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.
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