I can't believe Americans are just watching their government do this.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/031304A.shtml Editor's Note | In a story filed on March 12th, The New York Times
described allegations of mistreatment and humiliation perpetrated
against prisoners at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay by United States
military personnel. The original article from the Daily Mirror of
London is below. Click here to read the New York Times' report. -
wrp
Go to Original
My Hell in Camp X-Ray
By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones
The Mirror UK
Friday 12 March 2004
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the
world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken
into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two
years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the
US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.
The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was
assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery
injection.
He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time
in hand and leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin.
Their "cells" were wire cages with concrete floors and open to
the elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats,
snakes and scorpions loose around the American base.
He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known
as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full
riot-gear, raining blows on them.
Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in
attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed.
Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment.
Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of
limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.
A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left
inmates malnourished.
But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of
vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees.
Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would
be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.
The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had
smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.
Jamal said: "I knew of this happening about 10 times. It
always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be
particularly religious who would be taken away.
"I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us -
we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously
knew we wouldn't be shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't
bother.
"It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They
would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take
perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout
it out around the whole block."
Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you
psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the
psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other
stuff stays with you."
HE was talking from a secret location after being reunited
with his family. The website designer, a convert to Islam, had gone
to Pakistan in October 2001, a few weeks after September 11, to
study Muslim culture.
He accidentally strayed into Afghanistan - believing he was
being driven to Turkey - and was arrested as a spy, perhaps because
of his British passport. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and
fell into US hands.
Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a
hunch as he walks because the shackles that bound him were too
short.
As a punishment, inmates would be confined so tightly they
would be forced to lie in a ball for hours. During lengthy
interrogation, they would be tethered to a metal ring on the floor.
Jamal said: "Sometimes you would be chained up on the floor
with your hands and feet actually bound together. One of my friends
told me he was kept like that for 15 hours once.
"Recreation meant your legs were untied and you walked up and
down a strip of gravel. In Camp X-Ray you only got five minutes but
in Delta you walked for around 15 minutes."
Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded
in front of cells. "It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent
sight."
He said one unit used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by
70 per cent of the 600 inmates. The strike started after a guard
deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran.
Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was "filthy".
Jamal added: "In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black
- the colour of Coca-Cola.
"We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they
would often turn the water off as punishment.
"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't
wash ourselves according to our religion.
"The food was terrible as well, up to 10 years out-of-date.
They would open a hatch and shove it through a section at a time.
"We had porridge and something they called 'like-milk', which
was disgusting and 'like-tea' and a piece of fruit. The fruit had
been frozen and pounded with chemicals. An apple might look red but
there was waxy white stuff all over it and inside it would be black
and brown.
"They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you
might be the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I
prided myself on never asking them for anything. I would not beg."
Jamal said they were told they had no rights. "They actually said
that - 'You have no rights here'. After a while, we stopped asking
for human rights - we wanted animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my cage
was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog.
"He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass
to exercise on. I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they
replied, 'That dog is member of the US army'.
"You would be punished for anything - for having six packets
of salt in your cell rather than five, for hanging your towel
through the cage if it wasn't wet, even for having your spoon and
things lined up in the wrong order."
Being forced to use a bucket as a toilet in view of other
inmates and guards was particularly embarrassing. Jamal said: "I
never got used to it - we would all put our towels and clothes
around us.
"But the Military Police up in the tower would see us and
would shout to each other.
"We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning
and none at all in solitary confinement.
"This was very tough because you are supposed to be clean when
you pray.
"Gradually the number of showers rose to three a week. They
were always cold.
"You would be chained by two MPs while you were still in the
cage before being taken off for what they called 'rec and shower'.
"You could sometimes see the guards tampering with the shower
heads to make water squirt all over the inmate's clothes if he had
put them up to protect his privacy."
Inmates were issued with "comfort items" - known as CIs - like
shampoo, towels, a washcloth and boxer shorts. CIs would be removed
as a punishment.
Jamal defiantly refused "treats", such as watching a James
Bond film in a room dubbed The Love Shack by inmates.
He added: "Some people were given pizzas, ice-cream and
McDonald's, but they didn't offer them to me. I guess they knew
bribery would work with some and not with others."
To pass the time, inmates would chat to each other, pray, read
the Koran and sing Islamic songs. In Camp X-Ray, they were given
Mills and Boon-style romance novels in Arabic, which they refused
to read.
Describing medical treatment, Jamal said he knew of 11 men who
had legs amputated and two who lost toes and fingers. He was told
that the Americans had removed far more tissue than was necessary.
HE added: "The man in the cell next to me had frostbite in two
fingers and two toes. He also had it in his big toe, but they
didn't treat that for a year by which time they had to cut off much
more than was needed.
"All the men who had lost limbs complained they would chop
them off high up and not bother to try to save as much as
possible."
Jamal added that he didn't have close friends in Guantanamo,
saying: "When I did meet the other Brits, we would reminisce about
home - particularly the food.
"We were all obsessed with Scottish Highland Shortbread - we
wanted some so much.
"One of the Brits told me he was asked why he was a Muslim,
because he ought to be praying to the Queen."
Jamal, who is divorced with daughters aged three and eight and
a son of five, is convinced his refusal to succumb to mind-games
gave him the will to come through.
He said: "It was very, very hard at times, but I tried to
think about nothing but survival.
"I kept my thoughts from home as much as possible because it
would drive me crazy.
"About a year into my time, I had a dream. A voice said, 'You
will here for two years'.
"In my dream I said, 'Two years! You're joking'. But when I
woke up, I was calmer because at least that meant I would be
getting out one day.
"I was sent to Guantanamo on February 11, 2002 and left on
March 9, 2004, so I was there for just over two years, just like
the voice in the dream said."
TERROR OF TORTURE IN CUBA CAMP
'I was beaten by special squad in show of force. Guards chant while
kicking and punching"
JAMAL al-Harith told last night how he suffered a brutal
attack by US military police because he refused to have a mystery
injection.
A squad of five men used batons, fists, feet and knees in an
assault that left him with severe bruising.
During the beating the officers barked in automated unison:
"Comply, comply, comply. Do not resist. Do not resist."
Jamal told how the men swung into action after he politely
refused a jab an orderly was trying to give him because he didn't
know what it was and he was fit and healthy.
The squad was from the US military's Extreme Reaction Force, a
unit trained to hand out beatings and known to prisoners at
Guantanamo as ERF.
Jamal said: "I could hear their feet stomping on the ground as
they got closer and closer to my cell. They were given a briefing
about me refusing the injection, then I heard them readying
themselves outside.
"I was terrified of what they were going to do. I had seen
victims of ERF being paraded in front of my cell.
"They had been battered and bruised into submission. It was a
horrible sight and a frequent sight."
Jamal, who had been warned by interrogators they would inject
him with drugs if he did not answer their questions, cowered in his
cell awaiting the inevitable.
When it came the full force of heavily protected men in riot
gear, with batons and shields, was used against him.
He said: "They were really gung-ho, hyped up and aggressive.
One of them attacked me really hard and left me with a deep red
mark from my backbone down to my knee. I thought I was bleeding,
but it was just really bad bruising.
"I said to myself, 'You shouldn't have put yourself through
that', but said nothing to the ERFs. I didn't want to give them the
satisfaction.
"There is principle and I wasn't going to take the injection
so if they wanted to beat me up that was down to them. This huge
black bruise was there for days after that."
But Jamal's ordeal didn't end there. Half an hour later as he
was recovering, a second ERF squad arrived to dish out more
punishment.
HE SAID: "They accused me of biting a military policeman. I
said nothing. I knew it wouldn't help whatever I said.
"They laid into me again. When they were finished I sat down,
picked up the Koran and started reading. Then two guards put me in
more chains and said: 'Will you comply?'"
Jamal was taken to the feared isolation units, nicknamed ISOs,
where those accused of misbehaving are kept in solitary confinement
with just a mat and towel.
A toothbrush, toothpaste and soap, considered "comfort items",
were denied. Jamal admits this was the first time he cried,
although he did not let the guards see he was upset.
He added: "I sobbed a little, twice. Everything had been taken
away from me. All I had was my dignity."
Jamal told of the psychological torture used on those in the
isolation unit by guards who were trying to break their resolve.
Bright lights were left on in their cells overnight making it
impossible to sleep properly. And the rooms were turned very hot in
the day or freezing in the early morning by using fans in the
ceiling.
Jamal said: "I'd wake up at 3am shivering like crazy. Just to
keep a little bit warm I'd try to sleep under a metal bed to
protect me from the cold air that was blowing in.
"I'd kept a towel which I hid from a guard to lie on. It
wasn't much, but it made things a bit better."
He was put in the isolation unit twice more. Once when he kept
ripping off wrist bands with his name and the number 490 written on
and another time after guards set up a group of detainees by
pretending some spoons had gone missing. Jamal said:
"Non-compliance were the favourite words thrown at us."
Jamal told how he was interrogated on a regular basis by FBI
and CIA agents and later MI5.
On 40 occasions he was quizzed in chains, which were bolted to
the floor, for up to 12 hours at a time.
Jamal quickly became an expert in their interrogation
techniques, often turning questions on his tormentors.
He said: "They'd ask me the same thing over and over again.
Sometimes I'd say nothing and they asked me why I wasn't
responding.
"I'd say: 'You're boring me, ask me something new and I will
reply'." After the Americans failed to glean any information, MI5
officers and British consular officials interviewed him. On eight
or nine occasions they tried to make him admit he was involved in
terrorism.
Jamal said: "They would say: 'Are you a terrorist?' I'd say
'no, get me out of here'."
Speaking about his British interrogators, Jamal added: "They
were a mixed bunch. There was one young nervous guy who looked
about 21. I called him Youth Training Scheme MI5.
"He wasn't very professional and hadn't even checked out my
background. One of them did say they had run my name and details
through every Interpol check, but could find nothing. I told them
that's because I'm innocent. There's nothing on me. I haven't even
got a parking ticket.
"The young guy got a bit frustrated with me and said: 'Are you
trying to tell me how to do my job?'
"One MI5 guy I just didn't want to talk to. He kept asking me
questions and I'd say 'it's in my file'.
"In the end I said: 'I'm not talking any more.' He replied:
'I've come all this way from England to see you.' I only saw him
for 10 minutes. He was very red faced and angry."
Jamal said his US interrogators were much meaner in their
approach to questioning.
One told him after not getting the answers he wanted: "We are
going to inject you with drugs."
Jamal said: "They were trying everything they could to
frighten me. They even staged a mock beating up in the next room to
me. They started shouting and pulling a chair around, but I knew
there wasn't anyone there because I couldn't hear any chains
clanking on the floor."
Another officer threatened Jamal with torture to get a
confession. He told him: "Then we will kill your family and you."
Jamal said: "Sometimes they'd joke about what they were going
to do to me. But I was determined to show no weakness. I didn't
want to let them think they were getting to me.
"Other times they'd play a good cop, bad cop routine. I tried
to remain calm, although I was fuming inside. It would been giving
in to have lost my temper and I never did, not once.
"I don't swear and I didn't fight back. It was only on
principles that I stood my ground.
"The mental torture was far tougher than any of the physical
punishments. I knew I was being treated a lot worse than any of the
other detainees. They tried everything to break me.
"Ridiculously, they even accused me of being an MI5 spy.
"I began to tease them a little because it was my way of
coping. They could never work out when I was serious or not.
I HAD three plaits in my beard. I suggested, although I didn't
say it, that it was for three people I had killed during drug deals
in Moss Side, Manchester.
"I was making the whole thing up but they believed me. Next
time I saw an officer he said MI5 had confirmed the story.
"They couldn't get a handle on me and that frustrated them. In
the end one said: 'Who are you?' And I said: 'I've been here for
over one a half years and you're asking who I am?'
"I took a stand against them because what they were doing to
me was barbaric. I wouldn't get down on my knees for the chains to
be pulled around my body because it was demeaning.
"About 20 per cent of us wouldn't co-operate. Eventually they
backed down and we would stand while the guards went on their knees
to chain us up.
"That was a small victory. There weren't many, but they were
memorable. I will cherish them."
Despite the horror, Jamal said there were lighter moments.
One particular interrogation technique amused him. He said:
"They started playing different music to see how I would react.
"They started with country singer Kris Kristofferson which I
said I quite liked. Then some Fleetwood Mac songs.
"They watched my reactions on camera. I just said the music's
great and even started singing along. They didn't play it again."
In the isolation unit, Jamal met for the first time fellow
British detainee Tarek Dergoul.
He said: "He was suave and had a pencil moustache. We had a
good chat about life back in Britain."
Jamal was released on Tuesday after being flown from Cuba to
RAF Northolt, West London.
He arrived back with four other former Guantanamo Bay Britons
- Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, both 22, and 26-year-olds Shafiq
Rasul and Tarek.
They were freed on Wednesday night after being quizzed by
anti-terrorist police in London.
Four other British suspects are still being held in Cuba.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last night said the US was right
to keep the men locked up and the release of the five did not
necessarily prove their innocence.
He added: "The Americans as far as they were concerned had
good reason for detaining them."
Asked whether they were innocent, he replied: "I can't answer
that question, nobody can."
I WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME
JAMAL al-Harith's incredible journey to Guantanamo Bay began
in the tough streets of Manchester's Moss Side.
He was born Ronald Fiddler in a family of Jamaican origin and
grew up with his father and two sisters after their mother walked
out.
At 23, Ronnie began learning about Islam and converted soon
afterwards, taking the name Jamal al-Harith "just because I liked
it".
He took a computer course alongside his religious studies and
became a web designer.
He visited several European countries before deciding to go
further afield to learn more about Muslims and how they lived.
He began studying the Koran and learned Arabic on a trip to
Sudan.
The ill-fated trip to Pakistan in October 2001, just a few
weeks after September 11, was his second and he planned to stay for
three weeks, learning about Muslim culture and studying the holy
book.
Divorced Jamal, who has three children aged three, five and
eight, said: "Yes, I travelled to Pakistan in October 2001 but if
that's my crime then you would have to arrest whole planeloads of
people.
"When I was interrogated, the Americans used to say 'How come
you're so clean? We've put your name and face through Interpol and
we can't even find a speeding ticket'.
"I told them: 'That's because I've never done anything wrong
in my life. You don't have anything on me and you still won't have
anything on me when I walk out of here' - and that's exactly what
happened.
"I think that's why they were so hard on me. They couldn't
bear to admit they had made a mistake."
Jamal was in Quetta, on the border with Afghanistan and just
four days into his trip to Pakistan, when the Americans began
bombing Taliban strongholds.
He decided to leave for Turkey and paid a local truck driver
4,000 rupees - around £47 - to drive him.
He was told their route would take them through Iran, but he
had no idea he would be passing through Afghanistan.
A few days into the trip, the truck was stopped by an armed
gang.
They grew excited when they saw Jamal's British passport and
after looking at his other possessions, which included a clockwork
radio, accused him of being a spy.
He was taken to a filthy jail, held in solitary confinement
then transferred to another prison.
He was again held in isolation and was beaten and
interrogated, during which he denied he had been spying against the
Taliban for the British.
Jamal later told the Americans how a man he presumed was a US
agent had died after suffering a particularly brutal beating.
He said: "They tried to say the man wasn't an American, but I
know he was. I am sure I would have got the same treatment but I
made sure that every time my guards saw me I was praying.
"The Taliban liked me because I always had the Koran in my
hands. I was beaten very badly, but not as badly as most of the
other inmates.
"Afghanistan finally fell and I was visited in jail by the Red
Cross.
"There were a couple of Pakistanis in the prison and they were
allowed to go across the border.
"The Red Cross asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I had
no money and no way of getting back to Britain so I asked them to
put me in contact with the British Embassy in Kabul.
"That is incredible to me now - I could have gone home on my
own."
Jamal stayed with the Red Cross in Kandahar for a week and, in
phone calls to the British Embassy was assured he would soon be put
on a flight to Kabul and then back to Britain.
But two days later, the Americans arrived. They drove him to a
place described by Jamal as "a concentration camp", complete with
watchtowers and barbed wire.
He said: "I begged the Red Cross to get me out or at least
contact the embassy for me. On January 24, I was taken to a US air
base and held there for another three weeks.
"Then my interrogator told me I was being sent to Cuba, but it
was just standard procedure.
"I was assured it would take about two months to process me
and then I could go free. I believed him."
For the next two years, Jamal continued to protest his
innocence.
He said his interrogators would often taunt him by promising
he was about to go home, only to pretend they had never said it.
But two weeks ago, Jamal and the four other Britons were met
by the Red Cross and told they were finally to be freed.
Before they were released, the Americans asked the five men to
sign a piece of paper confessing to links with al-Qaeda and the
Taliban.
Jamal said: "This was given to me first by the Americans and
then by a British diplomat who asked if I agreed to sign it. I just
said 'No'.
"I would rather have stayed in Guantanamo than sign that
paper.
"That night, all the inmates sang Islamic songs for me,
wishing me well.
"The next morning, as I walked past them in chains for the
last time, they shouted out: 'Don't forget us, Jamal. Tell the
world, tell the Press, about what is happening here'."
Jamal was the only one of the five men not to be arrested when
they landed at RAF Northolt in West London.
While Tarek Dergoul, 26, Ruhal Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, and
Shafiq Rasul, 26, were taken to Paddington Green police station,
Jamal was questioned with his solicitor.
"Then suddenly it was all over and they told me I could go,"
he said.
Jamal has vowed to sue America for compensation for his two
lost years.
He said: "They deprived me of my liberty, interrogated and
tortured me and let me go without even a word of apology."
He also plans to campaign for other detainees to be freed and
given human rights.
He said: "I can speak freely at long last and let the world
know what's happening there.
TO be honest I'd rather go on a camping holiday with my
family, but I know I have a grave responsibility to those still
there.
"That's why I want my story told in the Daily Mirror."
Jamal, who has yet to be reunited with his two girls and a
boy, said: "I want so much to hug my children and tell them I love
them.
"They think I have been on holiday. They don't know the truth.
"I woke up last night when I heard the keys of someone
returning to their hotel room. I woke up in a fright and thought
one of the guards was coming to put on my chains.
"I then realised that the light in the room was on. When
locked up in our cages, the lights were on as well, and I thought
to myself: 'You can sleep in the dark now' - and I switched it
off."
Jamal added: "One thing good about being in Guantanamo, was
that it made you think. Time actually went very quickly.
"There was always something or other on your mind. It didn't
pay to dwell on things.
"I tried not to think about my family for two years, because
it hurt so much.
"I tried to contain everything.
"It was very difficult, but I survived - and I survived well."
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