States, being operated by Joint Task Force Guantanamo of the United States government, and 775 detainees have been brought there. Of these, the military has released 180 and transferred 76 to custody of other countries.
On January,2009,President Barack Obama was announced to have signed an order to suspend the proceedings of the Guantanamo Bay for 120 days and therefore the detention facility would be shut down within the year. Strangely, on July 2010, 176 still remain at Guantanamo.
Anyhow, bounties of „millions of dollars” appeared along with these worldwide scandals. It’s sad to see that others make money while accusing innocent people (of course, only some of the detainees were guilty of their charges) and it’s even more sad to find out what Guantanamo Bay meant to them, all their sufferings in their orange clothes, all their nightmares form there.
Guantanamo Bay and its detainees also influenced the movie industry but also the writing industry. If you are interested, look up for The Road to Guantanamo, 2006, or Murat Kurnaz’s memoir, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo.
