Tuesday 10 January 2006
Washington - Marking the fourth anniversary of the first transfers of
detainees to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, January 11, 2006, Amnesty
International released new testimonies alleging the use of torture and
ill treatment against prisoners in the U.S. detention center and
additional details on several detainee cases.
The testimonies include that of one of the first detainees to be
transferred to Guantánamo, Jumah al-Dossari, a 32-year-old Bahraini
national who was taken to the U.S. Naval Base in January 2002 after
being held by U.S. forces in the Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan.
Al-Dossari's testimony, corroborated by people who have now been
released from Guantánamo, includes several allegations of physical and
psychological torture and ill treatment inflicted by U.S. personnel both
on him and on other inmates in Afghanistan and Guantánamo.
"Anniversaries usually represent milestones. Today's milestone
is a
frightening and disheartening one. The situation at Guantánamo is not
getting better - in fact, it may be worse. First, the Bush
Administration wants all 186 pending habeas corpus petitions filed on
behalf of the detainees to be dismissed based on a new law that was not
meant to apply to cases filed before the law went into effect. And now,
after Congress overwhelming passed the historic Anti-Torture Amendment,
President Bush is asserting that he can waive the restrictions on the
use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against detainees. When
does the hypocrisy of defending democracy around the world while
continuing to curtail fundamental due process end?" said Dr. William F.
Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA.
"There are approximately 500 men who have been treated with complete
and
utter disdain - the antipathy of the American value of recognizing the
basic human dignity of all people. It isn't surprising that after years
of uncertainty about their fate, some of these men have expressed their
intention to die rather than remain in Guantánamo indefinitely,"
added
Schulz.
Amnesty International also revealed further details on the cases of
Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al Hajj, transferred to Guantánamo in June
2002 after spending time in detention in Bagram and Kandahar, and
Abdulsalam al-Hela, a Yemeni businessman, subjected to rendition and
secret detention before being transferred to Guantánamo. Amnesty
International is urging Congress to create an independent commission to
investigate all aspects of U.S. detention and interrogation policies
including the dozens of reports of torture and ill treatment that have
taken place since 2002 and to take measures to prevent torture from
recurring in the future.
Testimony Highlights of Jumah al-Dossari
Below are highlights from testimony of Jumah al-Dossari, which he wrote
in July 2005 in the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay naval
base, Cuba. The hand written testimony was given to Amnesty
International by Jumah al-Dossari's civilian lawyer. At the date of
publication Jumah al-Dossari remains detained in Guantánamo Bay. This
testimony is Jumah al-Dossari's personal account of his experiences in
Pakistani and US custody, and the views expressed in it are his own.
From here, from the depths of the degradation that debase a person's
dignity, attack his religion, his person, his honour, his dignity and
his humanity, all in the name of fighting terror. I am writing for those
who will read my words. I am writing the story of what I have suffered
from the day I was kidnapped on the Pakistani border and sold to
American troops until now and my being in Guantánamo, Cuba. What I will
write here is not a flight of fancy or a moment of madness; what I will
write here are the established facts and events agreed upon by detainees
who were eye witnesses to them, representatives of the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as well as soldiers, investigators and
interpreters.
Arrest and Treatment by Pakistani Authorities
- I passed through several small jails where there was a lot of
abuse.
I had previously met several people when I was on the border, they were
of different nationalities. They had left Afghanistan and the Pakistani
army abused us and gave us the worst and most nasty kind of food. They
put me in a cell which was 4m x 4m in which there were 59 prisoners
without mattresses, blankets or a bathroom; there was only one bucket in
the cell for everyone to relieve themselves in without a screen.
- They stole many passports from the prisoners who were of many
nationalities and we were abused. They abused me personally and beat me
several times during investigations. The worst tribulation for us was
when they transported us from one place to another: they would tie us up
in the most savage way, so much so that some of us got gangrenous
fingers and our hands and feet swelled and turned blue. They would tie
us up for long periods of time in military trucks, sometimes from
daybreak until night, in addition to the hours that they spent
transporting us in trucks.
- When we reached the airport, an American military plane, American
soldiers and an American interpreter who spoke Arabic were waiting for
us. They took one by one and handed us over to the American soldiers.
The deal was done and they sold us for a few dollars and they were not
interested in us. US custody in Afghanistan
- When we were all in the plane - there were approximately 30
of us -
they closed the plane door which from behind said "designed to carry
machinery". After they closed the door, the soldiers started shouting,
screaming and insulting us with the most vulgar insults and nasty
curses. They started beating us and took pictures of us on a camera; I
could see the flash. I had a violent pain in my stomach - I had had an
operation on my stomach and there was a piece of metal in it; when I
complained about the severity of the pain, a soldier came and started
kicking me in my stomach with his military boot until I vomited blood. I
do not know how many hours I was in that state as we went from the base
in Kohat to Kandahar Airport where there is an American military base.
- We arrived at Kandahar airport after midnight. It was a Friday
night
at the beginning of January 2002. They started to wrap a very strong
wire around our right arms; each of us was tied at a distance of about
two metres from the person in front of him. After they pulled this wire,
they started making us run towards the unknown. When we approached the
tents which had previously been an instalment, they started to insult us
savagely. The prisoners started shouting and crying because of their
severe pain - there were many young people with us - and the soldiers
increased their insults and beatings and those of us who fell started to
drag themselves on the grounds on the asphalt of the airfield and the
others continued to jog. As I have already mentioned, I still had the
Pakistani shackle which made it hard for me to walk, so I was one of
those who fell and was dragging himself along on the asphalt.
- When they wanted to take one of us, they would order us to lie
on our
stomachs on the floor, and then they would tie our hands behind our
backs. When it was my turn, two soldiers took me. I was barefoot and
they beat me before I met the investigator. They banged my head against
the metal building and made me walk on the barbed wire. They raised my
hands from behind my back so high that my shoulders were almost
dislocated. When I entered the investigation tent, I found that there
were two Americans among the investigators, one of whom was white and
the other was black. I said to them, "why are you torturing me and you
haven't even started questioning me? What do you want from me? Give me
a
piece of paper and I will sign anything you want". He said to me, "there
is no torture here and there are no beatings".
- During that time, I was moved to the camp clinic because of
the
terrible state of my health. They would take me for investigations which
were mostly held at night; they would beat me severely and tell me to
confess that I was a terrorist!! Once, from the excessive and severe
beatings, one of my foot shackles broke. Once, they poured boiling hot
liquid on my head and the investigator stubbed his cigarette out on my
foot. I said to him, "why are you treating me like this?" He then
took a
cigarette and stubbed it out on my right wrist and said, "in the name of
Christ and the Cross I am doing this". Once, they had beaten me so
severely that my clothes were ripped and my genitals were exposed. I
tried to cover myself up but they started kicking me with their boots.
- They started preparing to move us to Cuba. When it was my turn
and I
was in approximately the third group to be moved to Guantánamo, I was
moved to another tent with several people. We were next to an empty tent
in which they put Afghans from the northern states and Shabarghan.
Transfer to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
- The third stage started on the day the plane landed us in Guantánamo
in Cuba; we did not know where we were. The soldiers put us on a
military bus that had no seats in it. They made us sit on the floor of
the bus. A translator who was Lebanese came and said, "you are at an
American base and you mustn't talk or move. You have to keep your heads
down.
- When I was put in the cage, a soldier told me, "you mustn't
talk, you
mustn't touch the mesh, you mustn't cover your head and your hands
when
you sleep and you have to stay in the middle of the cage". He also me
that there was a toilet outside the cage; if I needed to relieve myself,
I would have to ask one of the soldiers. In the cage, there were two
buckets, one had water in it and the other was empty. The soldier said
that the empty bucket was for urine.
- It was then that my suffering started. If we wanted to go to
the
outside toilet, a portaloo, the soldiers would take us violently and
would look at our genitals; even the female soldiers did that. They
would stand outside the door which was open while we relieved ourselves.
Torture and Ill-Treatment in Guantánamo Bay
- During investigations, I was threatened with rape, attacks on
my
family in Saudi Arabia, my daughter being kidnapped, and my murder -
assassination - by their spies in the Middle East if I went back to
Saudi Arabia.
- They went to a detainee and put his head in the toilet. The
toilets
in Camp Delta are iron, Turkish-style toilets and then they flushed his
head down the toilet until he almost died. They went to a detainee and
started beating his head against the toilet rim until he lost
consciousness and he could not see for more than 10 hours.
- One detainee, called Abdul Aziz Al-Masri, was ill and was asleep
in
the hospital. These soldiers went and beat him very badly in the
hospital in front of the doctors and nurses. His injuries were excessive
and caused his spine to break. He is now hemiplegic. They are now trying
to operate on him but he is refusing out of fear that they will play
with his back and make it worse rather than make it better as their
operations often do. These kinds of incidents happen often. They would
make sending them to the detainees an excuse for incidents in which we
would suffer extensive injuries, severe disfiguration and fractures as
there was no one monitoring or following up their actions. Rather, their
officers and officials gave them the orders.
- At the end of 2003, a major incident happened to me in the
investigation room. The soldiers took me to the investigation room and
the investigator - who I only ever saw on this one occasion - had
a
Koran in his hand when he entered the room. He put it on the table and
started talking and raving. Then he asked some soldiers to come in so
some soldiers came. This investigator had brought the American and
Israeli flags in with him. He then ordered the soldiers to wrap the
flags around me tightly and then he took the Koran, threw it on the
floor and damaged it with his shoe. Then he exposed his penis and
urinated on it. He said a lot of things to me, such as, "this is a holy
war between the star of David and the cross against the crescent" and
"the whole world will submit to us and if any one doesn't submit
to us.
Camp 5
- This stage finished when they finished building Camp 5 which
was
opened on 25 May 2004. I went into this new camp to start a new stage of
misery, privation, humiliation and distress. There was an order to move
me to Camp 5 for me to finish off the rest of my days in solitary
isolation there. All the cells in Camp 5 were isolation cells and the
whole building was made entirely of pre-cast concrete.
- I return now to my story. In March 2005, I met the lawyer who
had
taken on my case. I was telling him about the torture, violations and
assaults I had faced and I do not know if they were spying on us. When
the lawyer left, a soldier came and he had put on the military
[illegible] and he was angry. He said, "it's best that you forget
everything that's happened to you and don't mention it again to
anyone
if you want to stay safe."
- My state of health has become very poor recently. I fall and
faint
nearly every day. On 12 June 2005, in the evening, when my evening meal
was brought to me, there was a dead scorpion on the plate. When I ate a
little and saw the scorpion, I gave the food back to the soldier and
showed him the scorpion. On that same night, in the same meal, a
Tunisian brother called Hecham was also given a plate of food with a
dead scorpion on it. Since the day that they threatened until now, I
have been removing insects and dung beetles from the food and showing it
to the soldier who then says, do you want another plate?
- Today is the end of the second week and the strike is still
continuing. We have been in Cuba for nearly four years, during which
time we have not faced any trial or charges. We are also on hunger
strike because of the medical abuse and neglect we face and because they
prevent us from learning about our religion and about religious issues.
Two days ago, while I was writing these memoirs, I became really ill; I
fell and was taken to the hospital. I spent two days there and then they
brought me back here. Here I am now; as I try to write the last page of
my memoirs, I am in a terrible state.
- I would thus like to point out that NOT all of the soldiers
in
Guantánamo tortured and oppressed us. There were some soldiers who
treated us humanely, some of them would cry because of what was
happening to us and were embarrassed by the style of management at the
camp and even by the American government, their lack of justice and
oppression of us. To give an example, when I was in Camp India in Camp
Delta and I was being tortured, an Afro-American came to me. He said
sorry to me and gave me a cup of hot chocolate and some sweet biscuits.
When I thanked him, he said, "I don't want your thanks. I want you
to
know that we are not all bad and we think differently". When I was
talking to a soldier and I told him what happened to me, he cried and
had tears in his eyes. He was clearly moved. He said sorry to me about
what had happened to me and he also offered me some food. These are
examples to show the reader that there are some soldiers who have
humanity, irrespective of their race, gender or faith.
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