Guantánamo's
Lost Souls (Guardian). By American lawyer George Brent
Mickum.
Excerpts:
The day after tomorrow marks the confluence of two ignominious
anniversaries. The first is the five-year anniversary of the opening
of the notorious prison camps run by the US at the Guantánamo
naval air station in Cuba. In the five years since the US started
shipping prisoners from around the world to Guantánamo,
approximately 99% have never been charged with any transgression,
much less a crime. Approximately 400 prisoners, characterised
by the Bush administration as "the worst of the worst,"
have been released without charge, many directly to their families.
That any prisoners have been released is due almost entirely to
the outrage of the civilised world.
Thursday
is also the start of my clients' fifth year of captivity around
the world: Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna...Bisher and Jamil
have withstood various forms of physical torture during their
five years as prisoners. Both have suffered numerous beatings
(Bisher suffered broken ribs and perhaps a broken foot because
of beatings by guards, though both injuries went untreated – despite
Bisher's requests for medical assistance), stress positions, temperature
extremes, extreme sleep deprivation, death threats, threats to
family and, at various times, starvation and being denied water
that was fit to drink.
It pains
me to report that, at the start of his fifth year in prison, the
once healthy and extremely articulate Bisher is failing. He is
no longer able to withstand the most insidious form of torture
being used by the US military: prolonged isolation combined with
environmental manipulation that includes constant exposure to
temperature extremes and sleep deprivation...
What the
British government knows and the British public needs to know
is that Bisher's treatment is designed to achieve a single objective:
causing an individual to lose his psychological balance and, ultimately,
his mind. Every aspect of Bisher's prison environment is controlled
and manipulated to create constant mental instability. The damage
to Bisher's psyche is not unexpected. The ravages of extended
isolation and sensory deprivation leave no marks, but they destroy
the mind...
Bisher al-Rawi
is, slowly but surely, slipping into madness. British officials
have long been aware of Bisher's treatment. To my knowledge, they
have done nothing to intercede on his behalf. They have done nothing
to end his torture and constant mistreatment. They have done nothing
to address the constantly changing list of spurious, new allegations
that the military is uses to justify continued imprisonment.
Among the
latest new allegations: the military alleges that Bisher received
terrorist training in Bosnia and Afghanistan. British officials
know these charges are false beyond conjecture. Bisher has never
been in Bosnia and has signed an affidavit to that effect. The
only time Bisher has been in Afghanistan was when the CIA rendered
Bisher and Jamil there aboard CIA Gulfstream V-N379P out of the
Republic of the Gambia to Cairo, Egypt, where the aircraft refuelled,
then went on to the notorious Dark Prison. The reports Bisher
and Jamil have given us have matched exactly the flight logs of
CIA flights we have obtained. In the Dark Prison, Bisher and Jamil
spent weeks underground, encased in total darkness, chained to
a wall and shackled in leg irons, starved, and assaulted 24 hours
a day with cacophonously loud noise before being transferred to
Bagram....
Until last
March the British government adamantly refused to intercede on
behalf of any of the British residents still interred at Guantánamo....That
changed suddenly when the government asked for Bisher's return
on non-humanitarian grounds, belatedly conceding that Bisher had
worked for MI5. Unfortunately for Bisher, this long-overdue admission,
and the British government's request for his immediate repatriation,
coincided with Bisher being thrown into isolation. He remains
there more than nine months later, with no end in sight.
Bisher's
world is a cell 6ft by 8ft in Camp V, where alleged "non-compliant"
prisoners are incarcerated. After all these years and hundreds
of interrogations, Bisher finally refused to be interrogated further.
Despite the fact that Guantánamo officials have publicly
proclaimed that prisoners are no longer required to participate
in interrogations, Bisher is deemed to be non-compliant and hence
is tortured daily....
Solitary
confinement is but a single aspect of the torture that Bisher
endures on a daily basis. While in isolation, Bisher has been
constantly subjected to severe temperature extremes and other
sensory torments, many of which are part of a sleep deprivation
program that never abates. Frequently, Bisher's cell is unbearably
cold because the air conditioning is turned up to the maximum.
Sometimes, his captors take his orange jumpsuit and sheet, leaving
him only in his shorts. For a week at a time, Bisher constantly
shivers and is unable to sleep because of the extreme cold. Once,
when Bisher attempted to warm himself by covering himself with
his prayer rug, one of the few "comfort items" permitted
to him, his guards removed it for "misuse." On other
occasions, the heat is allowed to become so unbearable that breathing
is difficult and labored. For a week at a time, all Bisher can
do is lie completely still, sweat pouring off his body during
the day when the Cuban heat can reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit,
and the temperature inside Camp V is even higher.
Bisher is
allowed no contact with fellow prisoners. Bright lights are kept
on 24 hours a day. Bisher is given 15 sheets of toilet paper per
day, but because he used his sheets to cover his eyes to help
him to sleep, his toilet paper – considered another comfort item
by his beneficent constabulary – has been removed for "misuse."
Accordingly, he is no longer receives his daily ration of 15 sheets
of toilet paper. Imagine being in the position of having to make
a choice between using your tiny allotment of toilet paper for
the purpose for which it was intended or using it to sleep, and
then having it removed altogether...
Changes of
clothing take place at midnight when prisoners are given a single,
thin cotton sheet. Prisoners are unable to sleep until close to
1am. They are awakened at 5am, when each is required to return
his sheet. All of Bisher's legal documents and family photographs
were seized from him last June and have never been returned.
If Bisher
spends four more months in the conditions I have described, the
man I met in September 2004, who was healthy, articulate, thoughtful
and humorous, will in all likelihood no longer exist. He will
probably slip into a madness that is permanent. If that comes
to pass, Britain must recognise and accept the grave culpability
it bears...
The Bush
Administration, of course, continues to deny that the United States
uses torture, prating endlessly about the Administration's humane
treatment of the prisoners and its robust compliance with the
Geneva Conventions. It long ago defined away torture in the now
infamous "Torture Memo" commissioned by now Attorney
General Alberto Gonsales. But thousands of pages of memoranda
generated by FBI field agents at the prison camps in Guantánamo
and released pursuant to Freedom of Information Act litigation
belie the Administration's hollow assertions and paint a grim
and accurate picture...
These memoranda
expose in detail only some of the "torture techniques"
employed by the military. They document abuses that include "strangulation,
beatings, [and] placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees
ear openings" (document 4911 entitled Urgent Report). Mamdouh
Habib, a former prisoner at Guantánamo who was rendered
first to Egypt for unmentionable torture before being transferred
to Guantánamo, arrived there without fingernails and bleeding
from the ears and nose where cigarettes had repeatedly burned
him. Habib, one of the few prisoners actually charged by the military,
was summarily released to his home in Australia once the extent
of his abuse was exposed. But before placing Habib on the aircraft
that would eventually take him home, military officials could
not resist one last gratuitous torture: they told him he was being
transferred back to Egypt! Among the horrors I have been exposed
to in this case, this particular story haunts still.
These FBI
memoranda also document efforts by the military to cover-up the
abuses. Document number 3977 is a memorandum entitled "Impersonating
FBI at GTMO." It informs FBI superiors in Washington, DC
that military interrogators at Guantánamo are impersonating
the FBI when torturing prisoners. It goes on to state: "These
tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralisation
nature to date and [the Department of Defense, Criminal Investigation
Task Force] believes that [the torture] techniques have destroyed
any chance of prosecuting this detainee. If this detainee is ever
released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators
will not be held accountable because these torture techniques
were done [by] the 'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will be left holding
the bag before the public."
If I alone
were making these claims, I would expect at least some readers
to doubt the reliability of my account. But FBI field agents wrote
these documents. The FBI withheld them until a US court ordered
their production. Notably, no one in the Bush Administration or
the military has questioned the veracity of these FBI accounts.
Thus, there is no debate regarding the authenticity or accuracy
of the information contained in these documents.
But if corroboration
is needed, the FBI accounts are confirmed by the International
Committee of the Red Cross, which reports that the methods used
at Guantánamo have, over time, become "more refined
and repressive" than those witnessed by the Red Cross on
previous visits. Red Cross officials are on record stating that
military interrogators seek to make detainees dependent upon them
through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature
extremes, use of forced positions." They confirm that prisoners
are exposed to loud and incessant noise and music and were subjected
to "some beatings."
The Red Cross
also reports that interrogators not only used psychological and
physical coercion, but also enlisted the participation of medical
personnel in what the report called "a flagrant violation
of medical ethics." Doctors and other medical personnel work
directly with military officials at Guantánamo, conveying
data about prisoners' "mental health and vulnerabilities."
The Red Cross reports these medical professionals become part
of the torture and interrogation machine. Their chief function
is not the medical care of prisoners, but assisting interrogators
in extracting information. As a result, prisoners no longer trust
doctors and others to whom their treatment is entrusted.
It should
come as a surprise to no one that the Red Cross concluded that
"[t]he construction of such a system, whose stated purpose
is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other
than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment
and a form of torture."
...Almost
a hundred prisoners that we know of have died in US custody; 33
of these deaths are formally classified as homicides by the military.
Not since the second world war, when the US imprisoned American
citizens of Japanese descent, has this country experienced such
a constitutional nadir. If the world is to fight this war on terror,
morality must not be allowed to become collateral damage. The
time is long past for the British government to demand Bisher's
and Jamil's immediate return. Paradigms of innocent suffering,
they will remain wraiths that hover above the political and moral
landscape, constantly reminding us that the destinies of those
who would wage just war and those against whom that war is waged
are mingled.
