Gitmo, when will all this stop?

Column

3 July 2007

By Mayada Al Askari

Whenever I hear the name Guantanamo, I remember an LP my mother played, in lazy Baghdadi afternoons. The tune was Latino, the mood was spicy and Baghdad was and still is the love of my life.

Today, when the name Gitmo is mentioned I see barbed wires, broken bones and souls. No more sweet melodies, no more of the Martí­ poem

I am a truthful man
from where the palm tree grows
and before dying I want
to let out the verses of my soul

Today, through the misery of so many innocent people, we do not see a Spanish setting which will go well with the name. No more romantics, this is the age of "terrorism" and its counter "terrorism".

It was a few days before Christmas 2004, when my cell phone rang in Amman, the caller said her name was Daphne and that she was Robert Fisk's assistant.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. She said Fisk would be flying to Amman in hope of meeting a certain "HM". The man was recently released from Gitmo, after 20 months of detention. So on the day before Christmas, we set off to Zarqa and met the newly released HM.

I was flabbergasted at what the man told us, and over the years, I heard this man's story told over and over again, by so many others. HM was taken to a location called Bagram in Afghanistan, there he was abused, because there is no monitoring at all in Afghanistan.

The prison's attendants wouldn't let him sleep for more than two hours a day. A barrel was his toilet which had to be used in front of everyone. He was sexually abused, beaten severely and water was thrown on him before facing an air conditioner.

He said: "If a prisoner did not comply and cooperate, he would be abused according to how convinced the interrogator thought he was guilty; and to reach the stage of "not guilty" in the eyes of the interrogator, one went through a long period of being physically abused."

From there, the man was put on a plane, his wrists, neck and feet were bound together in chains, he was gagged, made to wear ear muffs and darkened glasses, he flew in this state for about 24 hours to Guantanamo Bay prison.

Many men tried to commit suicide in Guantanamo, stated HM. "We'd see them hanging from the meshed barriers, we would scream and shout for the guards to come and get those young men down."

Interrogators

HM spent 20 months in Cuba. One day, the Guantanamo interrogators gave him a lie detector test, medical tests and fitted him for clothes. A few days later, an American told him he was going to be released.

After five days, hooded and bound, HM was put on an aircraft with an Iraqi, a Turk and two Tajiks and flown back to Bagram. They did an iris scan of his eyes too. "We were told we were now 'guests', but I spent another four months in Bagram."

A few days later, a friend of my friend , Clive Stafford Smith, called. A British watchdog lawyer, he wondered if I could conduct some research for him on Jordanian and Palestinian prisoners in Guantanamo and to meet up with their families.

This took me to a completely new level, and from several visits all over Jordan I found out other pieces of disturbing information.

I learnt that Camp-5 is a maximum security prison. Each cell is approximately 6 feet by 8 feet. The lights are on day and night. The prisoners are allowed out of their cells for only two hours a day. For a long time, the guards would vary temperatures to the extremes - cold and hot.

If a prisoner being led to a shower looked at another prisoner, or spoke to anyone, he was beaten. If the prisoner put his food tray down in the wrong place for collection, he was beaten.

Any guard at any time could order a beating or could sent a prisoner to an isolation cell. In isolation, prisoners' beards and heads were forcibly shaved.

I was discussing all this stuff, with a US officer with whom I communicate on MSN. That day, all of a sudden, he sent me a smiling face and I asked him: What? he answered: "OK so you convince the big hats to close down Gitmo, what about CIA prisons?"

Yes indeed.

The secret facilities are part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago. At various times these prisons have included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as at a small centre in the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Then he sends me another smiling face and says: "President Bush said 'the US does not torture. I have not authorised it and I will not'."

This really sent me on a confusion ride, I ask my friend: So the Lindsay England woman and the torturers in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo got their orders from angels in the sky!