Once appearing online in: se7en magazine but now apparently no longer...
(some time early 2009)
Guantanamo Bay is the oldest overseas US naval base, described by the US Navy as a cornerstone of military activities in the Caribbean Theatre, “on the front lines of the battle for regional security and protection from drug trafficking and terrorism, and protection for those who attempt to make their way through regional seas in un-seaworthy craft.”
After George Bush Junior waged war against terrorism, Guantanamo Bay became host to the detainee mission of Operation Enduring Freedom. Makeshift camps used previously to house a surge of Haitian and Cuban migrants in the nineties soon became known internationally as the detention facilities holding some of the world’s most evil people, including a handful of those responsible for masterminding the largest terrorist attack in history.
Yemeni national Ramzi Binalshibh was one of five men held at the centre accused of plotting September 11. At the time of his arrest in 2002 he was believed to be the most senior al Qaeda member then in custody, a supposed missing link who could help make sense of a seemingly incomprehensible strategy used by the terrorist organisation.
Whilst on trial recently he reaffirmed his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and stated his hopes that the Jihad will continue “and strike the heart of America with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction”.
As far as the Bush Administration was concerned, the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay was one of many crucial cogs in its anti-terrorist machine, necessary to detain men like Binalshibh who posed an all too real threat to the Western community.
But not long after the first detainees started arriving at Camp X-Ray, located on the northern side of the naval base near the sea, stories began to emerge that revealed a darker side to the world’s most powerful country and its self-proclaimed War on Terrorism.
In December 2002, 11 months since the first “enemy combatants” trickled in, it was revealed that at least 59 of the 300 or so detainees had no reason to be held, having been recommended for release by intelligence officers in Afghanistan long before their incarceration at Guantanamo.
One army official said at the time: "There are a lot of guilty [people] in there, but there's a lot of farmers in there too."United States Justice Department attorneys indicated at the end of 2001 that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay would be unable to appeal against their detention in US courts because the naval base is not on US soil.
Although this was later amended, the base continued to operate in contradiction to the Geneva Convention. It exists in a realm where the rules of the world do not apply, and humanity is just a word rarely uttered.
In some twisted way, however, the guards there are “honour bound to defend freedom”. They are told that the detainees are killers, and the type of people responsible for the World Trade Centre attacks.
Human Rights activist Moazzam Begg is currently travelling across Britain alongside a former guard and other former detainees as part of the Cage Prisoners tour, Two Sides One Story. He said: “They really believed that they were doing the job that was defending their nation.”
After September 11 2001, the US government gave itself the license to arrest and detain who it wished, in the name of its freedom.
British born Moazzam Begg is one of thousands of people once deemed to be “enemy combatants” by the US government. He was, therefore, a threat to society. He had his freedom taken away from him. He was held for three years without trial or charge, having been arrested by the CIA in Islamabad in 2002.
Moazzam moved to Kabul in 2001 with his wife and three children, fulfilling his dream of becoming a teacher and charity worker. Once there he set up a school which received official sponsorship from the UK. Then the war began.
He told a small crowd in Brighton of the 1500 pound Daisy Cutter bombs used by the US military that threatened his and countless other families. “Don’t let the name fool you,” he said, “the crater is so deep that if you were in it you would find it very difficult to get out.”
After his arrest he was held at the Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, another US overseas base. He has claimed to have seen two men beaten to death whilst in detention there. “After Bagram we were looking forward to going to Guantanamo Bay.”
Some detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been incarcerated for as long as 7 years with no hint of a trial on the horizon. Families fear the worst when their loved ones go missing, but have no clue where they are or what has happened to them.
The CIA has been reported to fly prisoners from one country to the other, always off the radar, all the time subjecting them to brutal interrogations. Quite often the first news heard after someone’s disappearance is their name read out on a list of international terrorist suspects years later.
Around 500 of Guantanamo’s prisoners are handed to the US by Pakistani forces, the Afghan Northern Alliance, and bounty hunters after a reward of thousands of dollars. Children as young as nine have been through the centre’s cages.
There is evidence that detainees are tortured. In January this year a US official admitted to the abuse and torture of a Saudi national accused of being the 20th hijacker behind the September 11 plot.
Former guard Chris Arendt told how guards were ordered to mace and beat up disobedient prisoners, it was in the Standard Operating Manual. Many of the prisoners do not speak English and do not understand the guards’ orders - they are at risk of being beaten more frequently than those who can speak English.
Chris is a changed man. He was only 17 when joined the army. It was not long before he was sent to Guantanamo. He said: “I don’t think it helps you to know the horrible things that happened. What I saw there was a complete violation of my personal ethics.”
In 2007, up to 80 per cent of prisoners were in solitary confinement, according to a report by Amnesty International. Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said at the time: “With many prisoners already in despair at being held in indefinite detention on a remote island prison, some are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown after years of solitary confinement.”
UK national Omar Deghayes is blind in one eye. A soldier allegedly plunged his finger into it. Omar had human excrement smeared over his face and, like many others, he was injected against his will with strange and mysterious drugs. He was beaten up by “Extreme Reaction Forces” on his first day after his transfer from Bagram, where he also saw a man beaten to death, to Guantanamo. The beatings continued consistently thereafter.
But as far as Omar is concerned, there are “other places which are worse than Guantanamo. The closure of Guantanamo is not the end of the problem”. He spoke of the secret detention facilities hidden in places like Romania, Morrocco, and Jordan, and “many other black hole places where torture still takes place”.
One of Barack Obama’s pre-election promises was to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and restore habeas corpus. Both Moazzam and Omar fear that this closure would have dire consequences for the thousands of other detainees in other detention centres across the world.
Amnesty International has said that there are as many as 70,000 people held in secret prisons worldwide, including on UK and US soil, where unspeakable atrocities occur every day out of the sight of the media’s watchful eye. Guantanamo Bay is just the tip of this iceberg of injustice.
Belmarsh Prison in London has been referred to as Britain’s Guantanamo. Nine foreign nationals were arrested in December in 2001 and imprisoned at Belmarsh where they were held indefinitely without trial, and kept in their cells for as long as 22 hours a day. The House of Lords ruled that this detention was in breach of the Human Rights Act.
UK Anti-Terror legislation means that terror suspects can be put under house arrest making it illegal for them to go into their own gardens.
Suspects can be held without charge for as long as 28 days while police track down shreds of evidence against them. During the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign suspects could only be held for 3 days without charge. In places like Guantanamo and Belmarsh people are held for years with no real evidence amounting to a case against them.
500 or more people, including Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards, have been released from Guantanamo without going to court. Moazzam aks: “If they were so dangerous why were they released?”
Jaralla al-Marri was arrested because of apparent links to the Taliban and al Qaeda. He is now a free man but his brother is still in solitary confinement at the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, America.
He flew seven hours from Afghanistan to speak to the people of Britain, not of his time in Guantanamo but of what can be done to bring an end to the unfair internment of thousands of people across the globe.
There is no such thing as a human rights campaign in Afghanistan. Jaralla said: “Seven years and no-one listened to our voice.”
Human rights group Cage Prisoners, of which Moazzam Begg is a spokesman, is campaigning for justice across the world and not just for those incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. The Two Sides One Story Tour is “to mark seven years of unlawful detention, abuse and torture”.
Moazzam told people in Brighton how “this is a unique time in history where people from both sides of the war are talking during the conflict about experiences that effected both peoples’ lives”.
By spreading awareness they hope that a unified voice of thousands of people standing against illegal detention without trial will embarrass the powers-that-be to do something about it.
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