Abbasi, Feroz Ali - Interview master file
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Interviewer | Okay, so. | 0:05 |
Woman | Sorry, do you want the overhead lights on? | 0:07 |
Interviewer | No. | 0:10 |
One thing, we might have to stop | 0:10 | |
because of lighting, you know, the light. | 0:13 | |
If the sunlight comes out or something, | 0:15 | |
if something changes. | 0:16 | |
- | Okay. | 0:17 |
Man | No, you're good there. | 0:18 |
It's coming straight through. | 0:19 | |
- | Okay, good, okay, good. | |
Okay. | 0:21 | |
Good afternoon. | 0:23 | |
- | Good afternoon. | 0:24 |
Interviewer | We are very grateful to you | 0:25 |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:27 | |
We invite you to speak of your experiences | 0:31 | |
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:33 | |
We are hoping to provide you with the opportunity | 0:35 | |
to tell your story in your own words. | 0:38 | |
We are creating an archive of stories | 0:41 | |
so that people in America and around the world | 0:44 | |
will have a better understanding | 0:47 | |
of what you and others have endured. | 0:49 | |
Future generations must know what happened, | 0:52 | |
and by telling your story, you're contributing to history. | 0:55 | |
We appreciate your courage and willingness to speak with us. | 1:00 | |
If any time during the interview | 1:04 | |
you'd like to take a break, just let us know. | 1:06 | |
And if anything you say you would like to retract, | 1:08 | |
just let us know and we can remove it. | 1:11 | |
And we'd like to begin with some basic information | 1:14 | |
such as your name and where you were born | 1:16 | |
and where you're living now and your age. | 1:21 | |
So you could start with that. | 1:25 | |
- | Okay, my name is Feroz Abbasi. | 1:27 |
I was born in Entebbe, Uganda. | 1:30 | |
I'm 30 years old. | 1:32 | |
And the last, okay. | 1:36 | |
- | And you're- | |
- | Where I'm currently living, in London, UK. | 1:37 |
Interviewer | And languages, | 1:41 |
what languages do you speak? | 1:43 | |
- | I speak, English is my mother tongue, | 1:45 |
and a little bit of Arabic, but I'm not very good at Arabic. | 1:47 | |
Interviewer | And your religion? | 1:51 |
- | I'm Muslim, so Islam is my religion. | 1:53 |
Interviewer | And your education? | 1:55 |
- | Education, I was educated, | 1:58 |
I came to this country when I was eight years old. | 2:01 | |
So partly primary school in Uganda, | 2:03 | |
and then primary school here, secondary, | 2:06 | |
English college, I know it's different to the American one. | 2:10 | |
And then I was sent to Guantanamo, et cetera. | 2:12 | |
And when I came back, hamdullah, I went to university. | 2:16 | |
Interviewer | Hmm. | 2:20 |
And could you tell us the dates | 2:21 | |
when you went to Guantanamo and when you left? | 2:23 | |
- | Okay, Guantanamo, I was amongst the first | 2:26 |
to the group of people sent to Guantanamo. | 2:28 | |
So I think it was the 11th of January, 2002. | 2:31 | |
And we were released, I think we left | 2:34 | |
the 24th of January, 2005, | 2:36 | |
but we landed here 25th, I think, so it's a time difference. | 2:39 | |
Interviewer | So I would like to begin by, | 2:45 |
if you could describe how it was | 2:48 | |
when you were first apprehended | 2:50 | |
and all that happened between that moment | 2:53 | |
to the moment when you went on a plane to go to Guantanamo, | 2:57 | |
and then we'll take that next. | 3:00 | |
- | Okay. | 3:03 |
Okay, when I was first apprehended, | 3:07 | |
so an Afghan family very generously were helping me, | 3:09 | |
because they realized, they knew the predicament | 3:13 | |
of any foreigners in Afghanistan. | 3:16 | |
They told me that there was a bounty on my head. | 3:22 | |
And if I remember the figure, it was 30,000. | 3:25 | |
Most, I learned later, | 3:28 | |
of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay | 3:32 | |
were sold for 5,000. | 3:35 | |
So that's a big figure. | 3:37 | |
And I don't know what the Afghans | 3:38 | |
told the Americans that wanted me. | 3:39 | |
I don't know what story they spun | 3:42 | |
that brought the price up on my head, but that's the price. | 3:44 | |
So the Afghan family's helping me. | 3:47 | |
But the issue was that, you know, as can be seen, | 3:51 | |
I'm black, and I don't pass for an Afghan. | 3:55 | |
But they tried their best to dress me up as an Afghan | 3:57 | |
to get me across, trying to get me to Pakistan. | 4:00 | |
It didn't last long, 'cause we didn't go far, | 4:04 | |
and then a van of, I think they're called anti-Taliban. | 4:07 | |
I don't know what they were called, | 4:12 | |
but anti-Taliban came over and obviously they spotted me. | 4:13 | |
And they decided, you know, we're gonna, | 4:18 | |
you know, this guy, we're gonna take him. | 4:22 | |
Initially, because they saw I was Muslim, | 4:26 | |
and they could, and you know, | 4:29 | |
I was relating to them as a Muslim, | 4:31 | |
and the Afghan that was helping me, 'cause he was older, | 4:35 | |
I could see he was giving them harsh words. | 4:40 | |
And you know, like I didn't understand the language, | 4:42 | |
but he was giving them harsh words. | 4:44 | |
So I think he got them to take me to Spin Boldak, | 4:46 | |
which is on the border with Pakistan. | 4:49 | |
It's Afghanistan, Afghanistan-Pakistan border. | 4:52 | |
So they took me there, telling me | 4:57 | |
that they were gonna take me to Pakistan. | 4:59 | |
So initially they were gonna help me. | 5:01 | |
We watched the border, the Pakistani soldiers | 5:04 | |
were walking back and forth and so forth. | 5:06 | |
And they said, "We're not gonna be able | 5:09 | |
to take you to Pakistan. | 5:10 | |
We're gonna take you to Herat, | 5:13 | |
which is over the other side of Afghanistan, | 5:15 | |
we'll take it to Iran and Iran will let you through." | 5:17 | |
So we're driving back, | 5:20 | |
and obviously we're driving through Kandahar, | 5:21 | |
and it was night. | 5:23 | |
I don't know what happened, | 5:24 | |
whether they changed their mind or whatever, | 5:25 | |
or you know, they started talking to each other, et cetera. | 5:27 | |
And you know, saying that it's, you know, | 5:29 | |
this guy is not gonna work out, | 5:32 | |
we're not gonna be able to help him, | 5:33 | |
and we can get some money for him, and the bounty. | 5:34 | |
And as I said, I don't know what happened, | 5:36 | |
because they seemed to be talking. | 5:37 | |
They became a bit malicious, you know, | 5:39 | |
just because it seemed like new people came into the car, | 5:42 | |
if I remember rightly, and they became malicious. | 5:45 | |
So you heard a Kalashnikov, you know, | 5:46 | |
you heard it cocking behind your head. | 5:49 | |
The guys over there didn't actually, | 5:51 | |
they searched me a number of times, | 5:53 | |
you know, which was kind of disconcerting. | 5:56 | |
'Cause before they were being friendly. | 5:58 | |
Now they're being, there was animosity, | 6:01 | |
but I obviously had to go with them. | 6:03 | |
Because first, I'm in fear of my life. | 6:06 | |
These are people actually, you know, | 6:10 | |
looking to to grab any foreigners in Afghanistan, | 6:12 | |
and they could kill you or whatever. | 6:14 | |
And secondly, you know, | 6:17 | |
maybe they would help me in that regard. | 6:19 | |
So we end up in Kandahar and it's late night. | 6:22 | |
And an Afghan comes over to the car. | 6:25 | |
And he could speak some English, but he seemed, | 6:31 | |
he spoke English, but he had an American accent. | 6:35 | |
He was an Afghan, but you could see | 6:37 | |
that English was not his first language. | 6:39 | |
And he said to me, he said, | 6:43 | |
"We're gonna hand you over to the British guys. | 6:45 | |
The British guys do not want you, | 6:48 | |
but we're gonna hand you over to the British guys." | 6:49 | |
Then he turns, like you know, angry and walks away. | 6:51 | |
So I don't know what's going on. | 6:54 | |
I'm just sitting in the car, | 6:56 | |
there's people with Kalashnikovs around me, | 6:57 | |
and you know, I, it's just, | 6:59 | |
it's not, you can't process it. | 7:04 | |
You know, your whole life has gone upside down. | 7:07 | |
The everyday rules of everyday life | 7:10 | |
that you thought were kind of universal and determined, | 7:12 | |
they've just kind of been ripped apart. | 7:16 | |
You don't even know how to, what to make of it. | 7:18 | |
Like, so you can't, I'm having trouble | 7:20 | |
processing what's going on. | 7:22 | |
So obviously I'm just sitting there. | 7:23 | |
I don't know what to do. | 7:24 | |
It's not like I've been in that situation before. (laughs) | 7:26 | |
There's no experience, nothing. | 7:28 | |
So, and I'm young at the time as well. | 7:29 | |
So I don't know what to do. | 7:31 | |
So they tell me to get out of the car, | 7:32 | |
obviously now, and then to walk. | 7:35 | |
And this is in the center of Afghanistan now, the city. | 7:37 | |
And then I had to walk into a building. | 7:39 | |
And then, you know, I walk into the building, | 7:44 | |
and then the building is just, | 7:46 | |
it's crawling, crawling with people with weapons. | 7:48 | |
I mean, just I don't know what, every weapon. | 7:50 | |
Just, they're all over the place they've got these weapons. | 7:53 | |
And then, you know, they, you know, they grab me. | 7:57 | |
I had a turban on with, this was the attempt | 8:01 | |
at the old Afghan trying to help me, put me here, | 8:03 | |
I had a turban on my head. | 8:06 | |
They took my turban off my head, tied my hands, | 8:07 | |
and you know, and when that happened, it, | 8:11 | |
I guess there was, you know, | 8:15 | |
with hope, you're hoping. | 8:20 | |
You know, you're hoping that the situation | 8:22 | |
is not as bad as it is. | 8:24 | |
So even though you have the clues of them | 8:26 | |
cocking their Kalashnikovs behind your head, | 8:28 | |
and blah, blah, blah, searching you so many times | 8:30 | |
and so forth, you know, not being so friendly anymore, | 8:32 | |
new people coming in, and you know, | 8:36 | |
the stares that they give you and so forth. | 8:38 | |
You still hope that they're still gonna help you. | 8:41 | |
You're still holding onto that glimmer | 8:43 | |
that they're gonna, they're gonna take me to Herat, | 8:45 | |
and Herat is gonna go to Iran, | 8:47 | |
in Iran it's gonna be okay, 'cause I'm gonna call home | 8:49 | |
and then I'm gonna get help, | 8:52 | |
and I'm gonna fly out and go home. | 8:53 | |
You know, this nightmare is gonna end. | 8:54 | |
But once they tied my own hands in my own turban, | 8:57 | |
then that's it. | 8:59 | |
I don't know, I felt something that I've never felt, | 9:00 | |
I don't think I've ever felt in my life. | 9:03 | |
And it was like the energy in my body just drained, | 9:05 | |
drained, and I just became limp. | 9:09 | |
Like, you know, I was about to faint. | 9:12 | |
You just can't describe it. | 9:15 | |
It's a feeling that I've never felt before. | 9:16 | |
I could not remember in my how many years | 9:18 | |
I've been living since then feeling like that. | 9:20 | |
So then they take me into this building and so forth, | 9:23 | |
and, you know, into a small room. | 9:26 | |
And the usual Afghan type housing, | 9:29 | |
and that small room was filled with people with weapons. | 9:31 | |
And I'm just standing there. | 9:34 | |
And one Afghan comes over, slaps me in my face. | 9:35 | |
I don't know why he did that, just come slaps in my face, | 9:39 | |
and I don't know what's going on. | 9:42 | |
And then, lo and behold, for the first time, | 9:44 | |
I guess, you know, anyway, | 9:49 | |
for the first time during that whole situation, | 9:52 | |
two American Marines walk in. | 9:56 | |
Blonde hair, blue eyes. | 9:59 | |
And I was like, I was surprised, you know. | 10:00 | |
That's not something you see in Afghanistan. | 10:04 | |
So they walk in with their uniforms | 10:05 | |
and their M16s on their necks and et cetera. | 10:07 | |
I'm there as the prime specimen, | 10:10 | |
the deer that has been caught. | 10:13 | |
And the Afghans are sitting around, | 10:15 | |
and you know, like they're presenting me to them. | 10:17 | |
They're looking at me and et cetera. | 10:20 | |
They had words to say, like you know, | 10:22 | |
blah, blah, blah, why are you here, | 10:25 | |
this and that and the other, et cetera. | 10:25 | |
You know, they checked me out. | 10:27 | |
It wasn't serious. | 10:28 | |
And then like, they went off | 10:29 | |
and they told the Afghans to put me in the Afghan prison. | 10:31 | |
So I'm transferred to the Afghan prison. | 10:34 | |
And transferring was really disconcerting. | 10:37 | |
It was like, they for some reason, I don't know, | 10:39 | |
anyway the Afghans, they brought a black wooly hat | 10:43 | |
and then they put it over my eyes. | 10:46 | |
So that was the kind of black bag over the head type, | 10:47 | |
but they did it with a black wooly hat. | 10:51 | |
And then they put me in the back of a four by four, | 10:53 | |
and then I'm lying on the floor. | 10:57 | |
And I don't know, I think they covered me with something | 10:59 | |
because I couldn't breathe. | 11:00 | |
I found a difficulty breathing. | 11:01 | |
You know, it's amazing that there's a lot | 11:03 | |
about the treatment that we suffer that's very mundane, | 11:07 | |
and someone won't understand | 11:11 | |
until they're put in that situation. | 11:12 | |
It's very small things that really bother you. | 11:13 | |
But when you're there, and that's happening to you, | 11:15 | |
it's a big thing to you. | 11:19 | |
And not being able to breathe | 11:19 | |
because there's something over you, | 11:21 | |
they put a cover over me. | 11:22 | |
And I think they put a cover over me because, | 11:23 | |
and I was surrounded by like, you know, | 11:25 | |
Afghans with weapons again, | 11:28 | |
in the back of this four by four. | 11:29 | |
You know, because they were hiding me. | 11:33 | |
They were hiding me. | 11:35 | |
They were driving through the streets, | 11:36 | |
and you know, it looked like they were taking some cargo, | 11:37 | |
which was me, and a human cargo, | 11:40 | |
in the back of this four by four with their weapons. | 11:42 | |
They take me to the Afghan prison. | 11:44 | |
And I'm in the Afghan prison for I think three days, | 11:47 | |
I think three, I think it was three days | 11:51 | |
I was in the Afghan prison, | 11:54 | |
and they got the Afghans to shackle, | 11:55 | |
they shackled me, and they had their own shackles. | 11:57 | |
Rudimentary shackles, the lock kept on opening, | 11:59 | |
'cause it was that bad, but they kept me in the shackles. | 12:02 | |
And, but I was amongst the population of the Afghans | 12:05 | |
and I had my own room, like a cell and that kind of thing. | 12:07 | |
And they were pretty okay. | 12:10 | |
They didn't really, they didn't hit me | 12:11 | |
or anything like that, or treat me in a bad way. | 12:13 | |
I was just amongst the others, except for the shackles. | 12:16 | |
That's how I had to spend my time. | 12:18 | |
So obviously I'm thinking now, you know, | 12:21 | |
well, what has happened has happened, | 12:23 | |
and this is not so bad. | 12:27 | |
You know, like, you know, I guess prison is prison. | 12:29 | |
And Afghan prison is like, well, you know, | 12:32 | |
I could just kind of like, you know, | 12:35 | |
you're looking for some continuity. | 12:37 | |
So I was thinking to myself, well an Afghan prison, | 12:39 | |
I guess I could, you know, be okay with this. | 12:42 | |
You know, it's not freedom, but you know, | 12:44 | |
like you know, you're just trying to make sense of it, | 12:45 | |
trying to find something that, you know, | 12:48 | |
the thing about our treatment is that it keeps on changing. | 12:51 | |
So you're trying to find something that just stays stable, | 12:54 | |
and then you can deal with it. | 12:56 | |
'Cause if it stays stable, | 12:58 | |
if it keeps on changing, there's the unknown. | 12:59 | |
If there's unknown, then a human being | 13:01 | |
can't deal with the unknown. | 13:03 | |
You can't, it's just, | 13:04 | |
you just can't deal with it in that respect. | 13:05 | |
So after the three days, the it seemed like senior type, | 13:08 | |
the Afghans that came to look me over, three of them, | 13:14 | |
they seemed to be like, you know, like respected, | 13:18 | |
a bit older, and the way they held themselves, | 13:20 | |
you know, that you could distinguish them | 13:23 | |
from the Afghan guard in the prison. | 13:24 | |
And then they looked me over, | 13:29 | |
and they sat with me in the cell and they looked me over. | 13:31 | |
And then they take out the black wooly hat again | 13:33 | |
and they put it on my head (laughs) | 13:36 | |
and then that's it, I'm taken out. | 13:38 | |
So I'm taken out of the Afghan prison, | 13:40 | |
and then the Afghans are the ones taking me | 13:43 | |
and they take me to a house. | 13:45 | |
And I know they took me to a house. | 13:47 | |
I don't know where it was | 13:49 | |
because I was blindfolded the whole time. | 13:50 | |
They took me to the house and they took the blindfold off. | 13:53 | |
So I look around and it's kind of like an empty house, | 13:55 | |
that doesn't look like it's being used. | 13:57 | |
And then they put the blindfold on again, | 13:59 | |
'cause I think they weren't supposed to do that. | 14:01 | |
And then I hear American voices, | 14:03 | |
and there's the change over. | 14:05 | |
I don't know, I can't recall hearing the rustle of money. | 14:06 | |
(laughs) I don't recall any of that. | 14:10 | |
I just remember that, you know, | 14:13 | |
first I'm in the Afghan hands, | 14:14 | |
and then I hear American voices, | 14:15 | |
and it's the Americans that are taking me. | 14:17 | |
And obviously they take the shackles off, | 14:19 | |
and then they put their own, | 14:21 | |
I don't know what they call them, | 14:22 | |
the plastic ties, that's what they were using. | 14:23 | |
And then they put their own hood on my head, | 14:26 | |
I think if I remember rightly, 'cause I couldn't see. | 14:29 | |
But I don't think they used, | 14:31 | |
I don't think they used the Afghan one. | 14:33 | |
Or they just put it over the Afghan one, et cetera. | 14:33 | |
I think I've kept the wooly hat. | 14:36 | |
And then they put me into the back of their vehicle, | 14:38 | |
and then we were just driving along. | 14:42 | |
It was first bumpy, then all of a sudden it becomes smooth. | 14:44 | |
In Afghanistan, when it becomes smooth, | 14:48 | |
it can only be one road. | 14:49 | |
And that was the road I think, you know, | 14:51 | |
it goes by the airport, Kandahar airport. | 14:55 | |
And that's where I was taken. | 14:58 | |
I was taken out of the van. | 14:59 | |
And they were kind of being friendly, | 15:02 | |
but you know, like the situation, | 15:04 | |
you can't make sense of it. | 15:06 | |
So you don't, you don't make sense of it. | 15:06 | |
You don't know what's happening. | 15:08 | |
So you don't anticipate, | 15:09 | |
because you don't know what you're anticipating. | 15:11 | |
You just go along with it. | 15:13 | |
And you know, you're in a daze. | 15:14 | |
So I'm in a daze. | 15:15 | |
So they take me out, and I'm walking on gravel. | 15:16 | |
And then all of a sudden they trip me over, | 15:19 | |
and then you know, I'm thrown to the ground | 15:21 | |
and then like one knee's in my back. | 15:22 | |
And then they start searching, searching, searching, | 15:24 | |
and then you know, on one side, | 15:27 | |
the other guy does the other side, and et cetera. | 15:28 | |
Then picked up, your shoes have been taken off, et cetera, | 15:31 | |
you know like, 'cause they check between the toes as well. | 15:34 | |
I don't understand. | 15:36 | |
I don't understand the mentality, check between the toes. | 15:37 | |
Picked up, and then now you're just being pushed. | 15:40 | |
You know, it's only your toes touching the ground | 15:44 | |
and you're being rushed. | 15:47 | |
I'm rushed through. | 15:48 | |
Because I'm blindfolded, you know, | 15:51 | |
everything's done by hearing. | 15:52 | |
You know, you don't see anything, | 15:54 | |
just by hearing, by feeling, you know, that kind of thing. | 15:56 | |
I'm rushed through, like sometimes in warehouses | 16:00 | |
you have these plastic, like it acts like a doorway. | 16:03 | |
It's slit like that, so I'm rushed through one of those. | 16:07 | |
And then, you know, the process is kind of vague right now, | 16:10 | |
but I'll try to remember it as best as I can. | 16:13 | |
You know, they, well, I think the first thing is, | 16:18 | |
you know, they take scissors and you know, | 16:21 | |
you're blind folded right now. | 16:24 | |
You're handcuffed. | 16:26 | |
People are shouting around you. | 16:28 | |
The situation has changed. | 16:30 | |
All of a sudden you're hearing F word this, F word that, | 16:31 | |
just swearing, and you're being called names and et cetera. | 16:33 | |
And then there's the scissors, | 16:37 | |
and you feel these scissors, | 16:38 | |
this cold metal, just going all over your body. | 16:40 | |
It's like ants over your body, | 16:42 | |
just cutting your clothes off. | 16:43 | |
And then the next thing you know, you're naked. | 16:44 | |
Huh, you're naked but blindfolded. | 16:47 | |
For me, it's something | 16:51 | |
that, you know, in that situation, | 16:55 | |
for anyone, it would be very upsetting. | 16:57 | |
For an Arab, it would very upsetting. | 17:02 | |
Because I was raised in this country. | 17:04 | |
In our physical education, you know, | 17:06 | |
you have showers with the guys, and you know, | 17:08 | |
it's not something that Islamically is right, | 17:12 | |
but you know, in school, that's what, you know, | 17:14 | |
you have showers and everyone's naked. | 17:15 | |
So, you know, you kind of have, | 17:17 | |
you're kind of desensitized to it. | 17:19 | |
For an Arab, that's very, | 17:21 | |
it's a big humiliation in that regard. | 17:23 | |
So I really feel for the Arabs, and you know, | 17:26 | |
the others who are kind of traditionally Muslim | 17:29 | |
and that are raised in that kind of tradition | 17:33 | |
that, you know, that would have been a big humiliation. | 17:35 | |
So there I am, naked. | 17:37 | |
There's a blindfold on my head. | 17:39 | |
I'm moved on, like from one set of hands to another, | 17:41 | |
with the same set of hands either side, you know, | 17:44 | |
the same guards that had took me out of the van | 17:46 | |
and tripped me up are the same ones on the side, | 17:48 | |
but they're moving me to other sets of hands. | 17:49 | |
And then there's this whole thing. | 17:52 | |
Sometimes I would pull off the, | 17:52 | |
whatever's on my head, the sack, et cetera. | 17:57 | |
And then, so I'll get to see, | 18:00 | |
but there's so many bright lights that you know, | 18:01 | |
your eyes are squinting | 18:02 | |
and you can hardly see what's going on | 18:03 | |
and there's too many things happening | 18:05 | |
and you can't process it. | 18:06 | |
It's too many things. | 18:06 | |
And then like, there's the lights of what you can see. | 18:07 | |
And then beyond, there's just these shadows, moving. | 18:09 | |
And you know it's people and et cetera, | 18:12 | |
and you're in a big tent, et cetera. | 18:14 | |
So you remove that. | 18:15 | |
And then there's these hands feeling your body, | 18:17 | |
checking for scars, et cetera, | 18:19 | |
this, that, and the other, and you're naked. | 18:21 | |
And there's everyone around you. | 18:22 | |
And it's not only men, there's women around as well. | 18:23 | |
And then they're looking at you, | 18:26 | |
and you know, you're just there, naked. | 18:27 | |
And I mean naked, like that. | 18:29 | |
And then the scars, and then there's a guy there, | 18:31 | |
speaking to you, asking you and he asks you, | 18:33 | |
"Are you Al Qaeda or Taliban?" | 18:35 | |
That's the question, right? | 18:37 | |
Where's, kind of, (laughs) what are the options? | 18:39 | |
There's no other options, there's two options here. | 18:41 | |
And then that's all he asks, "Are you Al Qaeda or Taliban?" | 18:42 | |
Okay, like that. | 18:46 | |
And then, you know, scars, they're checking, et cetera. | 18:46 | |
Then the thing goes back on your head, | 18:48 | |
and you get rushed, running through, | 18:49 | |
and then through the plastic thing again. | 18:52 | |
And then I was taken to another place, | 18:54 | |
and then they took the thing off my head. | 18:56 | |
I think it was a sack, I can't remember exactly. | 18:58 | |
Bright lights now, these are bright lights, | 19:01 | |
and there's a guy with a camera in front of me, | 19:02 | |
and he takes pictures of me naked. | 19:04 | |
And I know that they're fully naked pictures. | 19:07 | |
They weren't facial, et cetera. | 19:09 | |
I know because later on, many years later, | 19:10 | |
a detainee tells me that his military lawyer, | 19:14 | |
a military lawyer, | 19:18 | |
'cause he was off for the military commissions. | 19:19 | |
He had them, these pictures, on his laptop. | 19:21 | |
So these are pornographic pictures, fully naked. | 19:24 | |
They're not, they didn't take pictures, | 19:27 | |
we weren't naked and they took pictures | 19:29 | |
of our upper body or face. | 19:30 | |
These were fully naked pictures, 'cause he told me, | 19:32 | |
on his laptop, and he was showing the detainee, | 19:34 | |
and he showed the detainee my picture. | 19:36 | |
So, you know, there is this pornographic picture | 19:39 | |
on a military lawyer's laptop, | 19:41 | |
being shown to another detainee, | 19:43 | |
and that detainee came to tell me. | 19:44 | |
So they take these pictures. | 19:47 | |
Now I could see, like beyond the light, | 19:49 | |
you have to squint, and I could see, | 19:50 | |
you know, like it's just, you know, | 19:52 | |
the soldiers are looking, | 19:53 | |
and you know where they're looking, | 19:54 | |
'cause you can see where their eyes are. | 19:56 | |
They're not looking at your face. | 19:57 | |
So, and there's female soldiers is there as well. | 19:58 | |
And what can you do in that situation? | 20:01 | |
You know, you're butt-naked, and I mean naked. | 20:03 | |
And then there's this group of people just looking. | 20:07 | |
So the thing goes back on my head. | 20:10 | |
I'm taken into, you know, | 20:12 | |
it seems like there's workmen cabins, | 20:15 | |
you know, like the work sites, | 20:17 | |
when they're doing some construction or something, | 20:19 | |
they have a cabin, I was taken into one of those. | 20:20 | |
I'm naked, and then they take the thing off my head | 20:23 | |
and this was the interrogation. | 20:25 | |
So there's the interrogator in front of me, | 20:26 | |
sitting at a table and chair. | 20:29 | |
I think I was on on the floor. | 20:31 | |
And I was naked. | 20:34 | |
And then the first time I got clothes, | 20:35 | |
they throw me some Afghan clothes. | 20:36 | |
So, okay, so I get some clothes. | 20:39 | |
But the thing about Afghan clothes is, | 20:41 | |
I don't know, I don't understand | 20:42 | |
whether they did this on purpose, | 20:44 | |
or they probably did it on purpose. | 20:45 | |
You have to buy the belt separately. | 20:47 | |
And it's just like a piece of soft rope | 20:49 | |
that goes through your trousers. | 20:51 | |
Otherwise the trousers are too big. | 20:52 | |
They're made too big. | 20:53 | |
So I put on the trousers, like you know, | 20:55 | |
as best as I can, and I put on the top. | 20:58 | |
And I'm sitting on the floor, and then I'm asked | 21:00 | |
all sorts of questions, et cetera. | 21:02 | |
I don't remember the questions. | 21:03 | |
Just, they were all military related, | 21:04 | |
'cause they, 'cause it was the military | 21:07 | |
that was interrogating me. | 21:08 | |
So obviously they just wanted to know something about, | 21:10 | |
I don't know, where the fighters are, | 21:13 | |
or where the explosives are, some stupid, | 21:15 | |
and I was like, "I don't know." | 21:17 | |
you know, like I'm gonna answer those questions, | 21:18 | |
but that's all they were interested in. | 21:20 | |
You know, 'cause obviously in that situation, | 21:21 | |
I guess that's what military intelligence does. | 21:23 | |
And then, you know, | 21:25 | |
those are the questions that they started off with. | 21:27 | |
Obviously they asked me about my background, | 21:30 | |
what I was doing, et cetera. | 21:32 | |
Then the guy went away, | 21:36 | |
and I think I was left there. | 21:37 | |
Now the interrogation, I remember, | 21:39 | |
there was two people behind me, and I knew they had guns | 21:40 | |
'cause when they brought you in, you know, | 21:42 | |
they're there and they're obviously looking menacing. | 21:44 | |
And then there's, you know, | 21:45 | |
there's at least five people in the room. | 21:46 | |
And obviously I thought to myself, you know, | 21:49 | |
I'm gonna get kicked in here. | 21:50 | |
You know, these people, I'm on the floor, | 21:51 | |
and you know, these people looking menacing | 21:53 | |
and they've got guns and one guy's got a knife, | 21:54 | |
you know, in his boot. (laughs) | 21:56 | |
You know, what has he go that for? | 21:58 | |
Like, you know, that kind of thing. | 22:00 | |
So I'm afraid. | 22:01 | |
I'm really afraid, and I don't know | 22:03 | |
how to process the whole thing. | 22:04 | |
You know, just going from one situation to another, | 22:05 | |
and you know, there's no moment, | 22:08 | |
there's no quiet time where you can sit back | 22:11 | |
and start making sense of it. | 22:13 | |
It just keeps on changing and changing | 22:14 | |
and changing and changing, | 22:16 | |
and your mind is not keeping up with it. | 22:17 | |
And you know, it's very discomfiting. | 22:19 | |
So they go back, and they come back and they say I'm lying. | 22:21 | |
So, okay, so I'm lying. | 22:24 | |
So I have to go through the process again, | 22:26 | |
and you know, like blah, blah, blah. | 22:28 | |
And then they start questioning me, et cetera. | 22:30 | |
And the military intelligence guy, I think he was a Marine. | 22:31 | |
He said he was a Marine, 'cause I remember even him saying, | 22:35 | |
"Do you know what the Marines are? | 22:37 | |
It means you don't eff with us. (laughs) | 22:38 | |
That's what a Marine means." | 22:40 | |
Okay, that's fine. | 22:41 | |
So he said, he asked me what year it was. | 22:42 | |
I remember this clearly, he asked me what year it was. | 22:46 | |
And I couldn't tell him, I actually couldn't tell him. | 22:49 | |
And really, I thought very hard. | 22:51 | |
I thought very hard. | 22:53 | |
And I think the first thing I said was 2003. | 22:55 | |
This was 2001. | 22:59 | |
And I didn't, I could not tell him the year like that. | 23:00 | |
And he asked me again, and I said 2002. | 23:04 | |
He said, no, it's 2001. | 23:07 | |
That's, but I was thinking, I was really thinking hard. | 23:10 | |
And he said, you know, like most people, | 23:13 | |
when they answer the question, | 23:15 | |
they answer it in 0.7 seconds. | 23:15 | |
Why does it take you four seconds to answer a question? | 23:17 | |
I didn't, I didn't know. | 23:20 | |
But the situation was like that, that's the way. | 23:21 | |
So they take me out of there, and then | 23:24 | |
they put me in, you know, like what they called the barn. | 23:27 | |
So, you know, it's just basically, | 23:33 | |
in Kandahar there was a old hangar, | 23:34 | |
and they'd converted it into an isolation kind of situation. | 23:38 | |
So it had three meter highly razor wire, | 23:41 | |
and I was separated from everyone else. | 23:43 | |
And you know, there was a guard above my head with an M16. | 23:45 | |
And I think he had instructions to shoot to kill | 23:48 | |
if you tried to escape or something, he told me. (laughs) | 23:50 | |
You know, they tell you these things. | 23:54 | |
So I was putting the barn, but I was blindfolded, | 23:55 | |
and I was still like in the plastic cuffs. | 23:58 | |
And then I was made, and they took me into the barn | 24:00 | |
and into my little kind of razor wire cell. | 24:02 | |
And then they had me there for, | 24:06 | |
you know, near the razor wire, so I could feel it. | 24:07 | |
And then they said, "Do not move." | 24:09 | |
And then I just lay there, and you know, | 24:11 | |
like I don't know how long I laid there, | 24:13 | |
but that was maybe the first night, | 24:15 | |
whatever, how many hours. | 24:18 | |
It wouldn't have been a long, a few hours. | 24:19 | |
It wouldn't have been eight hours or something. | 24:21 | |
And I could feel the razor wire near me. | 24:23 | |
So I, you know, obviously I hadn't been in the actual cell, | 24:25 | |
so I don't know whether it's just, it's all around me. | 24:28 | |
I'm not gonna squirm around to get caught up in it. | 24:30 | |
And it is razor wire. | 24:32 | |
It is, you know, it's very dangerous. | 24:33 | |
So I just lay still. | 24:35 | |
And the thing is, it was that night | 24:37 | |
when, you know, I told myself, | 24:41 | |
you know, like I couldn't sleep. | 24:44 | |
'Cause the situation, you have to, | 24:47 | |
like right now, you know, you're in a survival situation. | 24:48 | |
So you have to stay awake, you don't know what's happening. | 24:50 | |
It's better to be awake than to be sleeping | 24:52 | |
and get caught off of guard. | 24:53 | |
And, you know, I said, you have to sleep. | 24:58 | |
You have to keep your strength up. | 25:00 | |
'Cause, you know, you can't be weak | 25:01 | |
in a situation like, so I tried to sleep. | 25:02 | |
But I couldn't get a full night's sleep. | 25:06 | |
Normally before that, you know, I would sleep pretty well. | 25:09 | |
I wake up refreshed, you know, I deep sleep. | 25:13 | |
I'm a deep sleeper, and I'd been like that for years. | 25:16 | |
But I think that was the first night | 25:18 | |
where I didn't sleep properly, you know, | 25:19 | |
slept but didn't sleep properly. | 25:22 | |
And that was the first night, | 25:24 | |
and every night until I was released from Guantanamo Bay. | 25:26 | |
Because there is a sense that, you know, | 25:30 | |
you have to be ready, you have to be ready. | 25:31 | |
And you know, there's, you have to prepare | 25:36 | |
'cause you don't know what's happening. | 25:38 | |
And at least, you know, you can soften the blow | 25:39 | |
by knowing it's coming | 25:41 | |
rather than just being taken unawares of it. | 25:42 | |
So they take me out. | 25:45 | |
And then I think, I can't remember how many interrogations, | 25:45 | |
they interrogated me so many times. | 25:48 | |
The first time I ate, I don't know why, | 25:52 | |
they took me into a van and they were all staring at me. | 25:52 | |
And then they threw an MRE at me. | 25:55 | |
And, you know, really, Kandahar, | 25:59 | |
there's not much to say about that situation. | 26:02 | |
The soldiers were starving me, because I came, | 26:05 | |
they called me Santa Claus because I came, | 26:08 | |
the time when I was brought there | 26:10 | |
was kind of near Christmas time. | 26:11 | |
And then they would take presents from my MRE, | 26:13 | |
which meant that, you know, | 26:16 | |
basically I wasn't getting that much food. | 26:18 | |
To the point where they had this habit, | 26:20 | |
I don't know why, a group of 10 soldiers would come. | 26:23 | |
It happened maybe three times or something like that. | 26:27 | |
They would come into the barn, you know, looking menacing. | 26:29 | |
And one of them in front would say, "Stand up." | 26:32 | |
And I think I was 016. | 26:34 | |
"Stand up and turn around, what's your name, | 26:37 | |
blah, blah, blah, where are you from?" | 26:39 | |
And then you have to go all the way down to my town. | 26:40 | |
Then they'll say, then the guard would say | 26:43 | |
to the rest of the soldiers, this is badass. | 26:44 | |
This is SAS, SAS guy. | 26:48 | |
So I was supposed to be special air forces. | 26:52 | |
I was supposed to be British secret services, | 26:53 | |
you know, not secret services, | 26:57 | |
British special forces, the elite of the British army. | 27:00 | |
I'm supposed to be British SAS. | 27:04 | |
This is the accusation. | 27:06 | |
This is the first accusation, yeah. | 27:07 | |
Badass, British SAS. | 27:09 | |
And you know, I don't even know where that came from. | 27:11 | |
And when they were doing this, | 27:15 | |
I had to stand up the whole time. | 27:17 | |
And the thing is, like it maybe would take 10 minutes, | 27:19 | |
but I couldn't stand for five minutes. | 27:22 | |
I couldn't, my legs were hurting, | 27:24 | |
were in pain so much I couldn't stand. | 27:26 | |
Because you know, like | 27:28 | |
you weren't supposed to lean on the wall | 27:30 | |
'cause they would tell you to turn around, | 27:32 | |
and then they would say you're a badass, SAS, | 27:33 | |
and this, that, and et cetera. | 27:35 | |
So, you know, like it was that bad. | 27:37 | |
I would drink water, 'cause you got water regularly, | 27:39 | |
just to keep my stomach from shrinking, you know. | 27:41 | |
And you didn't get that much food, | 27:45 | |
and there wasn't much reading material | 27:46 | |
or something like that. | 27:48 | |
So my reading material was the actual packets in the MRE. | 27:49 | |
I would read the calories, add them up. (laughs) | 27:51 | |
I don't know, just I would do whatever with the packet. | 27:54 | |
That that was my reading material | 27:57 | |
Hamdullah, you know. | 28:00 | |
Am I going into too much detail? | 28:03 | |
Interviewer | No, it's wonderful. | 28:05 |
- | Yeah? | 28:05 |
Okay. | 28:07 | |
Interviewer | Can I ask you some questions? | 28:08 |
- | Yeah, sure, go on, go on. | 28:09 |
Interviewer | Did you see other prisoners | 28:10 |
while you were there? | 28:11 | |
- | Okay. | 28:12 |
Because for some reason they isolated me straight away. | 28:13 | |
During the whole processing, | 28:18 | |
if you want to call it processing, | 28:19 | |
with them taking my clothes off and et cetera, | 28:20 | |
they isolated me straight away. | 28:24 | |
So I did see, in the barn, they held certain people. | 28:25 | |
The first people I saw was a group | 28:29 | |
of Pakistanis and Afghanis I think. | 28:31 | |
I could tell, but they were distant | 28:33 | |
and they were grouped together. | 28:35 | |
But they were kept away from me. | 28:36 | |
And then they took me out of the barn, | 28:39 | |
and then they put up a screen | 28:40 | |
so I couldn't actually see them. | 28:42 | |
But opposite me, there was an Afghan | 28:44 | |
who was kind of, I don't know what they called him, | 28:48 | |
but he was acting a bit crazy. | 28:51 | |
So, you know, he was just kind of leaping about | 28:53 | |
and doing whatever, like, you know, | 28:56 | |
I think he was a bit crazy. | 28:57 | |
I can't remember his name, but he was a bit crazy. | 28:58 | |
And if, like on the other side of me, you know, | 29:00 | |
I think it was a group of Afghans. | 29:04 | |
But no one, I couldn't actually speak to anyone, | 29:05 | |
because I was isolated. | 29:07 | |
I was supposed to be the SAS guy in that regard. | 29:08 | |
At night, I would hear them, | 29:12 | |
you know, bringing people in. | 29:14 | |
And you know, it was horrible, really. | 29:16 | |
It was horrible. | 29:18 | |
You would hear the shackles, you would hear them | 29:19 | |
being smashed into the metal doorway | 29:22 | |
and the soldiers were laughing. | 29:24 | |
You'd hear the detainees screaming. | 29:26 | |
You'd hear the soldiers commenting | 29:29 | |
that they've defecated themselves, the detainees. | 29:30 | |
You'd hear, 'cause the guy in the guard tower, you know, | 29:34 | |
he was, he gave running commentary of what's going on. | 29:36 | |
You know, and I'm just lying there, hearing this, yeah, | 29:39 | |
and you know, I can't see it, but you know, it was horrible. | 29:42 | |
One of the detainees over there, | 29:47 | |
you know, he needed something to drink. | 29:50 | |
And then the, you know, the guard in the guard tower, | 29:51 | |
you know, said to drink from the urine bucket, which he did. | 29:56 | |
He didn't really, I don't think he knew it was urine, | 29:59 | |
you know, like that, so 'cause they started laughing. | 30:01 | |
The guards in the guard tower would comment | 30:04 | |
on how small the genitals are of detainees, | 30:05 | |
which means that they were naked when this was happening. | 30:09 | |
And you would hear the detainees | 30:12 | |
being smashed into the metal, | 30:13 | |
because you know, it would reverberate. | 30:14 | |
This is a hanger, so you would hear, | 30:16 | |
(imitates metal reverberating) | 30:18 | |
And then, you know, they would laugh, | 30:18 | |
and you know, et cetera. | 30:21 | |
And then the detainees would be screaming. | 30:21 | |
And then, they had shackles on their legs, | 30:24 | |
and they'd been, you can, you know, | 30:25 | |
by the speed of the shackles you could, | 30:27 | |
you knew it was painful, | 30:29 | |
'cause they were moving them too fast. | 30:31 | |
And that must be painful. | 30:33 | |
It was just, it was really horrible. | 30:34 | |
But in terms of actually speaking to someone, | 30:35 | |
they kept them away. | 30:38 | |
Interviewer | And you were kept isolated | 30:40 |
the whole time you were there? | 30:42 | |
- | Yeah, I was kept as isolated the whole time. | 30:43 |
But hamdullah, it wasn't long that I was in Kandahar. | 30:44 | |
You know, some people suffered for a very long time | 30:47 | |
in that kind of situation, like Kandahar and Bagram. | 30:50 | |
But I think it was three weeks for me. | 30:52 | |
Interviewer | Three what? | 30:55 |
- | Three weeks. | 30:56 |
Interviewer | And the interrogators | 30:57 |
would always ask you the same questions, | 30:58 | |
that was always the American interrogator? | 30:59 | |
- | Yeah, military, I think, | 31:01 |
some pretended, like I had maybe two, | 31:05 | |
possibly maybe two interrogations | 31:10 | |
with people who they would said they were MI, | 31:13 | |
sorry, FBI, FBI. | 31:15 | |
But you know, I didn't really believe them. | 31:18 | |
But it was a military facility, | 31:19 | |
you don't know who's who. | 31:21 | |
But it was military interrogations. | 31:21 | |
The questions were just kind of like, you know, | 31:26 | |
your background, what were you doing there, | 31:27 | |
and you know, just stupid. | 31:29 | |
And then the military intelligence, obviously, like I said, | 31:30 | |
they were more interested in, you know, weapons | 31:33 | |
and you know, whatever, this, that, and the other, | 31:37 | |
et cetera, you know, 'cause of the situation we were in. | 31:40 | |
Later on the FBI, those who said they were FBI, | 31:43 | |
obviously they were interested in just other stuff, | 31:46 | |
Al Qaeda, where's Osama Bin Laden, or so forth. | 31:49 | |
I can't remember, it's been a long time, | 31:51 | |
so I can't remember the questions. | 31:52 | |
And there was a lot of interrogations after that, | 31:53 | |
and they kind of merge into this one, yeah. | 31:56 | |
Interviewer | So did you know | 32:00 |
you were gonna go to Guantanamo, or how did that happen? | 32:01 | |
- | Okay, that was like, so now, | 32:04 |
this is probably my last interrogation. | 32:07 | |
And I think, I believe it was a military, | 32:13 | |
it was military intelligence, Marine or whatever. | 32:17 | |
And he said, | 32:19 | |
he actually, he said, "You're gonna go, | 32:24 | |
we're gonna send you to America." | 32:27 | |
He says, "You're gonna go to America, | 32:30 | |
we're gonna transfer you over to America, | 32:31 | |
and you're gonna go either before a military tribunal | 32:34 | |
or a civilian court." | 32:36 | |
And then, then there's the usual, | 32:39 | |
100 years without parole for the default allegation. | 32:43 | |
If there's no allegation, | 32:49 | |
this is the default allegation, conspiracy. | 32:50 | |
They, you know, you want to ask, | 32:53 | |
conspiracy, well, what's the plot? | 32:54 | |
How was I involved? | 32:57 | |
You know, what was this incident? | 32:58 | |
And there isn't, there's no answer, | 33:00 | |
it's just a conspiracy, just a kind of, | 33:02 | |
you know, like just some vague, you know, conspiracy. | 33:05 | |
So it was conspiracy, 100 years without parole. | 33:09 | |
I remember him saying that. | 33:11 | |
And he also said, "You're gonna be on an island somewhere," | 33:12 | |
pardon my language, "shitting in a bucket." | 33:15 | |
That's what he said. | 33:18 | |
So, okay, something like that. | 33:19 | |
So shortly after that, I'm gonna be, | 33:21 | |
we're gonna be transferred. | 33:25 | |
And then they came and they took me out | 33:27 | |
as they normally took me out. | 33:29 | |
I won't go into the details. | 33:30 | |
And you're on the floor and there's a bag over your head. | 33:32 | |
There's a dog barking, you know, | 33:35 | |
incessantly behind you, around you, et cetera. | 33:37 | |
And then there was a processing, | 33:40 | |
which was, you know, just similar to the first processing. | 33:42 | |
So you're naked again. | 33:45 | |
For some reason, I don't know, | 33:49 | |
it, I think, I think yeah. | 33:50 | |
I think, yeah, you're naked again, | 33:54 | |
they shave your beard off, and the hair off your head. | 33:57 | |
You know, and then they put you | 34:02 | |
in orange kind of tight clothing and plimsolls and so forth, | 34:03 | |
goggles and earmuffs, handcuffs, | 34:08 | |
and mittens over the handcuffs, | 34:12 | |
which prevented some movement I think, and et cetera. | 34:14 | |
And then we were sitting for a long time, | 34:17 | |
waiting, waiting, waiting, | 34:21 | |
'cause there's a whole load of us. | 34:22 | |
But that's probably the first time I came, | 34:23 | |
once they isolated, in the barn they isolated me further. | 34:27 | |
So I don't think I actually saw any detainees. | 34:29 | |
That's probably the first time I came close | 34:32 | |
to another detainee, cause they were processing him | 34:33 | |
just before me, but then I didn't see him for long. | 34:36 | |
And then I was sitting amongst the other detainees, | 34:39 | |
and then we were waiting. | 34:41 | |
And then they took us out in two lines, | 34:42 | |
and I was at the front of one line | 34:45 | |
and then someone else was at the front of the other line. | 34:47 | |
And then we were, there was a chain running along us. | 34:50 | |
So if anyone was too slow, if anyone was too fast, | 34:53 | |
or tripped or whatever, we'd all fall down, | 34:56 | |
and et cetera, and they took us on the planes. | 34:57 | |
Now what they did with the handcuffs, | 35:00 | |
they didn't actually lock them. | 35:02 | |
Which means that if you just keep on pushing them, | 35:03 | |
then they'll keep on squeezing and squeezing on, | 35:06 | |
and they did that on purpose. | 35:08 | |
Because they checked whether it was done or not before. | 35:10 | |
And, you know, 'cause they would just push it slightly | 35:12 | |
to check whether it still clicks. | 35:16 | |
So like that, but they did it on purpose, | 35:18 | |
so that some people, if you just, if it locks, | 35:20 | |
if they just put it on hard in the beginning, | 35:22 | |
then it means that they spent the whole, | 35:25 | |
I don't know how many hours, | 35:27 | |
maybe 18 hours it was, the flight, | 35:28 | |
with you know, the blood restricted. | 35:31 | |
Some hands just swollen, swollen, and so forth, et cetera. | 35:34 | |
So, and then they put us on the plane. | 35:38 | |
And then on the plane, you know, just, | 35:41 | |
there's not much to say. | 35:45 | |
You're just there. | 35:46 | |
You're not allowed to lean on anyone, | 35:47 | |
soldiers shouting at you, and it's a long flight. | 35:50 | |
And if I remember rightly, I can't remember | 35:53 | |
it's this vague, but I think we were transferred. | 35:55 | |
I remember we were taken out of the plane, | 35:57 | |
and it was hot, and it was very bright. | 35:59 | |
Obviously I'm earmuffed, and et cetera. | 36:02 | |
And we were transferred, and it was a quick transfer | 36:04 | |
from one plane to another, and then it took off. | 36:06 | |
And the next thing I remember about the flight | 36:09 | |
is that, you know, the pilot saying that, | 36:11 | |
"Oh, we're going over such and such American city." | 36:15 | |
Well, I think he was probably lying, | 36:17 | |
but you know, just for my benefit. | 36:19 | |
Also, the guy next to me, | 36:23 | |
'cause they knew there was a British guy who spoke English, | 36:25 | |
so they wanted to give words to him, | 36:28 | |
but they got the wrong guy. (laughs) | 36:31 | |
They got the guy next to me, | 36:32 | |
which was, I felt sad for the guy next to me. | 36:34 | |
He was, (laughs) but I wasn't gonna say anything. (laughs) | 36:37 | |
It is a crazy, crazy experience. | 36:40 | |
So we land. | 36:42 | |
Interviewer | Before we get to Guantanamo, | 36:43 |
what were you thinking on the plane? | 36:46 | |
And just before you boarded the plane, | 36:49 | |
were thinking going to America | 36:51 | |
was a better situation than from Kandahar? | 36:53 | |
- | Okay, yeah. | 36:56 |
Well yeah, obviously. | 36:58 | |
I really, I heard stories. | 37:00 | |
Stories of, you know, prison, you know, some prisoners. | 37:04 | |
'Cause the thing is, right, | 37:08 | |
I'm in Kandahar and I'm starving. | 37:09 | |
And I'm losing a lot of weight, | 37:10 | |
and then I'm remembering someone telling me | 37:13 | |
about how prisoners in America get swollen. | 37:15 | |
Like, you know, they pump up. | 37:18 | |
And so I thought, I concluded that, you know, | 37:20 | |
they must get swollen because a lot of food. (laughs) | 37:23 | |
So, you know, if we go to America, | 37:25 | |
there's gonna be a lot of food. (laughs) | 37:27 | |
So, you know, America must be better than Kandahar. | 37:28 | |
And you know, obviously I thought to myself, you know, | 37:32 | |
I had this idea that America, | 37:34 | |
you know, is a bit like Britain, | 37:38 | |
you know, there's rule of law, | 37:39 | |
you know, there's justice, | 37:42 | |
there's, you know, fair treatment and so forth. | 37:43 | |
You know, I didn't, I really didn't expect Guantanamo. | 37:48 | |
I really, it's, | 37:50 | |
that's changed my impression of America. | 37:53 | |
Because beforehand, I really thought America | 37:55 | |
was all about, you know, I don't know, | 37:57 | |
democracy and... | 37:59 | |
Interviewer | So even being transferred | 38:01 |
to American prison, was it to you at that moment | 38:02 | |
a better situation? | 38:06 | |
- | Yeah. | |
Yeah, than Kandahar, yeah. | 38:07 | |
I really, I was really, you know, | 38:10 | |
the first thing you're thinking about is survival, | 38:13 | |
and obviously the second thing then, | 38:15 | |
you're thinking about legal, your legal situation. | 38:16 | |
And then, you know how, you know, justice. | 38:19 | |
But you know, thinking of survival. | 38:21 | |
And Kandahar, I mean, they were starving me. | 38:23 | |
They were starving me. | 38:25 | |
I got to, I was 147 pounds | 38:26 | |
when I got to Guantanamo. | 38:30 | |
Interviewer | How much were you weighing before you- | 38:33 |
- | I can't remember. | 38:35 |
I think I stayed at 170 in Guantanamo. | 38:36 | |
And then it got worse in Guantanamo, I started going down. | 38:40 | |
But the best I did is 170 pounds. | 38:43 | |
But that's a different story. | 38:46 | |
But I can't remember beforehand, | 38:48 | |
but you know, that 147 was really, really bad. | 38:50 | |
Interviewer | So we can go when you land then, | 38:56 |
since you were one of the very first people | 38:58 | |
to come to Guantanamo then, right? | 39:01 | |
So it's an important story, | 39:04 | |
if you can describe how it was | 39:05 | |
when you got off the plane and, you know. | 39:06 | |
- | Okay. | 39:10 |
So they're taking us off the plane, one after another, | 39:11 | |
and then the soldiers, there's two soldiers, | 39:16 | |
always one on one shoulder and one on the other shoulder. | 39:17 | |
You're always flanked by soldiers. | 39:20 | |
They take you down a ramp, | 39:22 | |
and obviously you've got the earmuffs on your ears, | 39:23 | |
and you know, you're blind goggled. | 39:28 | |
Not blindfolded, (laughs) it's an actual goggle. | 39:31 | |
You can't see anything. | 39:35 | |
And you know, it's been a long flight, | 39:36 | |
and you're taken down the ramp. | 39:41 | |
Okay, now the first thing is obviously, | 39:44 | |
you know, everything's by hearing, | 39:45 | |
you know, by tactical senses. | 39:49 | |
So it's hot, you know it's hot. | 39:51 | |
It's dry, the situation, 'cause it was day when we landed. | 39:54 | |
And then the soldiers, you know, | 39:59 | |
they're giving their running commentary, | 40:01 | |
the ones on either side. | 40:02 | |
So they say, you know, "Oh, look at that." | 40:03 | |
You know, like, "Those detainees | 40:05 | |
are really getting effed up," this, that, and the other. | 40:07 | |
"Those Marines are giving them this and giving them that, | 40:08 | |
you know, and it's gonna be you next, man." | 40:10 | |
And this, that, and the other. | 40:12 | |
Obviously you can hear, from the distance, | 40:13 | |
people screaming, shouting, you know, | 40:15 | |
like, you know, they're in pain, you know? | 40:17 | |
Like whatever, but you know, you can't see, | 40:19 | |
so you don't know what's happening. | 40:21 | |
And then like, then it's your turn. | 40:22 | |
So then they throw you into the hands of the Marines. | 40:24 | |
And then the Marines then they start, | 40:25 | |
they do the search again, you know, | 40:26 | |
like you know, search one side, search the other side. | 40:28 | |
And you're rushed, and you've got shackles on your feet. | 40:31 | |
So, you know, you're trying your best | 40:33 | |
to limit the pain, you know, and then, | 40:36 | |
but they're trying to make you go faster. | 40:39 | |
So, you know, we were just, | 40:41 | |
we were searched by the Marines and then put on a bus. | 40:43 | |
And the bus doesn't have any seats. | 40:47 | |
I don't understand why the bus doesn't have any seats. | 40:49 | |
We're sitting cross-legged on the floor | 40:52 | |
and then bolted to the ground, | 40:54 | |
and we're supposed to sit upright. | 40:55 | |
And we're not allowed to move. | 40:57 | |
You just have to sit there. | 40:59 | |
The Marines, at every opportunity they'll get, | 41:01 | |
they'll push you, kick you, punch you, that kind of thing. | 41:05 | |
The guy driving the bus, he's happy to accelerate | 41:08 | |
and you know, like, you know, just being stupid. | 41:12 | |
So you lose your balance, so you're about fall over, | 41:15 | |
which then inspires the Marines, | 41:19 | |
the Marines that are looking after you, | 41:21 | |
to shout at you because you moved from your position, | 41:22 | |
and then they hit you and whatever on your leg, et cetera. | 41:24 | |
Now there's people on, you know, | 41:27 | |
if you're young, if you were like young like me, | 41:28 | |
and you know, I was starved, but you know, | 41:30 | |
like young, relatively healthy, | 41:32 | |
then you kind of got to take care of these old people. | 41:34 | |
There's people with back problems, | 41:36 | |
there's people with, you know, just like, you know, | 41:38 | |
they're not in the situation, and you know, | 41:40 | |
able to maintain that position | 41:42 | |
for I don't know how long we were there. | 41:44 | |
It must have been hours, like you know, | 41:45 | |
they took, you know, on that bus. | 41:47 | |
These people punching, you know, like you know, | 41:50 | |
you know, just really treating you in a bad way. | 41:54 | |
The bus was stationary, | 41:57 | |
must have been stationary for half an hour. | 41:59 | |
And at the time I didn't, | 42:01 | |
I thought they were just being mean, you know, | 42:02 | |
well how come they're just leaving the bus here, | 42:04 | |
just you know, they can drive to the place. | 42:06 | |
I'm not sure whether that's the, you know, | 42:08 | |
later on I hear that from the lawyers and so forth | 42:10 | |
in Guantanamo that there's supposedly, | 42:12 | |
to get to Guantanamo you have to go through | 42:14 | |
on a boat or something, or something like that. | 42:16 | |
So maybe that was the boat. | 42:18 | |
At the time, I thought they were just being mean. | 42:20 | |
And then they brought us to Guantanamo. | 42:22 | |
And then what they do is they take you | 42:26 | |
into what I later learned was the rec yard | 42:28 | |
in, this is Camp X-ray. | 42:31 | |
So it's just a green, you know, like a green, | 42:35 | |
grassy kind of in between one block and another. | 42:38 | |
They took us there. | 42:43 | |
And then they have you sitting | 42:45 | |
in basically what they now call the stress position. | 42:47 | |
I didn't know these terminologies at the time. | 42:50 | |
All I knew is that, you know, they had you sitting down | 42:52 | |
and then, you know, like on your knees, | 42:54 | |
and then one foot was over, you know, the heel of the other. | 42:57 | |
And you had to put your hands in a specific position, | 43:00 | |
which was like, you know, just on, | 43:02 | |
near your knee and that kind of thing, and leave them there. | 43:06 | |
And you're supposed to sit there for hours on end | 43:08 | |
while they're shouting at you, | 43:12 | |
this, that, and the other, et cetera. | 43:14 | |
I had a face mask on, 'cause they put a face mask, | 43:17 | |
'cause I think of TB or something? | 43:19 | |
They were worried about TB or something like that. | 43:20 | |
So there was a face mask. | 43:22 | |
Because it's hot and you're sweating | 43:24 | |
and it's been on your face for a long time, | 43:25 | |
you can't breathe. | 43:27 | |
There's always this thing about breathing. | 43:28 | |
So obviously, in that situation, | 43:31 | |
then you start trying to find a way of breathing. | 43:33 | |
So I tried to remove it with my mouth. | 43:35 | |
So you just, you know, work the jaw | 43:36 | |
until it comes off my nose, and then just to get some air. | 43:38 | |
And then the soldier would come over, | 43:41 | |
scream at you not to do that and put it back on. | 43:43 | |
And then we just, this was the game we were playing. | 43:46 | |
You're sitting in this situation. | 43:49 | |
You can't see anything, there's earmuffs over your ears. | 43:52 | |
And you know, there's only one soldier. | 43:56 | |
There was another supposedly Arabic translator, | 43:58 | |
but he couldn't speak Arabic to save his life. | 44:01 | |
So, you know, his Arabic was bad. | 44:03 | |
And then there's a dog barking, | 44:06 | |
and then there's one guy who supposed to be maintaining, | 44:08 | |
and there's soldiers, you can hear them around you, | 44:10 | |
and there's other soldiers | 44:11 | |
who were just standing guard, et cetera. | 44:12 | |
So obviously you would hear the guy scuttle off | 44:14 | |
to mess with another detainee, | 44:20 | |
and then you take the opportunity | 44:21 | |
to either lean on one side to relieve yourself, | 44:23 | |
change your feet over, take the thing off your nose, | 44:25 | |
or just lean forward to get the pressure off your back, | 44:28 | |
et cetera, whatever. | 44:31 | |
And then he'll come running back to you and set you right. | 44:32 | |
And obviously he'll give you a punch or something, | 44:34 | |
you know, 'cause you know, like that. | 44:36 | |
Detainees were dropping like flies. | 44:39 | |
And whenever a detainee dropped like a fly, | 44:41 | |
then you know, then you'd hear a scurry, | 44:44 | |
like footsteps and they'd drag him away. | 44:46 | |
And then, you know, and then they just kept on dropping, | 44:48 | |
dropping, dropping, dropping. | 44:51 | |
And then for some reason, I was the only one there. | 44:53 | |
And I just remember silence. | 44:56 | |
You know, I'm just holding position. | 44:58 | |
What happened was I became numb. | 44:59 | |
I just, I really, I became numb, | 45:01 | |
you know, holding that position for so long, | 45:04 | |
it's just that you kind of become suspended | 45:05 | |
between pain and I don't know what else, you know? | 45:08 | |
It's just between, so all of a sudden, | 45:11 | |
so you're just there, and it was just silent. | 45:13 | |
And then for some reason the soldier came, | 45:15 | |
took my plimsoll off my top foot, | 45:18 | |
so there I am with one foot bare. | 45:21 | |
I don't know why he did that. | 45:24 | |
And I'm just there, you know, and fatigued. | 45:26 | |
It's been a hot day. | 45:29 | |
The sun was going down. | 45:30 | |
And then they decided, okay, they're gonna process me. | 45:33 | |
So they take me out. | 45:35 | |
Now, obviously I'm worried that, you know, | 45:37 | |
'cause I haven't got my plimsoll on my foot. | 45:38 | |
And this is how you got to think. | 45:40 | |
It's just tiny little, you know, | 45:41 | |
you're always cringing away from pain. | 45:44 | |
You're always trying to move away from pain, | 45:47 | |
cushion the pain. | 45:49 | |
So now my foot is bare. | 45:50 | |
I'm worried about my foot getting cut on the stones. | 45:52 | |
This is your thinking. | 45:55 | |
And it's always at this level. | 45:56 | |
It's not, it doesn't go beyond that. | 45:58 | |
You're just always trying to save yourself from pain | 46:00 | |
or minimize the pain or, you know? | 46:02 | |
That's the thinking in that situation. | 46:03 | |
So they drag me off, one foot bare. | 46:06 | |
And then, you know, right now I'm fatigued, | 46:09 | |
you know, dehydrated, you know, | 46:13 | |
you're just kind of in a twilight. | 46:15 | |
You know, you're just, like your head is lightheaded, | 46:18 | |
you know, you're just like that. | 46:21 | |
So it's kind of vague, the rest of the processing. | 46:22 | |
And then the sun's going down, and I don't know | 46:25 | |
if the sun was up when we got there, | 46:27 | |
but the sun's going down, and you have no sense of time. | 46:29 | |
And then it was the shower. | 46:32 | |
So obviously it's naked again. | 46:34 | |
So you know, like you're naked again, | 46:36 | |
and they're just watching you. | 46:39 | |
And then you've got like, | 46:39 | |
I don't know how many minutes to have a shower. | 46:41 | |
They throw some soap or something, | 46:42 | |
or shampoo or whatever at you. | 46:44 | |
And then you have a shower quickly. | 46:45 | |
And then there's, | 46:48 | |
then I remember they just, then you're blindfolded again | 46:50 | |
and they take you here and there and everywhere. | 46:52 | |
They do the anal search again. | 46:57 | |
I think it's not really, it's not a security measure. | 47:00 | |
Because you know, they did it in Kandahar. | 47:03 | |
And then 24 hours later, they do it there. | 47:06 | |
And there's no opportunity, there's no, | 47:08 | |
you know, you've been handcuffed. | 47:11 | |
You've been, you know, there's mittens on your hand | 47:12 | |
that will prevent thumb movement. | 47:14 | |
You can't deposit anything in your rectum | 47:16 | |
in that situation, obviously. | 47:19 | |
So it's just, it's a matter of humiliation. | 47:21 | |
So they had to put you through that as well. | 47:23 | |
And then they took me to the cage. | 47:25 | |
So right now it's just dark. | 47:28 | |
Interviewer | And they didn't interrogate you | 47:32 |
that first day? | 47:34 | |
- | No, it was just, I call it initiation. | 47:35 |
I think what they think they have to do is to break you. | 47:38 | |
So they put you through that, | 47:41 | |
and during transfer, they put you through excruciating pain. | 47:43 | |
That's the reason why they didn't lock the handcuffs, | 47:47 | |
because they say that if you're in pain, | 47:50 | |
then you won't to try to escape. | 47:52 | |
Not that anyone has any escape on their mind, | 47:54 | |
not that anyone would even know how to escape if they did, | 47:56 | |
but you know, that's the kind of mentality. | 48:00 | |
So there was no, | 48:01 | |
there was no interrogation that first. | 48:03 | |
Interviewer | And when you were there that first day, | 48:06 |
you weren't able to talk to anybody at all, | 48:08 | |
any other detainees, too? | 48:10 | |
- | No, when they took me, they took me into my cage. | 48:12 |
They took the, you know, blind goggles off. | 48:17 | |
And then, you know, I was basically deposited in my cage. | 48:20 | |
And that's the first time. | 48:22 | |
And then there were detainees around me. | 48:23 | |
So obviously, this is the first time | 48:25 | |
I can actually speak to someone, | 48:27 | |
for the first time in my situation. | 48:29 | |
But we weren't allowed to talk, | 48:33 | |
but obviously you try to get around it. | 48:34 | |
I don't remember actually speaking, | 48:35 | |
because when I got there it seemed like, | 48:36 | |
I think it was night. | 48:37 | |
I saw one detainee in the distance praying, | 48:39 | |
but he was praying in the wrong direction, I later learned. | 48:41 | |
And then everyone else, | 48:44 | |
I don't remember having a conversation with someone there, | 48:46 | |
so they must have been sleeping, but it was night. | 48:48 | |
Interviewer | Well, speaking in English, | 48:50 |
were you limited in who you could talk to? | 48:52 | |
Man | Can we just hold on one sec, though? | 48:54 |
I just, where's- | 48:56 | |
Woman | I'll hold. | 48:58 |
Man | You want to monitor that? | 48:59 |
Woman | Yeah, I show 8:30 now. | 49:01 |
I think I'm fast, though. | 49:02 | |
Man | I think you're fast, too. | 49:03 |
Give me a second. | 49:05 | |
- | Let me turn on my phone. | |
Man | Okay, okay. | 49:06 |
- | Okay, so- | 49:08 |
- | We're good to go. | |
Interviewer | So we were talking about, | 49:11 |
if I remember, people, whether they, | 49:12 | |
since you spoke English, | 49:16 | |
whether you were able to communicate with anybody else. | 49:17 | |
- | Okay, at that time I could just basic Arabic. | 49:19 |
I could speak some little bit of Arabic. | 49:23 | |
Interviewer | So then that was enough | 49:27 |
to at least have a little bit of communication? | 49:28 | |
- | Well, you couldn't actually have a conversation, | 49:30 |
'cause you know, they won't understand me | 49:31 | |
and I won't understand the majority of what they're saying. | 49:33 | |
But you know, the first days in Camp X-ray, | 49:35 | |
first thing is I remember it as three days | 49:41 | |
that we had to remain silent at all times, | 49:44 | |
you weren't allowed to speak to anyone. | 49:46 | |
Obviously you tried to get around it | 49:48 | |
by one way or another, and you'd then get in trouble. | 49:49 | |
But you know, yeah. | 49:54 | |
So the first night, I think people were sleeping, | 49:56 | |
obviously, because of the situation. | 49:59 | |
We were the first there. | 50:01 | |
So, you know, it wasn't as populated | 50:03 | |
as later on, when they brought more people. | 50:06 | |
So you know, just think, | 50:09 | |
I think there was only about, | 50:10 | |
there had to be a maximum of 27 people | 50:12 | |
that were first brought on the plane. | 50:14 | |
Interviewer | So I'm gonna ask you again, | 50:16 |
did you have any idea what was going on | 50:18 | |
or where you were, or you know, at that, | 50:20 | |
since you were the first there, | 50:23 | |
did you have any idea of what? | 50:24 | |
- | No. | 50:26 |
My conclusion, I looked around and I saw these cages | 50:26 | |
and, you know, et cetera. | 50:30 | |
And I thought to myself, this must be quarantine. | 50:32 | |
You know, cause obviously I had this impression | 50:35 | |
they were gonna send me to America. | 50:37 | |
The guy said they're gonna send us to America. | 50:39 | |
This doesn't look like America to me, | 50:41 | |
this must be quarantine. | 50:44 | |
And I thought to myself, well, you know, | 50:45 | |
like animals when they're being brought | 50:46 | |
from abroad into a country, | 50:48 | |
you have to put them in quarantine. | 50:49 | |
And my basic understanding, | 50:51 | |
you have to keep them in a situation | 50:52 | |
where there, you know, might be diseases | 50:53 | |
or something like that, et cetera. | 50:54 | |
So that's what I thought. | 50:55 | |
So I thought to myself, you know, this must be quarantine. | 50:56 | |
They're gonna hold us here for a short period of time | 50:59 | |
to work out whether we've got any diseases, or something, | 51:00 | |
whatever, and then we're gonna be sent to America. | 51:02 | |
And I actually did start to prepare myself, | 51:05 | |
like you know, because I knew, okay, right, | 51:07 | |
they're gonna take us in the, | 51:09 | |
on the bus again. | 51:12 | |
So I started sitting on my, | 51:14 | |
this is later on, in a few days, | 51:15 | |
I started sitting on the concrete, bare concrete, | 51:17 | |
'cause otherwise you can sit on the Isomat, I think, | 51:20 | |
on the bare concrete, preparing my legs. | 51:23 | |
Just, you know, when the Marines come and start beating us, | 51:25 | |
then I'll be in a better situation. | 51:27 | |
So, you know, I had this impression that, you know | 51:29 | |
we were only gonna be there for a short time. | 51:31 | |
It was just a holding for a short period of time, | 51:33 | |
and then they're gonna send us to America. | 51:34 | |
And then that's we'll face | 51:36 | |
a military tribunal or civilian courts. | 51:38 | |
Interviewer | And when you saw more people come | 51:41 |
the next day, did more people come the next day, or? | 51:45 | |
- | Okay, now I was there, what was it? | 51:48 |
We came in- | 51:52 | |
- | The 11th to the 1st. | |
- | Yeah, 11, and then I think it was about three months. | 51:55 |
Three months. | 51:58 | |
So it wasn't the next day that they brought people, | 51:59 | |
but periodically, you know, | 52:02 | |
probably quite regularly they would bring people. | 52:03 | |
And you would know, because they'll tell you | 52:05 | |
they're holding them in the rec yard, | 52:09 | |
the green area, which they held us in. | 52:10 | |
And then they'll tell us to face the other way. | 52:12 | |
And we weren't allowed to get up and, | 52:14 | |
you know, whether to pray or to use the toilet, | 52:17 | |
just had to sit there while they processed them. | 52:19 | |
So basically they were going through | 52:21 | |
the same thing that we were going through, | 52:22 | |
you know, the same situation, the initiation as it were. | 52:24 | |
Interviewer | And when was your first interrogation, | 52:27 |
and how many days in do you think? | 52:29 | |
- | I would estimate it from memory maybe about two weeks. | 52:32 |
- | Two? | 52:35 |
- | Maybe two weeks, yeah. | |
- | Two weeks? | 52:36 |
- | And it wasn't straight- | |
Two weeks, yeah. | 52:37 | |
It wasn't straight away that they took us to interrogation. | 52:38 | |
Interviewer | Okay, before we get to the interrogation, | 52:41 |
during those two weeks did you still think | 52:42 | |
you were just in quarantine? | 52:44 | |
Or did you begin to think something else was going on? | 52:45 | |
- | No, actually I think it was quarantine. | 52:49 |
I thought it was actually quarantine. | 52:51 | |
So that's what I was, I was preparing my legs | 52:53 | |
for the beating and (laughs) the Marines on the bus. | 52:55 | |
Interviewer | And did you know you were in Guantanamo? | 52:58 |
Did someone telling you that? | 53:00 | |
- | Whether I knew I was in Guantanamo, | 53:02 |
no I don't, in the first two weeks, | 53:05 | |
I don't think so. | 53:07 | |
And, wait. | 53:10 | |
Okay, first three days, | 53:14 | |
we weren't allowed to talk to anyone. | 53:15 | |
We had to sit in the middle of our cells for this, | 53:18 | |
face one certain direction, | 53:20 | |
and your eyes could only go on the vertical. | 53:21 | |
So you could look up at the sky, the ground, | 53:24 | |
but you couldn't look around. | 53:25 | |
The MPs took great pleasure in running up to you | 53:28 | |
when they caught you actually looking around | 53:31 | |
and telling you off, which was, you know, | 53:33 | |
that was their life at that time. | 53:36 | |
You know, so that's it. | 53:37 | |
For me, those three days, they were a relief. | 53:41 | |
'Cause all of a sudden there's kind of time to process, | 53:44 | |
you know, time to process this, you know, | 53:48 | |
and I didn't have to like speak to anyone. | 53:50 | |
So you know, it was quiet time | 53:52 | |
that you know, I could start thinking, | 53:54 | |
and I was trying to make sense of the situation. | 53:57 | |
Others remember it too, | 54:01 | |
for us to be sitting and not talking for about two weeks. | 54:02 | |
I don't know, I remember it as three days, | 54:04 | |
but maybe that's just, after years, you know. | 54:06 | |
You know, people remember things differently. | 54:10 | |
Interviewer | Do you remember what food you got | 54:13 |
those first few days? | 54:13 | |
- | Okay, okay. | 54:15 |
The first night, I'm put in my cage, | 54:17 | |
they take the goggles off, | 54:21 | |
my eyes are finding it very hard to focus | 54:22 | |
because I've been looking at the back of the goggle | 54:25 | |
for like, I don't know, 24 hours or over. | 54:27 | |
And so I'm looking around and it's dark | 54:32 | |
and it looks like people are sleeping, detainees. | 54:34 | |
And a soldier just kind of waltzes by, | 54:37 | |
and he throws this silver food packet | 54:39 | |
through the gap in the door. | 54:41 | |
And then that was dinner. | 54:43 | |
And then the flight were, you know, | 54:45 | |
it was like a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. | 54:47 | |
That was about it for the flight. | 54:51 | |
Interviewer | Were you able to eat those on the flight? | 54:54 |
- | Well, you attempted to eat it, like, you know, | 54:55 |
your hands are in mittens | 54:59 | |
and they wouldn't take the mittens off. | 55:00 | |
And you just kind of leaned forward | 55:02 | |
and tried to eat it, et cetera. | 55:04 | |
So I mean, you ate, but you know, | 55:05 | |
the soldiers on the plane, they ate more than us. | 55:08 | |
And you know, I remember hearing them, | 55:10 | |
you know, (laughs) I understand English. | 55:12 | |
So I hear them, you know, like chowing down on our food, | 55:15 | |
and they ate more than us. | 55:18 | |
So, you know, they didn't give us much to eat. | 55:20 | |
And then that was it for dinner. | 55:23 | |
What was the other question? | 55:27 | |
Oh, do I remember what we were fed? | 55:28 | |
Okay, yeah. | 55:29 | |
And then... | 55:30 | |
Then they, sorry? | 55:35 | |
- | For breakfast? | |
For breakfast the next day, were they the same? | 55:36 | |
- | Vaguely. | 55:40 |
I remember one breakfast, which it seems to like, | 55:42 | |
you know, descend pretty quickly. | 55:46 | |
What they did, they decided that you know, | 55:49 | |
'cause we weren't gonna be moving around much, | 55:51 | |
they were gonna give us just enough calories | 55:53 | |
to keep us, that would keep someone | 55:57 | |
in a comatose state, I believe. | 55:59 | |
So they gave us, I remember one breakfast, | 56:01 | |
it was a bagel and a small portion | 56:07 | |
of cream cheese, or something like that, | 56:10 | |
but they didn't bother putting it on a plate. | 56:12 | |
So they put it on the ground, served it like that. | 56:15 | |
Another lunch or dinner was a small polystyrene cup | 56:18 | |
of, you know, it was just rice | 56:24 | |
and beans on top, in the same cup. | 56:26 | |
And they put the spoon in the cup as well, | 56:29 | |
so (laughs) that took up space. | 56:30 | |
They didn't bother opening the door this time. | 56:32 | |
For the bagel, they opened the door. | 56:34 | |
So you know, for this one, | 56:36 | |
they just fed it through the gap | 56:37 | |
between the frame of the door and the frame of the cage. | 56:39 | |
So that was that. | 56:42 | |
And I think lunch, they had an MRE, | 56:46 | |
but they had a special one. | 56:48 | |
They said it was a kosher one. | 56:49 | |
So basically it was just things like raisins. | 56:51 | |
The good thing is, we got granola bars, | 56:55 | |
bagel chips, sunflower seeds, | 56:59 | |
that kind of thing like that. | 57:07 | |
For the Arabs, that was like, | 57:09 | |
'cause they're used to meat and rice | 57:11 | |
and that kind of thing, et cetera, | 57:13 | |
you know these were snacks for them. | 57:14 | |
And that's what we got. | 57:17 | |
Yeah, that's what I remember. | 57:20 | |
Interviewer | So can we move to the first interrogation? | 57:22 |
Was that any different from the interrogation in Kandahar? | 57:24 | |
The first interrogation in Guantanamo. | 57:28 | |
- | Okay, first interrogation in Guantanamo, | 57:30 |
I think it was military again, it's a military guy. | 57:33 | |
And if I remember rightly, it was, | 57:37 | |
none of the information, if I understand rightly, | 57:41 | |
from Kandahar had got to them. | 57:45 | |
Or they said they were starting a clean slate. | 57:47 | |
You have to start your story all over again. | 57:49 | |
So like I said, a guy just sits there, | 57:50 | |
and he seemed very disinterested. | 57:52 | |
And then he's like, "Okay, tell me your story," | 57:55 | |
blah, blah, blah, so you know, | 57:57 | |
that was the first interrogation. | 57:58 | |
They called it, they called it | 58:00 | |
exhibition, the code name for it was exhibition. | 58:05 | |
So if they're taking a detainee to interrogation, | 58:07 | |
they're taking one to exhibition. | 58:11 | |
And they would take you out of the cages, | 58:13 | |
and then into kind of shacks that were made like that. | 58:14 | |
There would be a guy with a shotgun, | 58:17 | |
you know, like outside the door. | 58:20 | |
And then obviously you'd be bolted to the ground. | 58:23 | |
So the shackles would still be on your person. | 58:25 | |
And then you answer the questions. | 58:28 | |
There was cameras. | 58:30 | |
I remember, I think I remember cameras, | 58:32 | |
'cause I don't know where they were. | 58:33 | |
Maybe they were, they were somewhere, situation. | 58:34 | |
I just remember thinking to myself, | 58:36 | |
they're actually filming this, | 58:38 | |
and then listening to it as well. | 58:40 | |
You know? | 58:42 | |
I don't know why, what conclusion I came to that, | 58:43 | |
but it's, yeah. | 58:44 | |
Interviewer | And it's almost time for us to take a break, | 58:49 |
but did the interrogations change over time, | 58:52 | |
or were pretty much the same, repetition? | 58:55 | |
- | What they'll do, they'll work out rapport, | 58:57 |
who you have rapport with. | 59:01 | |
So there's military intelligence | 59:02 | |
and then there was FBI at the beginning at Camp X-ray. | 59:04 | |
Obviously I didn't like the military people, | 59:07 | |
'cause of the way they treated us. | 59:09 | |
The FBI were kind of more civilian. | 59:11 | |
So you know, they came to, I think, | 59:13 | |
I don't know who dealt with the interrogations or whatever, | 59:16 | |
but FBI became dominant. | 59:19 | |
The military kind of left me alone, | 59:21 | |
because they realized I'm not gonna talk to them, | 59:22 | |
and I didn't like them at all. | 59:24 | |
Just at Camp X-ray, or you want to talk | 59:29 | |
about just the whole of Guantanamo? | 59:30 | |
Interviewer | Well, you can talk generally, | 59:32 |
if there's something you wish to. | 59:34 | |
- | Okay, so later on, that's Camp X-Ray, | 59:35 |
that was mainly, it was either military or there was FBI. | 59:38 | |
Then Camp Delta, then you get, | 59:42 | |
it's military, FBI, sometimes New York Police Department. | 59:46 | |
I don't know why they were there. | 59:50 | |
Yeah, some New York police guy came. | 59:51 | |
MI5, the Australian intelligence. | 59:57 | |
I don't know why they wanted to speak to me. | 1:00:02 | |
ASIO, A-S-I-O, they came and yeah, spoke to me. | 1:00:03 | |
I don't even know why. | 1:00:07 | |
Yeah, so it's just a whole, it's a whole mix. | 1:00:11 | |
Interviewer | Were they also the same questions | 1:00:13 |
again and again? | 1:00:14 | |
- | It, no, it changed. | 1:00:19 |
It changed. | 1:00:20 | |
First of all they were interested | 1:00:21 | |
in background information in your story. | 1:00:22 | |
Then there's a kind of maybe, | 1:00:25 | |
yeah, there's always, where's Osama Bin Laden stupidness. | 1:00:29 | |
Then it just kind of descended into just, | 1:00:35 | |
just nonsense, really seriously. | 1:00:39 | |
They just, they just said, "We just want you to talk. | 1:00:41 | |
Talk about cricket, talk about football, just talk. | 1:00:43 | |
We don't care what you talk about, just talk." | 1:00:45 | |
Like that. | 1:00:47 | |
And then like, if you think about it, | 1:00:48 | |
like you know, what kind of intelligence value, | 1:00:50 | |
if we had any at the beginning, we would have | 1:00:51 | |
after so many years of being incarcerated? | 1:00:53 | |
We won't. | 1:00:55 | |
So, you know, they just wanted us to talk about anything. | 1:00:56 | |
So we could just, you know, | 1:00:58 | |
you've talked philosophy, you could talk about, | 1:00:59 | |
I mean kind of, I mean, with the FBI | 1:01:03 | |
funny conversations like, you know, | 1:01:07 | |
we were talking about the sighting of the moon | 1:01:08 | |
in the Ramadan, the month of fasting, | 1:01:12 | |
whether you do it by the calendar | 1:01:14 | |
or you do it by the sighting. | 1:01:15 | |
'Cause he had talked to someone or something like that. | 1:01:17 | |
Whether the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, | 1:01:19 | |
you know, whether the Prophet Muhammad was illiterate. | 1:01:21 | |
What that meant, did it mean he couldn't read and write, | 1:01:25 | |
or it meant, you know, cause he was a merchant, | 1:01:28 | |
which meant he knew numerical, so it doesn't, | 1:01:31 | |
so we had a conversation about that. | 1:01:33 | |
There was a conversation about whether laws of a country | 1:01:37 | |
are based on the morals of the people of that country. | 1:01:40 | |
It's just things like that. | 1:01:45 | |
So, you know, it was very quick | 1:01:46 | |
that, you know, the, you know, | 1:01:50 | |
the questions weren't always about terrorism, | 1:01:52 | |
or Osama Bin Laden, or this, that, and the other. | 1:01:55 | |
It just became, at least in Camp Delta, | 1:01:57 | |
it just became, just talk to us. | 1:02:00 | |
Just talk to us about anything. | 1:02:02 | |
And as long as we can bring you into interrogation | 1:02:04 | |
and ensure that you're talking, | 1:02:06 | |
but not necessarily talking | 1:02:07 | |
about what people would think you were talking about, | 1:02:08 | |
you know, in Washington and so forth and the White House, | 1:02:11 | |
then that was fine. | 1:02:14 | |
That's what it descended into. | 1:02:15 | |
Interviewer | Well, why don't we take a break | 1:02:17 |
and then we'll continue to- | 1:02:18 | |
- | Okay. | |
- | Okay? | 1:02:21 |
- | All right, okay, thank you. | |
I'll be back soon. | 1:02:22 | |
Interviewer | What I want to go back to was when, | 1:02:24 |
I just want to confirm you were, | 1:02:27 | |
you were on the first plane load | 1:02:29 | |
to come to Guantanamo, and you knew that? | 1:02:31 | |
You saw no other detainees when you arrived, | 1:02:34 | |
and how did you know that you were the first plane load? | 1:02:36 | |
- | Okay, how did I know? | 1:02:41 |
It's probably a number of factors, | 1:02:50 | |
but it would have been my ISN number. | 1:02:51 | |
I was 024, and then they were processing us | 1:02:54 | |
chronologically at that time. | 1:02:57 | |
Later on I, so that meant | 1:02:59 | |
I was the 24th person to be processed. | 1:03:00 | |
We must've been 27 on the plane. | 1:03:04 | |
I don't know how I came by the information, | 1:03:06 | |
but it must have been cumulative. | 1:03:09 | |
For instance, you know, you talk to people | 1:03:11 | |
and then, you know, they came later and so forth, | 1:03:13 | |
you know, cause they found people already there. | 1:03:17 | |
People talk to interrogators, | 1:03:19 | |
and then they come back with information and so forth. | 1:03:21 | |
So it wouldn't have been, | 1:03:23 | |
I wouldn't have known it at the beginning, | 1:03:24 | |
apart from the fact that, you know, | 1:03:26 | |
there wasn't that many people. | 1:03:27 | |
But when people keep on coming, | 1:03:29 | |
then you start to realize, you know, | 1:03:30 | |
then this batch come from this, | 1:03:32 | |
and that batch came from there, | 1:03:34 | |
and you start hearing people's stories | 1:03:35 | |
and so forth in that regard. | 1:03:36 | |
But I know it was the 24th person to be processed, 024. | 1:03:38 | |
There must have been about 20, 27 people on the plane. | 1:03:43 | |
Interviewer | And you knew it was January 11th, | 1:03:47 |
which was the first. | 1:03:49 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 1:03:50 |
Interviewer | And then when the MI5 interrogated you, | 1:03:51 |
were the British any different | 1:03:54 | |
in the questions they asked you from Americans? | 1:03:57 | |
- | Okay, so we're kind of jumping now. | 1:04:00 |
Do you want me- | 1:04:02 | |
- | Oh, they came much later? | |
- | Yeah, they came much later. | 1:04:04 |
This is, actually, no. | 1:04:05 | |
They came in Camp X-ray, actually. | 1:04:07 | |
Yeah, they did. | 1:04:09 | |
Okay, I think there was a period of two weeks | 1:04:11 | |
being interrogated every day by the FBI. | 1:04:15 | |
They just kept on taking me every day | 1:04:20 | |
to get interrogated for two weeks. | 1:04:22 | |
And in fact, the other detainees got worried, | 1:04:23 | |
you know, they said this is, what's going on here. | 1:04:25 | |
You know, this guy is just being taken | 1:04:27 | |
every day to be interrogated. | 1:04:28 | |
During that period, the Red Cross came to talk to us, | 1:04:31 | |
and the MI5 came to talk to me | 1:04:34 | |
and the other British detainees. | 1:04:38 | |
But it was, | 1:04:43 | |
one of them said he, they didn't actually say they were MI5. | 1:04:45 | |
So one of them said, "I'm a consular official, | 1:04:48 | |
I've come in to speak to you, | 1:04:51 | |
just, you know, to see how you are, et cetera, | 1:04:53 | |
I'm from the British government and so forth." | 1:04:54 | |
And then he said, "My colleague | 1:04:55 | |
is from the British government." | 1:04:57 | |
He didn't actually say MI5. | 1:04:58 | |
It's only later on that I learned, | 1:05:00 | |
and they did that I think for a period of time. | 1:05:02 | |
And it was, I can't remember the exact date, | 1:05:06 | |
but it was at least a few years. | 1:05:08 | |
At least, definitely one year, | 1:05:11 | |
but it must have been over a year, | 1:05:14 | |
when the actual British consular guy comes. | 1:05:16 | |
So they pretended that whole time | 1:05:18 | |
that, you know, that- | 1:05:20 | |
Interviewer | And did you believe them | 1:05:22 |
that they were consular? | 1:05:23 | |
- | Obviously, yes. | 1:05:25 |
You know, like the situation is that, you know, | 1:05:26 | |
I've just got to Guantanamo Bay, I'm in Camp X-ray. | 1:05:29 | |
And you know, I'm new, you know. | 1:05:34 | |
You have to be lied to so many times | 1:05:36 | |
before you start realizing, well, you know, | 1:05:38 | |
what they tell you is not the truth. | 1:05:40 | |
So obviously, I'm fresh to the situation. | 1:05:42 | |
And I actually believed, I actually believed | 1:05:43 | |
that, you know, one of them was a consular official | 1:05:45 | |
and the other one was just British government, | 1:05:47 | |
so I didn't know what that meant. | 1:05:50 | |
Interviewer | Did they say you'd be coming | 1:05:52 |
back to Britain soon, or did they give you any? | 1:05:54 | |
- | No, they just want us to know who, | 1:05:57 |
they just wanted to confirm that I was who I said I was, | 1:05:58 | |
and you know, to know my story, so forth, | 1:06:04 | |
you know, how I got into the situation. | 1:06:06 | |
And then they would just, they would go back. | 1:06:09 | |
They never said anything about being released | 1:06:10 | |
or anything like that, et cetera. | 1:06:12 | |
Interviewer | And how do you know | 1:06:13 |
there were other English, or other British citizens there? | 1:06:14 | |
How do you know that? | 1:06:19 | |
- | Okay, because | 1:06:20 |
Asif Iqbal, he was in the same kind of, | 1:06:23 | |
'cause we were, I was Bravo Bravo nine. | 1:06:28 | |
So you were in kind of like, section Bravo, | 1:06:31 | |
and then I was segment Bravo, and then I was the ninth cage. | 1:06:33 | |
So he was in the same section, but he was in Bravo. | 1:06:37 | |
So he was Bravo Alpha something. | 1:06:40 | |
Like that, Asif. | 1:06:45 | |
And then Shafiq Rasul was in the same, | 1:06:46 | |
I can't remember which section he was, | 1:06:49 | |
but he was in the same kind of segment. | 1:06:51 | |
So I actually could speak to them. | 1:06:54 | |
And Hicks was in the same segment as well. | 1:06:55 | |
So I actually could speak across, | 1:06:57 | |
when we were allowed to speak, | 1:06:58 | |
and definitely after two weeks we were allowed to speak. | 1:06:59 | |
I could, we would shout over across to them, | 1:07:02 | |
and then you have your conversation and so forth. | 1:07:03 | |
And you know, you could talk to them | 1:07:07 | |
to some degree. | 1:07:08 | |
- | How did it feel | |
to see some more Englishmen there, how? | 1:07:09 | |
- | Yeah, it was, | 1:07:17 |
it didn't strike me as anything significant. | 1:07:18 | |
I mean, the thing about being incarcerated | 1:07:22 | |
in that situation, like it's, I tend to go quiet. | 1:07:27 | |
I tend to go quiet and just keep myself to myself, | 1:07:30 | |
kind of brood in a way. | 1:07:33 | |
So, you know, conversation wasn't a big thing for me. | 1:07:35 | |
Like, you know, not to say that I didn't appreciate it, | 1:07:37 | |
and it was good to talk to them, but you know, | 1:07:39 | |
like they weren't close enough | 1:07:41 | |
to have a long conversation with, so you had to shout a bit. | 1:07:43 | |
And so you couldn't say, it was just like a few words | 1:07:47 | |
and you know, sentences passed along, et cetera. | 1:07:51 | |
And then, you know, you couldn't sustain it for long. | 1:07:53 | |
'Cause you would be shouting | 1:07:55 | |
for a really long time in that regard. | 1:07:56 | |
So, yeah. | 1:07:58 | |
Interviewer | Did you go quiet with the interrogators too? | 1:08:01 |
- | Okay, there's me, and my naive self, | 1:08:05 |
you know, thinking that, you know, | 1:08:10 | |
like, okay, this is Guantanamo. | 1:08:11 | |
I think Hicks was the one who told, | 1:08:14 | |
he, when he was processed, he told his story. | 1:08:18 | |
The Marine said something like, you know, | 1:08:21 | |
"Welcome to Guantanamo Bay, you are US property now," | 1:08:24 | |
or something like that, et cetera. | 1:08:29 | |
So he relayed it to us, and that's one of the ways | 1:08:30 | |
we found out, or at least I found out, | 1:08:33 | |
we were in Guantanamo Bay. | 1:08:35 | |
I didn't hear about Guantanamo before then. (laughs) | 1:08:36 | |
I know about Cuba, but (laughs) | 1:08:39 | |
like that I saw it on TV, | 1:08:41 | |
and I actually wanted to go there on holiday one time. | 1:08:42 | |
But I'd never heard of Guantanamo Bay before. | 1:08:44 | |
And so, sorry, I missed the question. | 1:08:48 | |
Interviewer | How, what was the question? | 1:08:56 |
- | It was- | 1:09:01 |
- | You know... | |
(interviewer mutters) | 1:09:07 | |
Oh yeah, did you ever go quiet with the- | 1:09:12 | |
- | Okay, yeah, quiet with the interrogators. | 1:09:14 |
Okay, so there, I'm telling him, | 1:09:16 | |
you know, telling him my story, being truthful, et cetera. | 1:09:19 | |
This is my story, and so forth. | 1:09:23 | |
Then, you know, they, I don't know. | 1:09:27 | |
They were just, | 1:09:31 | |
I didn't like where they were going with it. | 1:09:34 | |
So actually no, in Camp X-ray I didn't go quiet. | 1:09:38 | |
I didn't go quiet with them. | 1:09:42 | |
I didn't go quiet with them. | 1:09:44 | |
But... | 1:09:45 | |
But they were they were taking, you know, | 1:09:56 | |
they were going... | 1:09:57 | |
You know, I was telling him the truth, et cetera, | 1:10:02 | |
but they were going with it | 1:10:04 | |
in the wrong direction, if you understand. | 1:10:06 | |
I wasn't happy with it. | 1:10:08 | |
So I, you know, I decided, | 1:10:09 | |
basically I let them know I wasn't happy with it. | 1:10:13 | |
And then they kind of became a bit despondent with me. | 1:10:15 | |
And then, you know, they went quiet on me. | 1:10:19 | |
So there was a whole period of two weeks | 1:10:21 | |
when they were, | 1:10:23 | |
when they were, you know, interrogating me, | 1:10:25 | |
and then they just basically stopped. | 1:10:30 | |
I don't want to go into too many details concerning it, | 1:10:32 | |
'cause it's probably an ongoing thing. | 1:10:35 | |
But they they stopped, and they stopped interrogating me. | 1:10:38 | |
For them, they thought it was a privilege. | 1:10:42 | |
I don't understand why they think, | 1:10:47 | |
they thought it was a privilege | 1:10:48 | |
to bring the detainee to the interrogation room. | 1:10:49 | |
They bolt you down to the ground, | 1:10:52 | |
and you have a guy behind you with a shotgun, | 1:10:54 | |
'cause for sort of some reason it was a privilege. | 1:10:55 | |
Later on, in Camp Delta, they referred to the, | 1:10:59 | |
I don't think they ever saw the cages. | 1:11:01 | |
So they referred to the cages as the shithole, | 1:11:03 | |
meaning that when they took us out of the shithole | 1:11:09 | |
and brought us into the interrogation room, | 1:11:11 | |
it was a privilege. | 1:11:12 | |
I would have rather stayed in my cage, | 1:11:14 | |
because, you know, I wasn't bolted to the ground in my cage. | 1:11:16 | |
At least I had some freedom to walk around. | 1:11:19 | |
Although it was a small cage, | 1:11:20 | |
it was better than actually being bolted to the ground. | 1:11:21 | |
But they saw it as a privilege. | 1:11:24 | |
So I guess because they thought, you know, | 1:11:25 | |
like for two weeks they were privileging me | 1:11:26 | |
and, you know, I didn't want to do | 1:11:29 | |
what they wanted me to do, | 1:11:32 | |
and then, so that was, you know, that was it. | 1:11:34 | |
They weren't gonna privilege me anymore. | 1:11:36 | |
So basically, they shut up on me | 1:11:37 | |
rather than me shutting up on them in a way, in that regard. | 1:11:39 | |
That was in Camp X-ray. | 1:11:42 | |
Interviewer | And then where were you moved to next? | 1:11:44 |
- | Okay, it must have been after about three months, | 1:11:47 |
and then Hicks was our kind of line of information. | 1:11:49 | |
He would go to interrogation | 1:11:53 | |
and then bring information back. | 1:11:54 | |
So he tells us about this new prison, blah, blah, blah, | 1:11:55 | |
is built, whatever, et cetera, and this and that, | 1:11:57 | |
and that's where we're gonna be going. | 1:11:58 | |
So, you know, he's, I took his information to be credible, | 1:12:00 | |
and it was, it was credible. | 1:12:03 | |
So I'm thinking, okay, they're about to process. | 1:12:07 | |
I was thinking about, they're gonna send us | 1:12:12 | |
through to process again and send us to a new prison. | 1:12:13 | |
That's, this is Camp Delta now. | 1:12:16 | |
Unfortunately, the Arabs in general, | 1:12:19 | |
they, sadly, they didn't want to hear about a new prison. | 1:12:22 | |
They had this notion in their head | 1:12:29 | |
that, you know, the American government | 1:12:30 | |
will realize that they made a mistake, | 1:12:35 | |
and they will soon transport them home. | 1:12:37 | |
So when there was this whole big mass movement of us, | 1:12:40 | |
I think we were 300 at the time, | 1:12:44 | |
we'd amassed from about 27 to 300, | 1:12:45 | |
you know, being moved into like empty cages | 1:12:51 | |
and then, you know, being transferred, | 1:12:53 | |
you know, you could see the hope in their eyes. | 1:12:55 | |
This was, this was their homecoming. | 1:12:57 | |
And you know, and I remember speaking to one of the Arabs, | 1:13:00 | |
trying to tell him, "Look, you know, | 1:13:02 | |
they're going to take us to a new prison." | 1:13:05 | |
He didn't want to hear it. | 1:13:07 | |
He didn't want to hear it. | 1:13:08 | |
He really wanted to believe that he was going home, | 1:13:11 | |
he was going home, and it was sad to see. | 1:13:13 | |
It was sad to see. | 1:13:15 | |
So obviously the transfer is the same thing. | 1:13:16 | |
The Marines, you know, search you. | 1:13:19 | |
They weren't supposed to touch the Quran, | 1:13:24 | |
I think Saiful Islam, you know, | 1:13:27 | |
the chaplain at that time, | 1:13:31 | |
told us they weren't gonna touch the Qurans, et cetera. | 1:13:33 | |
They touched the Quran, flicked through it, | 1:13:35 | |
you know, did it on purpose, you know. | 1:13:37 | |
Like the Marine, he did it on purpose, | 1:13:40 | |
'cause I know the Marine grabbed my Quran, | 1:13:42 | |
looked me in the eye, and flicked through it. | 1:13:43 | |
I looked back at him in the eye. | 1:13:45 | |
they had cameras there filming it. | 1:13:46 | |
I don't know what they've done with the footage. | 1:13:48 | |
They probably have it somewhere, | 1:13:50 | |
if they haven't done a CIA | 1:13:51 | |
and actually gone and got rid of it. | 1:13:52 | |
You know, look at his eyes and so forth at the camera. | 1:13:56 | |
'Cause I was looking at the Marine very, very sternly. | 1:13:58 | |
And then he gives me back my Quran. | 1:14:01 | |
And they put us in the bus, and it's the same thing. | 1:14:03 | |
So obviously you're bolted to the ground, | 1:14:05 | |
sitting cross-legged, you can't lean on anything. | 1:14:06 | |
You're sitting there. | 1:14:09 | |
The bus is just jolting forward and backwards, | 1:14:10 | |
so you're being, you're moving out position. | 1:14:12 | |
And then, you know, they're messing you up, | 1:14:14 | |
they're pushing you, hitting you and so forth. | 1:14:16 | |
I remember Asif Iqbal, he couldn't maintain the position. | 1:14:18 | |
So I hear him screaming, "I can't do this," | 1:14:21 | |
and putting his legs out, | 1:14:23 | |
and then they're hitting him and so forth | 1:14:24 | |
because you know of his back. | 1:14:25 | |
He had a back problem, pain in his back, and et cetera. | 1:14:27 | |
So that's all, you know, | 1:14:30 | |
the same situation again, the mass movement. | 1:14:31 | |
And then they bring us to Camp Delta. | 1:14:33 | |
Obviously you're blindfolded, you know, | 1:14:35 | |
like blind goggled. | 1:14:38 | |
It's not an actual material, it's an actual goggle. | 1:14:39 | |
And then I was taken into the Charlie block, | 1:14:42 | |
and I was put like in the first cage. | 1:14:45 | |
Being there, I was put in my cage obviously. | 1:14:50 | |
You know, people being brought, | 1:14:53 | |
and we have a change of situations, | 1:14:56 | |
so new people being brought into the cage, | 1:14:58 | |
and they didn't keep the same set up as Camp X-ray. | 1:15:00 | |
Obviously I'm gonna give them greetings, | 1:15:03 | |
Islamic greetings, but you know, | 1:15:04 | |
the Arabs, they were just choked up. | 1:15:08 | |
You could see the tears in their eyes. | 1:15:11 | |
They were just, you know, they were sad. | 1:15:13 | |
You know, the Islamic greeting, | 1:15:16 | |
it's actually obligatory to reply. | 1:15:18 | |
They didn't reply, and I don't blame them. | 1:15:20 | |
Because they were, they couldn't take it. | 1:15:22 | |
They were hoping to go home, and that's what they saw. | 1:15:24 | |
Interviewer | Do you think | 1:15:26 |
you didn't have the same feelings | 1:15:27 | |
'cause you understood what was going on? | 1:15:28 | |
- | You know, in Camp X-ray, I evaluated the situation. | 1:15:33 |
And being from the West, I, you know, | 1:15:36 | |
I, you know, in Britain, et cetera, | 1:15:38 | |
I've never had any trouble with the police. | 1:15:41 | |
You know, like I'd never had before, | 1:15:43 | |
before Guantanamo, nothing. | 1:15:44 | |
I never had any trouble with police. | 1:15:46 | |
Obviously, I watched movies and so forth. | 1:15:47 | |
I know America has the Miranda rights | 1:15:49 | |
or something like that here. | 1:15:51 | |
You know, read you your rights and so forth. | 1:15:52 | |
So the way I was grabbed and et cetera, | 1:15:54 | |
I started putting things together. | 1:15:57 | |
I thought to myself, you know what? | 1:15:59 | |
These people don't have a clue where the Afghans, | 1:16:01 | |
'cause the Afghans lied to them, actually. | 1:16:04 | |
The Afghans said they found me | 1:16:06 | |
roaming around after curfew in Kandahar, | 1:16:08 | |
and they grabbed me | 1:16:12 | |
and then handed me over to the Americans. | 1:16:13 | |
When they know the true story is | 1:16:15 | |
they took me to the Pakistani border, | 1:16:18 | |
and then they said they were gonna take me to Herat, | 1:16:22 | |
and then that's why we ended up in Kandahar at night, yeah? | 1:16:24 | |
But they lied to them in that regard. | 1:16:26 | |
So the Americans, and they didn't have a clue | 1:16:28 | |
who I was, whether I was doing anything or what I was doing, | 1:16:32 | |
where, they don't have a clue. | 1:16:35 | |
Because it was the Afghans that got us. | 1:16:37 | |
And the Afghans would fleece you, | 1:16:38 | |
and they would take anything from you, | 1:16:40 | |
money, your watch, your whatever, | 1:16:41 | |
this, that, and the other, et cetera. | 1:16:42 | |
I don't even know what they passed on to Americans, | 1:16:43 | |
if they passed on anything. | 1:16:45 | |
So, you know, they don't have, | 1:16:46 | |
they don't know where you were caught. | 1:16:49 | |
So I thought to myself, you know what, | 1:16:51 | |
okay, my rights haven't been read to me. | 1:16:53 | |
They don't know where they got me. | 1:16:55 | |
The only way they're gonna, you know, justify having me | 1:16:56 | |
and then like, you know, like charging me | 1:17:00 | |
and then keeping me in prison for a long time, | 1:17:02 | |
they're gonna have to frame me. | 1:17:03 | |
That's what I thought. | 1:17:05 | |
And believe me, like from the beginning, | 1:17:06 | |
I thought to myself, you know, | 1:17:08 | |
I'm gonna be in Guantanamo for a long, long time. | 1:17:09 | |
That's it. | 1:17:12 | |
I'm gonna be, I'm not, there's no hope | 1:17:12 | |
of me leaving this place unless, you know, you escape, | 1:17:14 | |
or you know, you leave out of a body bag | 1:17:17 | |
or something like that, yeah. | 1:17:19 | |
I'm gonna be in this place for a long, long time. | 1:17:21 | |
And then as a young man, well, what can you do? | 1:17:22 | |
You can only just make the best of it as you can, | 1:17:25 | |
and try to live your life. | 1:17:27 | |
There were very few detainees who took that line. | 1:17:28 | |
The majority were, they'll languish in their cells | 1:17:31 | |
and wait to be released. | 1:17:34 | |
Interviewer | And why did you take that line, | 1:17:36 |
and they didn't? | 1:17:38 | |
- | I guess because I understood that, you know, | 1:17:40 |
the only way they were gonna keep us in prison | 1:17:41 | |
was to frame us, and they were definitely gonna frame us. | 1:17:43 | |
And I believed, you know, the American government | 1:17:47 | |
and the FBI and all the others, | 1:17:50 | |
the interrogators were gonna frame us. | 1:17:51 | |
Later on, I came, I thought to myself, | 1:17:54 | |
I came to realize that maybe no. | 1:17:56 | |
Because I was surprised by that. | 1:17:57 | |
This is later on, I started to realize | 1:18:00 | |
that, you know, the interrogators, | 1:18:02 | |
as much as they would all go toe the line, | 1:18:04 | |
they wouldn't put their behinds on the line. | 1:18:07 | |
And it would take, you know, | 1:18:10 | |
like an act of patriotism in a way, | 1:18:13 | |
for one of them to lie in so much | 1:18:17 | |
as put someone in prison because of that lie. | 1:18:19 | |
So they were covering their backs. | 1:18:21 | |
And that, basically I believe is what saved us | 1:18:22 | |
from being framed, at least, you know, | 1:18:26 | |
me in that situation. | 1:18:29 | |
I don't know what's happening now. | 1:18:31 | |
Interviewer | So do you think you had an advantage | 1:18:33 |
that you knew English and you were from- | 1:18:34 | |
- | Of course, of course, of course. | 1:18:36 |
They, how is an Arab, | 1:18:38 | |
Hicks is the one who's telling me this. | 1:18:40 | |
He got it from his interrogators. | 1:18:42 | |
I understand the system, in a way. | 1:18:43 | |
And you know, like, you know. | 1:18:47 | |
And you know, you kind of understand, | 1:18:48 | |
we're getting more information. | 1:18:50 | |
As an English speaker, | 1:18:51 | |
we're getting more information than the Arabs. | 1:18:52 | |
The Arabs are not getting any information | 1:18:54 | |
apart from themselves, you know? | 1:18:55 | |
And which is, you know, it's not helping them at all. | 1:18:57 | |
Interviewer | Were you getting information from guards, | 1:19:01 |
or could you overhear the guards? | 1:19:02 | |
And did you get get any information that way? | 1:19:04 | |
- | The guards, in terms of how we're gonna be treated? | 1:19:05 |
I think it was the interrogators. | 1:19:12 | |
'Cause it depends on whether a detainee | 1:19:13 | |
was in rapport with the interrogator. | 1:19:15 | |
Hicks was very, he had the military intelligence, | 1:19:17 | |
and I guess they told him some stuff. | 1:19:20 | |
And I remember it was Hicks | 1:19:22 | |
who was telling us about the new prison. | 1:19:23 | |
And I thought he was credible, you know, | 1:19:25 | |
that that was the likely scenario. | 1:19:26 | |
Obviously the Arabs, they don't. | 1:19:30 | |
First of all they, you know, they didn't want to hear it. | 1:19:33 | |
They just, it was a matter of like, | 1:19:38 | |
they didn't want to hear it. | 1:19:39 | |
I mean, there was, in Camp X-ray, one of the Arabs, | 1:19:40 | |
he said, 'cause he would speak a bit of English. | 1:19:44 | |
So he said, you know, he had a dream, | 1:19:46 | |
and the dream said tomorrow he was gonna be released | 1:19:48 | |
and so forth, et cetera. | 1:19:52 | |
Tomorrow came and he was watching the sunset | 1:19:54 | |
and it didn't happen, and he was miserable. | 1:19:56 | |
There was one time I was sitting in X-ray, | 1:19:59 | |
and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. | 1:20:01 | |
I was standing there, and I looked around, | 1:20:03 | |
and I scanned the whole, you know, section Bravo. | 1:20:05 | |
Everyone was sleeping, in the daytime. | 1:20:09 | |
Everyone just like, I was wondering what's going on. | 1:20:11 | |
They just sleeping, like that. | 1:20:14 | |
Because it's like they, | 1:20:16 | |
like I said, you know, there was very few | 1:20:18 | |
who said, I'm gonna be here a long time, | 1:20:20 | |
I'm gonna make the best of it. | 1:20:22 | |
And the majority were, this is a mistake, | 1:20:23 | |
they'll realize the mistake, they're gonna release us soon. | 1:20:26 | |
So let me just sit and languish in my cell | 1:20:28 | |
until they release me. | 1:20:30 | |
And that's not a healthy thing to do in Guantanamo. | 1:20:32 | |
Interviewer | Shafiq Rasul said to us | 1:20:37 |
that knowing English helped too, | 1:20:39 | |
when you could speak to the guards, | 1:20:41 | |
and sometimes, you know, the guards were nice to him too, | 1:20:43 | |
because he spoke English. | 1:20:46 | |
Did you have that experience? | 1:20:47 | |
- | Yeah, communication breaks down barriers. | 1:20:50 |
So, I mean, if you can communicate... | 1:20:52 | |
Are we talking Camp, just general? | 1:20:57 | |
- | Yeah, generally. | 1:21:00 |
- | General? | |
Yeah, if you could communicate, then you know... | 1:21:01 | |
First, you know, if they're doing something bad to you, | 1:21:07 | |
like you can't breathe or whatever, | 1:21:09 | |
you can say, "I can't breathe." | 1:21:10 | |
And then they might, they might show some, | 1:21:12 | |
if you want to call it mercy, upon you | 1:21:13 | |
because they understand your situation. | 1:21:15 | |
If you can't say that, then if you're wriggling, | 1:21:17 | |
they're probably taken in a bad way. | 1:21:19 | |
You know, it did help. | 1:21:23 | |
I think, you know, it really, | 1:21:24 | |
being British, speaking English, | 1:21:26 | |
meant that we got the better of the treatment | 1:21:31 | |
by default, by default. | 1:21:36 | |
And I really feel really sad for the Arabs, | 1:21:38 | |
'cause they would have, they just got it hard. | 1:21:41 | |
But you know, by just the fact that we're British | 1:21:44 | |
and we speak English and we can relate to the guards | 1:21:47 | |
and we can say when there's something wrong, | 1:21:49 | |
we can ask for something, and we can speak to them | 1:21:50 | |
and explain to them the situation. | 1:21:53 | |
And just by the fact of them speaking to us, | 1:21:55 | |
we can break down those barriers | 1:21:57 | |
and they can say, well, you know, | 1:21:58 | |
these guys are not so bad. | 1:21:59 | |
They're not just speaking a funny language. | 1:22:00 | |
And then, you know, like really, | 1:22:02 | |
they can't demonize us in the way they can demonize | 1:22:04 | |
an Arab or an Afghan or a Pakistani or so forth. | 1:22:06 | |
You know, that was an important factor. | 1:22:09 | |
And, but it's sad that it had to be, | 1:22:12 | |
it had to come down to that really. | 1:22:13 | |
Interviewer | Do you think you got | 1:22:16 |
better medical care, too? | 1:22:17 | |
- | Okay, the thing is about both questions, | 1:22:19 |
like for instance, speaking English and medical care, | 1:22:21 | |
there was, in Camp Delta... | 1:22:24 | |
I actually got sick of speaking to the guards. | 1:22:29 | |
Like, you know, it's, they just got on my nerves. | 1:22:31 | |
I didn't want to actually speak to them. | 1:22:34 | |
So for a long time, I was pretending I was Arab. (laughs) | 1:22:35 | |
So when I'd ask, I would speak to them in Arabic, | 1:22:39 | |
as best as I could, but they didn't know Arabic. | 1:22:42 | |
So they couldn't realize the faults in my language. | 1:22:44 | |
And so when I asked for something, | 1:22:47 | |
I would just say it in Arabic, | 1:22:47 | |
or like, you know, point and whatever, like the Arabs. | 1:22:48 | |
And medical care, I made very sure, | 1:22:52 | |
as best as I could not ask for medical care. | 1:22:56 | |
I stayed away from that. | 1:22:59 | |
- | Why? | |
- | Because, you know, that's where they get you. | 1:23:03 |
They will use that against you. | 1:23:06 | |
And there came a period of time in Camp Delta | 1:23:08 | |
when the interrogators were given free reign of our welfare | 1:23:13 | |
in the sense that whatever you had in, | 1:23:18 | |
they had control of your condition. | 1:23:20 | |
And therefore, if you needed medical care, | 1:23:22 | |
you had to go to your interrogator | 1:23:24 | |
and then speak to them and ask them | 1:23:26 | |
and then they would get you medical care. | 1:23:27 | |
And if you wanted to write letters to your family, | 1:23:28 | |
you had to go to your interrogator. | 1:23:30 | |
If you, you know, like you're missing something | 1:23:32 | |
in your cell, like for instance you wanted a blanket | 1:23:34 | |
or something like that, you had to go to your interrogator | 1:23:37 | |
and speak to them, everything was through the interrogators. | 1:23:38 | |
And that was a way of leveraging people to talk. | 1:23:41 | |
And it wasn't just like talking, just generally talking. | 1:23:45 | |
You know, they were trying to extract confessions. | 1:23:48 | |
They were really, they were treating people really badly. | 1:23:51 | |
There was a time in Camp Delta | 1:23:53 | |
when they were putting pressure on people | 1:23:55 | |
to extract confessions. | 1:23:56 | |
Interviewer | And so you just | 1:24:00 |
wouldn't ask for any medical treatment? | 1:24:01 | |
- | I stayed away, I stayed away. | 1:24:04 |
They were, they had this thing about, | 1:24:05 | |
the only medical treatment I got in Camp Delta willingly, | 1:24:06 | |
not even willingly, they said, you know, I had TB. | 1:24:10 | |
The thing is, in Britain you have, | 1:24:13 | |
they call them BCG shots when you're young. | 1:24:14 | |
And you have them like when you're young, | 1:24:17 | |
and I think you have them maybe twice. | 1:24:18 | |
Some people only have them once. | 1:24:19 | |
Any TB tests will show positive because of the shots, | 1:24:22 | |
because it's an immunization shot. | 1:24:26 | |
So when they, in Camp X-ray, they did that TB test. | 1:24:27 | |
And then it showed up positive, because of the BCG. | 1:24:30 | |
I wouldn't be a threat, because of the immunization shot, | 1:24:33 | |
I wouldn't have got TB, but because it showed positive, | 1:24:36 | |
then they wanted to give me some pills. | 1:24:38 | |
I didn't know that, like you know, I didn't know | 1:24:41 | |
because you had the BCG, it shows positive on a TB test. | 1:24:43 | |
So, you know, so I started taking the pills. | 1:24:47 | |
And I thought to myself, you know what, | 1:24:50 | |
I don't want to take the pills. | 1:24:52 | |
So it was only a few. | 1:24:53 | |
Like maybe a few times I took the pills, and then I stopped. | 1:24:55 | |
And then in the whole time Camp Delta, | 1:24:58 | |
I stayed away from that, | 1:25:02 | |
because that was a way they could get you. | 1:25:04 | |
And, you know, they could really use that against you. | 1:25:06 | |
And I made sure of those two things. | 1:25:08 | |
I didn't speak English to the guards, | 1:25:10 | |
and medical care I kept away from. | 1:25:12 | |
Interviewer | And you didn't see a dentist either, then? | 1:25:15 |
- | No, I, (laughs) | 1:25:18 |
that's another thing of being from the West. | 1:25:20 | |
The Arabs didn't know how to use a toothbrush, | 1:25:23 | |
because it was weird, | 1:25:26 | |
they don't use, I don't know why, | 1:25:29 | |
but, 'cause I don't know Arab culture too much. | 1:25:30 | |
They have a different way of, you know, | 1:25:33 | |
dental care and so forth. | 1:25:35 | |
And toothpaste was, some of them found it difficult | 1:25:36 | |
with toothpaste because they couldn't, | 1:25:39 | |
they couldn't hold the toothpaste in their mouth. | 1:25:42 | |
So this seems to be one of those Western kind of, | 1:25:44 | |
I don't know, (laughs) one of our peculiarities | 1:25:47 | |
that we can actually hold the toothpaste | 1:25:50 | |
in our mouth while we're brushing. | 1:25:51 | |
I was fine with it, I was fine with that. | 1:25:53 | |
And when they changed the toothbrush to a little finger one, | 1:25:54 | |
I still, because there was, | 1:25:57 | |
before, in Camp X-ray they had a normal toothbrush. | 1:25:59 | |
But they had snapped it. | 1:26:02 | |
So it was shorter, the handle. | 1:26:03 | |
'Cause they said it was a weapon. | 1:26:04 | |
Then they decided without it, | 1:26:05 | |
that can still be used as a weapon, | 1:26:06 | |
so they give you one that goes on the finger | 1:26:08 | |
and it just has bristles and it's just plastic. | 1:26:10 | |
So I was fine using it, and I could use it well. | 1:26:12 | |
The Arabs, you know, in general, they, | 1:26:17 | |
first of all, they weren't used to it, I think. | 1:26:21 | |
Or some of them weren't used to it. | 1:26:24 | |
At least I know one of the Russians, Russian detainees, | 1:26:25 | |
he couldn't do it, he wasn't used to using it. | 1:26:29 | |
So it would dribble out of his mouth. | 1:26:31 | |
And then the second thing was, | 1:26:33 | |
they didn't know what was in the toothpaste. | 1:26:35 | |
So they said maybe it's not lawful | 1:26:36 | |
to swallow or something like that. | 1:26:39 | |
So they kept away from it. | 1:26:40 | |
I'm from the West, I've used toothpaste before. | 1:26:42 | |
So you know, that was fine. | 1:26:44 | |
So no, in terms of dental care, | 1:26:46 | |
no, I didn't need dental care, no. | 1:26:49 | |
Interviewer | And were you ever put in isolation? | 1:26:52 |
- | Yeah, okay. | 1:26:54 |
Isolation, I was isolated about... | 1:26:58 | |
This is MSU, yeah, a maximum security unit. | 1:27:01 | |
Even though the whole of Guantanamo is maximum security, | 1:27:03 | |
but they have MSU, maximum security unit, | 1:27:06 | |
which is disciplinary isolation in the actual Camp Delta. | 1:27:08 | |
I was there three times, I think. | 1:27:12 | |
Interviewer | For what reasons? | 1:27:16 |
- | Was it three or four? | 1:27:18 |
Okay, I'll go through them. | 1:27:19 | |
Okay, they brought us, | 1:27:21 | |
they brought me to Charlie, Charlie block. | 1:27:22 | |
And I was in Charlie one. | 1:27:24 | |
I decided to take my sheet | 1:27:27 | |
and wrap it around my head like a turban. (laughs) | 1:27:30 | |
- | They took offense. (laughs) | 1:27:34 |
They took. (laughs) | 1:27:37 | |
Interviewer | What was your purpose? | 1:27:38 |
- | Huh? | 1:27:39 |
- | What was your purpose? | |
- | One of detainees said the Prophet Muhammad, | 1:27:42 |
he wore a turban, like, he wore a turban. | 1:27:44 | |
So, you know, in our religion, | 1:27:48 | |
if you emulate Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, | 1:27:49 | |
then you get rewarded for it. | 1:27:51 | |
So if you see, you're in a situation | 1:27:53 | |
where, you know, we're just in a cage and so forth, | 1:27:54 | |
and you can't really do much. | 1:27:56 | |
So I thought to myself, you know what, let me, | 1:27:57 | |
I've got a sheet here I'm not really using, | 1:27:59 | |
so let me use it as a turban. | 1:28:01 | |
So I wrapped it around my head as a turban | 1:28:02 | |
in emulation of the Prophet | 1:28:04 | |
Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. | 1:28:05 | |
They took offense to it. | 1:28:06 | |
I think I gave him words. | 1:28:09 | |
'Cause I said, you know, I'm not gonna, you know, | 1:28:10 | |
you don't tell me what... | 1:28:12 | |
You spend a lot of time in a cage. | 1:28:14 | |
So, you know, (laughs) | 1:28:16 | |
you've got to pass your time somehow. | 1:28:18 | |
And sometimes you do crazy things. | 1:28:20 | |
I mean, for instance, | 1:28:21 | |
I don't think Asif will mind you telling this, | 1:28:23 | |
Asif and Juma, 'cause they, | 1:28:25 | |
I was in Charlie one and then Shafiq was Charlie two. | 1:28:26 | |
I think Asif was three, and then Juma Al Dossari was four. | 1:28:32 | |
Now, Asif and Juma, they got on pretty well, | 1:28:36 | |
but sometimes they get into little arguments and stuff. | 1:28:41 | |
So they were going a bit wacky, | 1:28:43 | |
so they would throw water at each other. | 1:28:44 | |
They, at that time on the toilets, we had canvases, | 1:28:47 | |
like canvas strips to put on the toilet | 1:28:52 | |
because it was just a floor toilet. | 1:28:55 | |
So I guess they were, | 1:28:56 | |
you know, it was a new prison. | 1:28:58 | |
So they were being reasonable in a way. | 1:28:59 | |
Obviously, that canvas, | 1:29:02 | |
Asif and Juma didn't put it on the toilet. | 1:29:04 | |
When they got it, they put it | 1:29:06 | |
and they made it into a bandana. | 1:29:07 | |
Then they upgraded their headgear. | 1:29:09 | |
And what else did they put on their head? | 1:29:11 | |
Then they took their shorts, | 1:29:15 | |
and they put their shorts on their head. | 1:29:17 | |
Like jester's hats, and then they would, like that. | 1:29:18 | |
So obviously you've got a lot of time on your hands, | 1:29:20 | |
and there's not much to do. | 1:29:22 | |
I decided to do the turban thing. | 1:29:24 | |
The guard said, "Take it off." | 1:29:26 | |
I gave him some words. | 1:29:27 | |
So he put me in isolation, India block. | 1:29:28 | |
So I was in isolation for a few days. | 1:29:31 | |
That was the first time. | 1:29:32 | |
You know, isolation is not good. | 1:29:36 | |
The thing is with me, if I, | 1:29:39 | |
the more I get isolated, | 1:29:41 | |
the more I become just within myself. | 1:29:43 | |
I become very quiet, I don't want to speak, | 1:29:46 | |
even to the other detainees. | 1:29:47 | |
It's just, so isolation wasn't good. | 1:29:48 | |
It's just kind of, I don't know. | 1:29:51 | |
It just affects me in that way. | 1:29:52 | |
Then the other time I was- | 1:29:55 | |
Interviewer | Did you have the Quran | 1:29:58 |
while you were in isolation? | 1:29:59 | |
- | No, I think, I think... | 1:30:02 |
No, I don't remember having it in, no. | 1:30:06 | |
Because isolation is just like, you're being punished. | 1:30:08 | |
So, you know, they take your things away. | 1:30:12 | |
They take your, | 1:30:14 | |
what they call comfort items. | 1:30:14 | |
- | Comfort items. | |
- | Of course, I call them essentials. | 1:30:16 |
They're not comfort items. | 1:30:17 | |
They, you know, the wordage they try to use is, anyway. | 1:30:19 | |
So you would just, we just had the Isomat, | 1:30:24 | |
and they might give you a blanket when it's time to sleep. | 1:30:27 | |
But then, they have the AC, what they call the AC, | 1:30:30 | |
which is really for punishment, on high. | 1:30:32 | |
So you're freezing all the time. | 1:30:34 | |
Like that, but I wouldn't have had, you know, no. | 1:30:37 | |
I think the Quran would have been in a black plastic bag | 1:30:40 | |
with the rest of my stuff, which they'll keep on the side, | 1:30:44 | |
when they take you from the, you know, MSU. | 1:30:46 | |
Now, the second time I was in MSU... | 1:30:51 | |
The second time was because the detainees, | 1:30:58 | |
over a period of time, they've come to the conclusion | 1:31:03 | |
that the Qurans are being used against us. | 1:31:06 | |
The interrogators are using the Qurans against us. | 1:31:08 | |
So it became like a, this was the situation | 1:31:10 | |
where the interrogators have control of our welfare. | 1:31:13 | |
So it became like, just that like, | 1:31:15 | |
like a plastic cup or you know, like, | 1:31:16 | |
you know, what they call the comfort items. | 1:31:19 | |
So we said we were gonna give them back. | 1:31:23 | |
And then they wouldn't accept them back. | 1:31:26 | |
I took the policy of taking the English Arabic translation | 1:31:29 | |
because technically it's not a Quran, it's a tafsir. | 1:31:33 | |
It depends on, you know, like, | 1:31:37 | |
I won't go into the details. | 1:31:40 | |
But an English Arabic one was not a Quran. | 1:31:41 | |
It's a tafsir, meaning the explanation | 1:31:44 | |
of the meaning of the Quran. | 1:31:47 | |
And it doesn't have the same rules as a Quran, | 1:31:48 | |
because of the fact of this desecration of the Quran. | 1:31:50 | |
So I didn't take the full Arabic one in that regard. | 1:31:53 | |
So I tried to get around it that way. | 1:31:56 | |
But what happened was that the detainees decided | 1:31:59 | |
that you know, they weren't gonna flick through the Qurans, | 1:32:04 | |
because that's a desecration in itself, | 1:32:08 | |
before they go for recreation. | 1:32:09 | |
So, you know, the policy was, from the general I guess, | 1:32:11 | |
was that then you can't go to recreation. | 1:32:15 | |
So the detainees said, we're fine. | 1:32:17 | |
We'll stay in our cells. | 1:32:18 | |
And then the policy comes that you have to go to recreation. | 1:32:19 | |
It's mandatory to go to recreation. | 1:32:23 | |
Even if you, they call it touch base, | 1:32:25 | |
so you put one foot in the rec yard | 1:32:27 | |
and then they take you back, but you have to go. | 1:32:28 | |
So if you're sick, you have to go. | 1:32:30 | |
If you, whatever, you have to go. | 1:32:31 | |
And when one of the detainees was taken out, | 1:32:34 | |
then one of the senior kind of officers, et cetera, came. | 1:32:38 | |
And then he decided to flick through the Quran, | 1:32:42 | |
which meant that the whole block decided to scream about it, | 1:32:44 | |
and then, you know, like shout about it | 1:32:48 | |
and you know, like kick up a fuss. | 1:32:49 | |
I was there shouting, "Hitler is your leader, | 1:32:52 | |
you Nazis, religious persecutors." | 1:32:55 | |
And then after they kind of, | 1:32:57 | |
after they pepper sprayed a lot of people, | 1:33:01 | |
unnerved them, you know, | 1:33:04 | |
they took them and me into isolation. | 1:33:06 | |
So that was another reason for isolation. | 1:33:08 | |
When I was in isolation at that time, | 1:33:10 | |
one of the senior officers comes and says something | 1:33:11 | |
like, you know, "You effing get over here." | 1:33:14 | |
So I said to him, "Who do you think you're talking to?" | 1:33:16 | |
And then that landed me another three days. (laughs) | 1:33:18 | |
So that was another time I was in isolation. | 1:33:22 | |
The other time was because the MI5 agent decided | 1:33:25 | |
that he wanted to break fast with me. | 1:33:28 | |
So he told them to put me in an air conditioned room, | 1:33:30 | |
blah, blah, blah, somewhere separate | 1:33:32 | |
from the other detainees. | 1:33:34 | |
And then said that I'll be brought back, | 1:33:38 | |
when it's time to break fast, they can break fast with me. | 1:33:40 | |
They decided to put me in isolation. | 1:33:43 | |
And then the last time I remember, | 1:33:45 | |
they put me in isolation but this time with all my stuff. | 1:33:46 | |
I hadn't done anything, | 1:33:50 | |
but that was before taking me to Camp Echo. | 1:33:51 | |
But they put me in isolation with all my stuff, | 1:33:54 | |
which was very strange, | 1:33:57 | |
'cause the soldiers didn't understand. | 1:33:58 | |
I'm a level whatever four, but in isolation. | 1:34:00 | |
Like you know, not level four. | 1:34:03 | |
I think whatever level I was, | 1:34:04 | |
I can't remember the levels now. | 1:34:06 | |
But I had my stuff, but I was put in isolation, | 1:34:07 | |
which was very strange for them, | 1:34:10 | |
'cause you know, you go to isolation for punishment. | 1:34:11 | |
And then, but that was in preparation | 1:34:13 | |
for going to Camp Echo. | 1:34:14 | |
Interviewer | And why were you going to Camp Echo? | 1:34:18 |
- | Okay, well that's, (laughs) | 1:34:21 |
that's a long, long, long story. | 1:34:24 | |
The FBI, okay, interrogators | 1:34:29 | |
in Camp X-ray, like I said, in Camp X-ray, | 1:34:35 | |
there was, you know, they were going, | 1:34:37 | |
I told them my story, et cetera. | 1:34:39 | |
I was truthful, did not lie. | 1:34:41 | |
I didn't have anything to lie about, | 1:34:43 | |
nothing, you know, I was truthful. | 1:34:44 | |
They were going with it in a way | 1:34:46 | |
that I didn't like them to go with it. | 1:34:48 | |
So they thought that if they just, in Camp X-ray, | 1:34:51 | |
if they just, you know, stopped the interrogations, | 1:34:54 | |
I'll start getting worried. | 1:34:56 | |
I wasn't worried. | 1:34:59 | |
You know, like I'll be eager. | 1:35:00 | |
But in Camp Delta, after a month | 1:35:02 | |
they pulled me into interrogation, | 1:35:04 | |
and I don't know, | 1:35:05 | |
they thought I'd be in tears maybe, | 1:35:07 | |
and begging them or something like that. | 1:35:08 | |
And they decided, you know, | 1:35:09 | |
that that will make me compliant. | 1:35:11 | |
It didn't work. | 1:35:13 | |
And the situation worsened, | 1:35:14 | |
because at some point in Camp Delta | 1:35:16 | |
it was the second hunger strike. | 1:35:18 | |
It was, part of the second hunger strike | 1:35:20 | |
was to hunger strike and not to talk, | 1:35:22 | |
not to talk in interrogation. | 1:35:23 | |
The guy next to me convinced me (laughs) | 1:35:26 | |
I should go for it. | 1:35:28 | |
So I decided I would. | 1:35:30 | |
They took me into interrogation. | 1:35:32 | |
They realized that the situation's getting worse, | 1:35:34 | |
and now this guy's not even talking to us. | 1:35:36 | |
Beforehand, I was asking for lawyers. | 1:35:38 | |
So I was saying to them, "I want my legal representation. | 1:35:40 | |
If you want me to talk about my case, | 1:35:43 | |
I'm fine with it, just give me legal representation." | 1:35:44 | |
They were happy I was just talking about general stuff. | 1:35:47 | |
But now I'm just not talking to them, blank. | 1:35:50 | |
So they saw the situation worsening. | 1:35:53 | |
One of them, you like to give names, or is it, | 1:35:56 | |
yeah? | 1:36:00 | |
- | Sure. | |
- | WJ Corbett. | 1:36:01 |
It was WJ Corbett and Robert Iorio, | 1:36:02 | |
I-O-R-I-O, yeah. | 1:36:05 | |
- | How do you know their names? | |
- | WJ Corbett, I mean, he showed me his badge. | 1:36:09 |
But you know how they flash it? | 1:36:11 | |
'Cause I said to him, you know, | 1:36:12 | |
"You people don't even give me real names." | 1:36:14 | |
And then he flashed it. | 1:36:15 | |
But if I remember right, I think it's, | 1:36:16 | |
you know, that these were the two, | 1:36:18 | |
WJ Corbett and Robert Iorio, | 1:36:21 | |
that were the main FBI interrogators in Camp X-ray. | 1:36:24 | |
And then they had their own agenda. | 1:36:28 | |
Let's just say their agenda was supposedly, | 1:36:32 | |
I'm supposed to be some co-operative witness | 1:36:35 | |
or something in that regard. | 1:36:38 | |
So that's the reason why in Camp X-ray | 1:36:39 | |
I rejected, you know, their proposal. | 1:36:41 | |
And actually, I had to think of a way | 1:36:44 | |
of getting them off my back. | 1:36:46 | |
So I thought, I was told I was sold for 30,000. | 1:36:47 | |
So let me tell them, I want $6,000. | 1:36:52 | |
I want, I just thought of things like off my head, | 1:36:54 | |
like just to get them off my back. | 1:36:56 | |
I want $30,000, immunity from prosecution, and a green card. | 1:36:59 | |
That's what I was. (laughs) | 1:37:03 | |
I didn't even know what this green card was, (laughs) | 1:37:04 | |
but that's what I said. | 1:37:07 | |
So that, obviously they thought this guy, yeah, | 1:37:08 | |
we treated him too nice, we told him our plan, | 1:37:10 | |
and now he's just, he's become greedy. | 1:37:12 | |
So we're gonna just, you know, shut him up | 1:37:14 | |
and shut him off for a while, and in that regard. | 1:37:17 | |
WJ Corbett, he seemed to become the model, | 1:37:22 | |
he was still there when we got transferred to Camp Delta. | 1:37:25 | |
A few interrogations with him, you know, | 1:37:29 | |
his jovial, you know very happy self, | 1:37:31 | |
seemed to kind of just become deflated. | 1:37:34 | |
I think he realized what the situation was, | 1:37:36 | |
and you know, how things were going. | 1:37:39 | |
And his idealism kind of just went. | 1:37:41 | |
I didn't really hear much from him after, for awhile. | 1:37:44 | |
Robert Iorio, which, he's a guy. | 1:37:46 | |
If you look him up, I've looked him up on Google. | 1:37:49 | |
And I don't know whether it's the same guy, | 1:37:51 | |
but I think it's the NCIF, that's the Naval whatever, | 1:37:53 | |
whatever NCIF, there is a PDF | 1:37:57 | |
of an indictment about a drugs charge, | 1:38:01 | |
someone, they did this kind of drugs charge. | 1:38:04 | |
It's on the internet. | 1:38:07 | |
Interviewer | Could you spell his last name again? | 1:38:09 |
- | I-O-R-I-O. | 1:38:10 |
And I looked it up, | 1:38:15 | |
and I don't know whether it's the same guy, | 1:38:16 | |
but it's the same name from the same organization. | 1:38:18 | |
The, I can't remember, the NCIF, the Navy, | 1:38:21 | |
Navy whatever, I know I have it in my notes. | 1:38:25 | |
I wrote it down, so I knew it then. | 1:38:27 | |
Same thing, and that indictment's about 1994, | 1:38:29 | |
like the 1990s, mid. | 1:38:32 | |
So it's kind of like pretty old, but it is on the internet. | 1:38:34 | |
So I don't know whether it's the same guy. | 1:38:37 | |
But he wouldn't let the thing go. | 1:38:38 | |
So I think he pushed for me | 1:38:41 | |
to be the first to go up for a military commissions. | 1:38:46 | |
And he said he was taking a chance here. | 1:38:50 | |
And this is what happened in Camp Echo. | 1:38:55 | |
So if you want me to jump forward to Camp Echo? | 1:38:56 | |
Interviewer | Sure, if that's okay. | 1:38:59 |
- | If it's okay? | 1:39:01 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Okay, let me, okay. | 1:39:02 |
Let me just do a quick one. | 1:39:03 | |
They put me in, okay. | 1:39:05 | |
The first thing happening, like I'm in Mike block, I think. | 1:39:07 | |
And this is 2003, | 1:39:11 | |
before Iraq was attacked. | 1:39:18 | |
Because later on, I found out that the date | 1:39:20 | |
that they took me to Camp Echo | 1:39:23 | |
was the same date that Iraq was attacked. | 1:39:25 | |
Yeah, like you know, | 1:39:29 | |
that's the beginning of the conflict, et cetera. | 1:39:30 | |
Later on I realized that the date sticks in my head. | 1:39:32 | |
Before they did that, I'm in Mike, | 1:39:36 | |
and they took me to the medical. | 1:39:38 | |
I didn't ask for medical intervention or nothing, | 1:39:40 | |
but they took me to the medical facility on the base. | 1:39:43 | |
And then they did an x-ray, | 1:39:48 | |
and I think it was a chest x-ray. | 1:39:49 | |
So that was weird. | 1:39:51 | |
And then later they take me out of Mike | 1:39:53 | |
and out of the actual Guantanamo Bay, the prison. | 1:39:56 | |
And they took me like, dude, | 1:40:01 | |
I didn't even know that that existed. | 1:40:03 | |
They took me to the hospital. | 1:40:05 | |
So they actually took me to, you know, | 1:40:07 | |
like the civilian part, I don't know what it is, | 1:40:08 | |
but I could see that. | 1:40:10 | |
- | On base? | |
- | Yeah, like they took me off, out of, | 1:40:13 |
'cause you say Guantanamo Bay, | 1:40:15 | |
but Guantanamo Bay is an area. | 1:40:17 | |
It's not just a prison, like that. | 1:40:18 | |
They took me out of that prison, | 1:40:19 | |
and then they took me to the civilian area. | 1:40:21 | |
I could see roads. | 1:40:23 | |
I could see like, you know, just, | 1:40:24 | |
you know, like maybe shops or something like that. | 1:40:26 | |
High rise buildings, so forth. | 1:40:27 | |
And they took me to the hospital, | 1:40:28 | |
and they gave me a CAT scan. | 1:40:30 | |
So this- | 1:40:33 | |
- | What were they looking for? | |
- | They don't tell me, they don't tell me. | 1:40:34 |
So I asked them, this is, what's going on? | 1:40:36 | |
This is weird. | 1:40:38 | |
And they actually took me out of the prison itself. | 1:40:39 | |
And then they bring me back. | 1:40:41 | |
Then I'm in isolation with my stuff. | 1:40:42 | |
And it was from there that it took me to Camp Echo. | 1:40:46 | |
Now I thought when they took, brought me to Camp Echo, | 1:40:48 | |
they brought me there because their, you know, | 1:40:51 | |
medical intervention showed up something. | 1:40:55 | |
So this was like a holding facility | 1:40:56 | |
for something, maybe the TB or something like that | 1:40:58 | |
was active or something like that, in that regard. | 1:41:02 | |
Robert Iorio, he comes to visit | 1:41:07 | |
with another interrogator who called himself, | 1:41:10 | |
they would give false names, | 1:41:14 | |
so he called himself Gregory Highland. | 1:41:15 | |
He supposedly had Scottish roots, so whatever. | 1:41:18 | |
And his favorite movie was Scottish or something. | 1:41:21 | |
I don't know. | 1:41:23 | |
And Robert Iorio said that, you know, | 1:41:25 | |
here, being Camp Echo, can be like a short holiday stay | 1:41:29 | |
or it can be like for a long time. | 1:41:33 | |
And, you know, I think he was the one who pushed | 1:41:36 | |
for me to be offered a military commissions, to go up first. | 1:41:38 | |
And I guess it's just in connection with them | 1:41:42 | |
wanting me to be a co-operative witness in that regard. | 1:41:44 | |
And then he said, "Because I gave you a promise a year ago." | 1:41:49 | |
I don't know, I don't even remember the promise. (laughs) | 1:41:53 | |
"I promised you a year ago that, you know, | 1:41:55 | |
I think you'd be out of Guantanamo. | 1:41:57 | |
You know, this is me coming back to fulfill my promise." | 1:42:00 | |
At that time I'd sick of them. | 1:42:04 | |
I wasn't even talking, I wasn't even talking to them, | 1:42:05 | |
and I just blanked them. | 1:42:08 | |
And then, you know, he just, | 1:42:09 | |
he came for a few days over there | 1:42:10 | |
and he showed, you know, they had their movies, DVDs, | 1:42:12 | |
which I wasn't watching. | 1:42:15 | |
And then there was one about fishing, | 1:42:17 | |
and then he made me sit through it | 1:42:19 | |
just for one scene, one scene where the guy says, | 1:42:23 | |
you know, "You have to help someone, | 1:42:26 | |
even if they don't want that help." | 1:42:28 | |
That's it, that was the whole thing. | 1:42:29 | |
That was supposed to get me in my heart. | 1:42:31 | |
And I was supposed to break down in tears | 1:42:33 | |
and so forth, et cetera, so this is his big thing. | 1:42:35 | |
And then some nonsense about him, | 1:42:38 | |
he became more religious and he's going to church more now. | 1:42:40 | |
And he saw a dream where he's gonna give me a prayer mat. | 1:42:43 | |
So (laughs) he dumps it on my lap. | 1:42:49 | |
I thought it was some furry animal, | 1:42:52 | |
because I wasn't looking, (laughs) | 1:42:53 | |
and I was about to freak out. | 1:42:55 | |
And then I realized it is a prayer mat, | 1:42:57 | |
because prayer mats have these kind of frills | 1:42:58 | |
or something like, so. (laughs) | 1:43:00 | |
I didn't actually look at it | 1:43:01 | |
when he dumped it on my, and you know, | 1:43:03 | |
so he supposedly had a dream where he gives me a prayer mat. | 1:43:04 | |
And then he was pushing for me to go, | 1:43:07 | |
to be the first for the military commissions. | 1:43:09 | |
'Cause I guess that was leverage for me | 1:43:11 | |
to become a co-operative witness, | 1:43:13 | |
and then for them to have their way. | 1:43:14 | |
Like I said, WJ Corbett seemed to just kind of left the idea | 1:43:16 | |
and probably left the island a long time ago. | 1:43:20 | |
Robert Iorio, I think he was looking for, | 1:43:21 | |
you know, like, you call them glory hounds? | 1:43:24 | |
You call them glory seekers. | 1:43:28 | |
I think he was looking for his big break, | 1:43:30 | |
you know, like and I was supposed to be | 1:43:33 | |
that big break for him. | 1:43:35 | |
Interviewer | So when you didn't play the game, | 1:43:37 |
you were moved back out of Echo, or did they keep you? | 1:43:40 | |
- | No, no. | 1:43:42 |
- | They kept you there? | |
- | Oh, I, | 1:43:44 |
how much time do we have? | 1:43:49 | |
Interviewer | I think we should stop for a moment | 1:43:50 |
to change a card. | 1:43:51 | |
- | Yeah, we should change. | |
Interviewer | We just have to change a card, but. | 1:43:54 |
Man | Okay, we're good. | 1:43:56 |
Interviewer | Okay, so in Camp Echo, | 1:43:58 |
you said you were there for a while? | 1:44:01 | |
- | Okay, Camp Echo, yeah. | 1:44:02 |
So I must have stayed one year in Camp X-ray and Delta. | 1:44:04 | |
I remember the anniversary, one year anniversary. | 1:44:10 | |
I was in isolation (laughs) in Camp Delta. | 1:44:13 | |
So that was my one year anniversary. | 1:44:16 | |
I can't remember what the reason was | 1:44:18 | |
for me being in isolation, but yeah. | 1:44:20 | |
So the whole time I was there was three years. | 1:44:23 | |
So it's, let's say it was two years that I was in Camp Echo. | 1:44:28 | |
Interviewer | And was it better in Camp Echo? | 1:44:33 |
Is that what you're saying? | 1:44:36 | |
- | Camp Echo was a nightmare. | 1:44:37 |
Interviewer | Because? | 1:44:39 |
- | It was a real nightmare. | 1:44:40 |
I could deal with Camp X-ray. | 1:44:41 | |
I could deal with Camp Delta. | 1:44:43 | |
But Camp Echo was a nightmare. | 1:44:47 | |
Okay, how to put it? | 1:44:51 | |
Okay, first of all, the situation is there's only one cell. | 1:44:54 | |
It's within a building. | 1:44:57 | |
There are no windows. | 1:45:02 | |
And the guards, there's two guards. | 1:45:05 | |
You know, at least one would be there all the time. | 1:45:08 | |
And basically, you know, going from population, | 1:45:13 | |
not speaking Arabic, sorry, English to the guards. | 1:45:18 | |
And you know, just speaking like Arabic | 1:45:21 | |
when you want to ask him for something, | 1:45:22 | |
not being under that much attention. | 1:45:23 | |
All of a sudden you're the center of attention right now, | 1:45:26 | |
everything you do. | 1:45:29 | |
Because I, I think I was actually probably | 1:45:30 | |
one of the first to go into Camp Echo, | 1:45:34 | |
'cause they expanded Camp Echo. | 1:45:36 | |
But right now, I believe it was just only two buildings | 1:45:38 | |
or just maybe more, when I was brought there. | 1:45:42 | |
And later I learned, | 1:45:46 | |
Mozhan Beck was taken into the other building. | 1:45:47 | |
And he was there, like you know, | 1:45:50 | |
they brought him straight there. | 1:45:52 | |
Interviewer | So you were really in, | 1:45:55 |
that's really isolation. | 1:45:56 | |
- | That's really isolation. | |
Because right now, you know, you're in the cell on your own. | 1:45:58 | |
And then like, there's this enmity. | 1:46:00 | |
And then the guards, they weren't shy | 1:46:02 | |
about showing their enmity. | 1:46:05 | |
They really weren't. | 1:46:07 | |
First of all, like the first two weeks, | 1:46:08 | |
they take every day, I think it was every day, | 1:46:10 | |
that the corpsman, this is, | 1:46:14 | |
I did my best to stay away from these medical people. | 1:46:18 | |
All of a sudden, for two weeks, | 1:46:22 | |
they're taking my blood pressure or heart rate, et cetera. | 1:46:23 | |
Every day they're checking it. | 1:46:27 | |
And I'm wondering why. | 1:46:28 | |
I'm wondering why. | 1:46:30 | |
I'm getting worried there's stuff being put in my food. | 1:46:31 | |
Because when you're in population, you know, | 1:46:33 | |
they can't slip drugs and so forth in your food and so forth | 1:46:36 | |
because, you know, they just hand it out, et cetera. | 1:46:38 | |
Now it's, you know, specifically, | 1:46:41 | |
I'm specifically targeted in that way. | 1:46:43 | |
The soldiers, they have this idea | 1:46:47 | |
that, you know, because I'm up for the military commissions | 1:46:49 | |
and so forth, I must be Al Qaeda or something like that. | 1:46:52 | |
So it was, they're showing enmity. | 1:46:56 | |
And you know, it was a really bad situation. | 1:46:58 | |
Really bad situation. | 1:47:00 | |
When I got there, I believe, you know, | 1:47:01 | |
like when you're a detainee, | 1:47:03 | |
you've got to like work with minimal information. | 1:47:08 | |
You know, you don't know what's going, | 1:47:13 | |
happening around you. | 1:47:14 | |
But I believe they injected me with something there | 1:47:16 | |
that made me go, you know, like crazy in a way. | 1:47:20 | |
And you know, I really believe it for a number of reasons. | 1:47:23 | |
One reason is that when you're talking in interrogation, | 1:47:28 | |
you're just talking about general stuff. | 1:47:31 | |
So, you know, | 1:47:32 | |
you don't think that, you know, there's a malicious intent | 1:47:35 | |
by the people that you're talking to. | 1:47:37 | |
It's only later on you learn that, you know, | 1:47:39 | |
they're using what you're saying against you. | 1:47:41 | |
I remember them asking me, you know, | 1:47:44 | |
like the situation, you know, it must be bad. | 1:47:45 | |
It must be a bad situation. | 1:47:48 | |
And I said, no. | 1:47:49 | |
I said, you know, like, you know, | 1:47:50 | |
"This situation is bad, but you know, | 1:47:51 | |
the worst time of my life was my teenage years." | 1:47:54 | |
So that was worse than Guantanamo. | 1:47:56 | |
I mean, yeah, it was worse than Guantanamo, seriously. | 1:47:57 | |
And they said, "Why?" | 1:48:00 | |
Because they expected me to say to, you know, | 1:48:01 | |
"This is the worst time in my life. | 1:48:02 | |
I never, like this, yeah." | 1:48:03 | |
And I said, "I don't know, | 1:48:05 | |
maybe because of the testosterone." | 1:48:06 | |
And I think they caught on to that, you know, | 1:48:08 | |
like they caught into that. | 1:48:10 | |
And then that was, | 1:48:11 | |
that was kind of like a leveraging thing. | 1:48:12 | |
You know, as you do, men, medically, | 1:48:16 | |
some men might be embarrassed by this, | 1:48:19 | |
but you're supposed to check yourself, | 1:48:20 | |
you know, et cetera, | 1:48:22 | |
so that there's nothing growing | 1:48:24 | |
or whatever cancer and so forth, | 1:48:25 | |
on your genitals and so forth, for health reasons. | 1:48:26 | |
I remember specifically checking, | 1:48:29 | |
'cause I was isolated at that time, | 1:48:31 | |
checking, you know, like you know, myself obviously. | 1:48:33 | |
Obviously I was worried that in Guantanamo, | 1:48:35 | |
something's gonna happen to me. | 1:48:37 | |
And like, you know, for instance, medically. | 1:48:38 | |
You know, you worry about those things | 1:48:41 | |
because you have to, you know, | 1:48:42 | |
you have to, you don't want to go to them. | 1:48:43 | |
So, you know, in that regard. | 1:48:46 | |
In Camp Echo, there was this thing | 1:48:50 | |
about, okay, it's time for your immunization shots. | 1:48:52 | |
They gave us shots, immunization shots, | 1:48:54 | |
like, I don't know how regularly, | 1:48:55 | |
maybe four to six months, | 1:48:57 | |
every four to six months immunization shots. | 1:48:58 | |
So it wasn't something, | 1:49:00 | |
and if you refuse, they'll IRF you | 1:49:01 | |
and they'll give it to you anyway. | 1:49:02 | |
So it's something regular. | 1:49:03 | |
But two weeks after the immunization shots, | 1:49:04 | |
all of a sudden there's a cyst on my testicle. | 1:49:07 | |
There's a growth on my testicle, like that. | 1:49:10 | |
Now I'm figuring out, | 1:49:13 | |
now I could have thought to myself, you know what, | 1:49:14 | |
you know, like it's been there for a long time, et cetera. | 1:49:16 | |
But because I'd check myself beforehand, | 1:49:19 | |
you know, like so all of a sudden now, | 1:49:21 | |
between being in isolation and being in Camp Echo, | 1:49:22 | |
there's this growth on my testicle. | 1:49:25 | |
Then I start to have panic attacks. | 1:49:27 | |
Panic attacks, as though something in my cell | 1:49:31 | |
is attacking me, and I start to defend myself. | 1:49:34 | |
Now, this is very strange for me, | 1:49:36 | |
because I'm the type of person that, okay, | 1:49:37 | |
no one can deal with isolation, | 1:49:40 | |
but some people can do with isolation better than others. | 1:49:41 | |
And you know, I'm a person who can, | 1:49:43 | |
you know, I'm not very talkative | 1:49:45 | |
in the sense that I'm one of those people | 1:49:48 | |
that needs to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk talk. | 1:49:49 | |
You know, I can be quiet | 1:49:52 | |
for long periods of time and so forth. | 1:49:53 | |
But the cell there was affecting me in that way. | 1:49:54 | |
And I don't know why, but it came to the point, | 1:49:57 | |
after like maybe a month of that injection, | 1:49:59 | |
then I started to have panic attacks, | 1:50:02 | |
like something is attacking me and I have to defend myself. | 1:50:03 | |
You know, strange things were happening, | 1:50:06 | |
like thoughts in my head that weren't my own. | 1:50:09 | |
And I could distinguish, | 1:50:11 | |
because there was me, my rational thoughts, | 1:50:12 | |
and there was other thoughts | 1:50:14 | |
that were just coming into my head, | 1:50:16 | |
emotions that I felt they were just dislocated from myself, | 1:50:17 | |
in that regard. | 1:50:22 | |
When, you know, the doctor, | 1:50:24 | |
she would come, I don't know, | 1:50:26 | |
like every week maybe or something like that. | 1:50:27 | |
When the doctor, 'cause I had a panic attack, | 1:50:29 | |
and you know, it was this panic attack, | 1:50:32 | |
like you know, I was sleeping. | 1:50:33 | |
All of a sudden I felt something was attacking me. | 1:50:36 | |
I defended myself, and there was nothing there. | 1:50:39 | |
But rationally, I could rationalize. | 1:50:41 | |
I could think to myself, well, there's nothing there. | 1:50:43 | |
So why are you doing this? | 1:50:45 | |
But I didn't have control of my body. | 1:50:46 | |
It was just, I was just defending. | 1:50:48 | |
There was a kind of, kind of like a survival response. | 1:50:49 | |
I didn't say anything to the doctor, | 1:50:55 | |
because I'm thinking to myself, you know, | 1:50:57 | |
these people will have set me up, | 1:50:58 | |
they're giving me injections to unhinge my sanity. | 1:50:59 | |
This is it, this is the big frame-up, you know, | 1:51:03 | |
this is how they're gonna get out of this situation, yeah? | 1:51:06 | |
They've incarcerated me without any evidence. | 1:51:08 | |
I'm an innocent man. | 1:51:11 | |
They want to save face, | 1:51:12 | |
and they're gonna do it by taking away my sanity. | 1:51:14 | |
So I didn't want to say anything to the doctor, | 1:51:17 | |
the same doctor who gave me these injections. | 1:51:18 | |
Obviously the MPs there, they'd seen, | 1:51:21 | |
they had seen the panic attack. | 1:51:24 | |
The doctor came, asked, do I need medical treatment or not? | 1:51:26 | |
I said, "No, no, I'm fine," and et cetera. | 1:51:29 | |
The MP pulls her aside and says, | 1:51:32 | |
you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. | 1:51:33 | |
"He had a panic attack." | 1:51:35 | |
She comes running back, says, | 1:51:36 | |
"Oh, by the way I didn't tell you, | 1:51:38 | |
you got to have another immunization shot. | 1:51:40 | |
Now this is very strange, because the period of time | 1:51:43 | |
between one immunization shot and another | 1:51:45 | |
would at least be four months. | 1:51:48 | |
Now this is like maybe a month. | 1:51:49 | |
So that's very strange to me, | 1:51:51 | |
like you know, all of a sudden, immunization shots. | 1:51:53 | |
And the doctor was walking away. | 1:51:55 | |
And when she was told that, | 1:51:56 | |
all of a sudden she starts to tell me, | 1:51:58 | |
runs back and says, "Oh, in the next day | 1:51:59 | |
you're gonna have immunization shots." | 1:52:02 | |
So I'm thinking, okay, right. | 1:52:03 | |
This is minimal information I've got, | 1:52:04 | |
but you know, if they gave me another shot, | 1:52:06 | |
I'm gone, that's finished, that's my sanity gone, | 1:52:08 | |
I got to preserve my sanity. | 1:52:11 | |
So she comes back that night, | 1:52:13 | |
not the next day, that night. | 1:52:15 | |
She comes back and she tells me, | 1:52:18 | |
whatever she told me she's gonna give me, | 1:52:19 | |
wasn't the same thing that she told me in the morning. | 1:52:21 | |
Okay? | 1:52:24 | |
So she doesn't even know what I'm scheduled for. | 1:52:24 | |
Like she doesn't, | 1:52:26 | |
she doesn't know what she told me. | 1:52:27 | |
Like, you know, in that morning, whatever, | 1:52:29 | |
she told me one thing. | 1:52:31 | |
And then that night she tells me another thing. | 1:52:32 | |
So I said no. | 1:52:34 | |
Okay, no, I said, "You're not gonna send me crazy | 1:52:35 | |
by this stuff, so that's it." | 1:52:38 | |
And I knew I was gonna get IRFed. | 1:52:40 | |
I knew I was gonna get IRFed. | 1:52:42 | |
And it would be, you know, | 1:52:43 | |
it would be the first time of resisting. | 1:52:46 | |
Normally when you're IRFed, | 1:52:48 | |
when you're IRFed you know, | 1:52:49 | |
you just kind of put your hand on your head | 1:52:49 | |
and turn around on your knees and then they come. | 1:52:51 | |
They just knock you down, if they're being nice, | 1:52:53 | |
and then they just take you away. | 1:52:54 | |
This was basically, I'm gonna resist, et cetera. | 1:52:56 | |
The consular guy had come already. | 1:53:00 | |
He'd brought a picture of my mother. | 1:53:03 | |
I ripped up the picture, threw it down the toilet, | 1:53:05 | |
and flushed it 'cause I didn't want these people, | 1:53:07 | |
you know, making fun of it and doing whatever, et cetera. | 1:53:08 | |
The Quran, I couldn't do anything with my Quran. | 1:53:11 | |
They came to take my comfort items away. | 1:53:13 | |
I gave them the comfort items, | 1:53:14 | |
except for the picture and the Quran. | 1:53:16 | |
The Quran, you know, I can't, | 1:53:18 | |
you can't flush it down the toilet. | 1:53:20 | |
So I put it right in the corner of my bunk, underneath, | 1:53:21 | |
you know, just to preserve it. | 1:53:25 | |
This was it, this was my last stand. | 1:53:27 | |
And you know, the panic attacks just kept on happening, | 1:53:31 | |
like in that regard. | 1:53:33 | |
So they're getting the stuff, the MP has got the stuff. | 1:53:35 | |
They put it outside the cell, | 1:53:39 | |
the IRFing gear for me to see. | 1:53:41 | |
The situation's getting bad, | 1:53:43 | |
I'm having my last stand, this is it. | 1:53:45 | |
They're gonna send, | 1:53:47 | |
they're gonna take my sanity away from me. | 1:53:48 | |
And, you know, just you know, | 1:53:50 | |
you can't imagine that situation. | 1:53:51 | |
I'm having these panic attacks. | 1:53:53 | |
Now I'm conscious. | 1:53:55 | |
And you know, I feel that, you know, | 1:53:56 | |
I'm being attacked and I'm defending myself. | 1:53:57 | |
And I can rationalize, | 1:53:59 | |
like I know full well there's nothing there. | 1:54:00 | |
So why am I defending myself? | 1:54:02 | |
But I defend myself in that regard. | 1:54:04 | |
And then, you know, the thing is dragging on | 1:54:07 | |
and I don't know, it just, it's strange. | 1:54:11 | |
But I had, in that situation under that pressure, | 1:54:13 | |
I didn't know a way out, but I had a dream. | 1:54:16 | |
I had a dream, you know, I had a dream. | 1:54:19 | |
And then for some reason, after that dream, | 1:54:22 | |
I thought to myself, you know what, | 1:54:24 | |
I'm gonna have to just call in the interrogators. | 1:54:25 | |
This is, they've won. | 1:54:28 | |
They've won, basically. | 1:54:29 | |
Call in the interrogators. | 1:54:30 | |
This is it, like that. | 1:54:32 | |
So I call in the interrogators. | 1:54:33 | |
Now it's, what name did he give? | 1:54:35 | |
Antony, was it Antony? | 1:54:42 | |
It was Underwood. | 1:54:44 | |
He said Underwood. | 1:54:46 | |
And he was kind of something. | 1:54:47 | |
He was kind of military, whatever, | 1:54:48 | |
you know, joint terrorism force intelligence. | 1:54:52 | |
And then it was, was it Gary? | 1:54:55 | |
Gary Washington from the FBI. | 1:54:58 | |
He was a black guy, the first black FBI guy I see. | 1:55:00 | |
And then they're called in. | 1:55:04 | |
Basically, Robert Iorio had gone back. | 1:55:06 | |
Highlander or Highland, whatever his name was, | 1:55:09 | |
he left the island. | 1:55:12 | |
So these were interrogators. | 1:55:14 | |
So basically I just, | 1:55:16 | |
I come out of my cell and say, "You know, I've had enough. | 1:55:17 | |
I had enough, I want to go home." | 1:55:19 | |
And that was the first time that I said | 1:55:20 | |
to the interrogators, "I want to go home." | 1:55:22 | |
Every other time, if I ask them for something, | 1:55:24 | |
I said, "You know what, just bring me | 1:55:26 | |
in front of a court of law. | 1:55:27 | |
Let me have my day in court. | 1:55:29 | |
You're telling me you're accusing me of all these things, | 1:55:31 | |
telling me 100 years, 50 years, 70 years, 20 years, | 1:55:33 | |
et cetera, let me have my day in court." | 1:55:37 | |
That's what I said to them. | 1:55:39 | |
But at that time they'd broken me. | 1:55:40 | |
And you know, I said them, | 1:55:42 | |
I told them, you know, that situation, | 1:55:43 | |
you know, this is the situation, et cetera. | 1:55:45 | |
So they said, "Look, have the immunization shots," | 1:55:47 | |
et cetera, "You'll be okay," and as well, whatever. | 1:55:50 | |
So that was the way of getting out of the situation. | 1:55:52 | |
So the next day, very strangely, they come. | 1:55:54 | |
Now, interrogators don't come for your immunization shots, | 1:55:57 | |
but they came, just to make sure it happened. | 1:55:59 | |
And I was given I think three shots. | 1:56:01 | |
And if I remember rightly, at least one | 1:56:03 | |
maybe might've been in a tricep. | 1:56:04 | |
I'm not sure whether one in the tricep. | 1:56:06 | |
And the panic attacks, they didn't come anymore. | 1:56:09 | |
Didn't come anymore. | 1:56:12 | |
But it seems that I think there was a lasting effect. | 1:56:13 | |
There was a lasting effect. | 1:56:16 | |
But it didn't come anymore except for one moment, | 1:56:17 | |
like I felt something grab, I grabbed my throat, | 1:56:20 | |
like as though I was defending myself, then I held myself. | 1:56:23 | |
But it wasn't as bad as before, | 1:56:26 | |
because I'd gotten full motion. | 1:56:27 | |
Interviewer | And did you talk to interrogators then, | 1:56:29 |
say something? | 1:56:32 | |
- | Well, what else could I do? | |
- | You did, yeah. | 1:56:33 |
- | I had to talk to them. | |
I had to talk to them, I'd broken my silence. | 1:56:34 | |
And you know, that was it. | 1:56:37 | |
They broke me, that's how they broke me. | 1:56:38 | |
Interviewer | And after that, you stayed at Echo anyway? | 1:56:40 |
- | Yeah, I stayed at Echo. | 1:56:43 |
I was supposedly being held for military commissions, | 1:56:45 | |
but you know, it never happened. | 1:56:47 | |
But I stayed there for like, you know, | 1:56:50 | |
for a good part of the time I was there. | 1:56:51 | |
Interviewer | But you felt better | 1:56:53 |
than you felt, did you- | 1:56:54 | |
- | Not really, because it wasn't, | 1:56:56 |
you know, the panic attacks had gone, | 1:56:59 | |
except for that brief moment. | 1:57:01 | |
For some reason I just started drawing hearts | 1:57:04 | |
and stupid, stupid stuff, girly stuff in my letters. | 1:57:06 | |
And I don't even understand what's going on. | 1:57:10 | |
I can't make sense of this. | 1:57:13 | |
So I don't know, I don't understand what was happening. | 1:57:14 | |
But there was a sense that, you know, I could feel | 1:57:18 | |
like there was split personality in a way, | 1:57:23 | |
that you know, there was me | 1:57:25 | |
and then there was something else, like in that regard. | 1:57:26 | |
But that kind of dissipated over time. | 1:57:29 | |
And then there was a sense that there was maybe | 1:57:31 | |
three people existing within me, in a way. | 1:57:32 | |
But it wasn't like in a way that would impede my everyday, | 1:57:37 | |
but you know, just the sense that it was happening. | 1:57:40 | |
And it was very strange. | 1:57:42 | |
It was like an old man, a woman, and a child. | 1:57:43 | |
Just weird. | 1:57:46 | |
I can't make sense of all of this. | 1:57:47 | |
I don't know if a psychiatrist has to do that. | 1:57:49 | |
I can't make sense of all of this. | 1:57:51 | |
And then over time, it just kind of dissipated. | 1:57:52 | |
But I don't know. | 1:57:54 | |
I feel there's a lasting effect of that, | 1:57:57 | |
in that situation. | 1:57:59 | |
But for two years, roughly, I remained in Camp Echo. | 1:58:01 | |
Interviewer | Why was it a lasting effect? | 1:58:06 |
- | It's just like, I don't... | 1:58:09 |
Interviewer | Do you still feel it? | 1:58:13 |
- | I don't think I've really recovered, | 1:58:14 |
really recovered from that situation. | 1:58:16 | |
I really, I can't make sense of it. | 1:58:18 | |
I'm not a psychiatrist, I can't psychoanalyze myself. | 1:58:19 | |
I don't think I've really recovered from that situation. | 1:58:22 | |
You know, it's like... | 1:58:26 | |
I don't, like... | 1:58:29 | |
For instance, I don't feel the same. | 1:58:32 | |
I don't feel the same. | 1:58:34 | |
When I was in Camp X-ray, the guy, | 1:58:37 | |
you know, the guy with the shotgun decided one time | 1:58:39 | |
to point the shotgun at my, | 1:58:41 | |
you know, shotgun at my head. | 1:58:43 | |
You know, obviously you don't try to show fear. | 1:58:46 | |
You don't show fear, et cetera. | 1:58:49 | |
So you just, you know, like you know, | 1:58:50 | |
you just try and brave it out. | 1:58:51 | |
When in Camp Echo, after the incident, | 1:58:53 | |
there used to be a patrol of infantry outside. | 1:58:55 | |
And one of the idiots over there, MPs, | 1:58:58 | |
he loved, every time anyone new came, | 1:59:01 | |
to run to them and say, "This guy's Al Qaeda. | 1:59:02 | |
So he told them. | 1:59:05 | |
So they put, they're outside, | 1:59:06 | |
but there's a gap between the fencing. | 1:59:07 | |
And then they'd put the gun on the ground. | 1:59:08 | |
And obviously they lift it up in a way | 1:59:10 | |
that I could see that it was pointed at me. | 1:59:11 | |
Fear, but a fear that I haven't felt before. | 1:59:14 | |
But this is why, you know, I scolded myself. | 1:59:17 | |
Why are you being like, this is a kind of fear | 1:59:21 | |
that, you know, it was shameful for me. | 1:59:24 | |
And, but why is that? | 1:59:28 | |
Why is it? | 1:59:29 | |
This is, I changed, I changed. | 1:59:31 | |
So why is it I can, you know, | 1:59:33 | |
a shotgun can be pointed at my head at close range, | 1:59:34 | |
you know, and I can at least kind of, | 1:59:36 | |
you know, I can think to myself, | 1:59:38 | |
well, the guy's just being an idiot. | 1:59:40 | |
He's not gonna shoot me, yeah? | 1:59:42 | |
Not gonna shoot, he's only being an idiot. | 1:59:44 | |
So I'm not gonna be afraid. | 1:59:46 | |
To when an infantry man puts his gun on the floor | 1:59:47 | |
and points it at me, and I'm terrified. | 1:59:50 | |
Terrified, just strange things like that. | 1:59:52 | |
It's not something you can put your finger on, | 1:59:53 | |
but it's just very strange. | 1:59:55 | |
I don't feel the same. | 1:59:57 | |
I don't feel the same. | 1:59:58 | |
Interviewer | You know, Mozan told me | 2:00:01 |
when he was in that similar situation, | 2:00:02 | |
that he was so desperate for having somebody to talk to, | 2:00:05 | |
and he asked for somebody to talk to him, | 2:00:10 | |
and they finally sent him a psychologist, | 2:00:11 | |
a psychiatrist to talk to. | 2:00:13 | |
Did they ever send someone like that for you to talk to, or? | 2:00:15 | |
- | Well, supposedly Bush himself sent a psychiatrist. | 2:00:18 |
Interviewer | That's what they told you? | 2:00:23 |
- | Yeah, yeah, I believe it. | 2:00:24 |
He sent a psychiatrist from Washington, | 2:00:25 | |
and he came and he spoke to me, | 2:00:27 | |
after all of this incident. | 2:00:28 | |
And I told him, I told him about the panic attack, | 2:00:30 | |
you know, et cetera, and being in, | 2:00:32 | |
because I was held in building four | 2:00:35 | |
and they took me out of there. | 2:00:37 | |
And then, because they'd expanded Echo by the time, | 2:00:38 | |
and then they took me into one of the other buildings. | 2:00:40 | |
Building four, that was a nightmare. | 2:00:44 | |
The other buildings were a bit better. | 2:00:46 | |
And I told him about the panic attacks and so forth. | 2:00:48 | |
He was supposed to evaluate my mental health, | 2:00:50 | |
in order to check whether I can go up | 2:00:52 | |
for the military commissions, | 2:00:53 | |
and he's gonna go, he said himself, | 2:00:55 | |
he's gonna go straight back to Bush. | 2:00:56 | |
And I think he was actually documented, | 2:00:57 | |
like yeah, by the media and so forth. | 2:00:59 | |
And there was this thing about, I wasn't mentally capable, | 2:01:01 | |
you know, like to go up before a trial. | 2:01:03 | |
And then, you know, that I had to be assessed. | 2:01:06 | |
And he, the psychiatry said he's come from, | 2:01:08 | |
he's spoken to Bush, and he's come from Bush. | 2:01:10 | |
You know, he was gonna go back to Bush | 2:01:13 | |
with an assessment on my mental health. | 2:01:14 | |
Interviewer | And did you feel better | 2:01:17 |
after that conversation? | 2:01:19 | |
Did you feel like that went? | 2:01:20 | |
- | Well, he had his own agenda. | 2:01:23 |
He wasn't there to take care of my welfare, no. | 2:01:24 | |
Interviewer | So how much time after that | 2:01:26 |
did you realize you were gonna go home? | 2:01:28 | |
- | Well, it's a long time in Camp Echo. | 2:01:33 |
And then... | 2:01:38 | |
Actually, it was... | 2:01:43 | |
I think it was, I think he called himself Underwood. | 2:01:47 | |
Underwood, this new interrogator, | 2:01:49 | |
he said, I think it was him who said, | 2:01:52 | |
or one of the interrogators said | 2:01:54 | |
that you're gonna receive a target letter. | 2:01:55 | |
Actually, no, the target letter is, okay. | 2:02:00 | |
I can't remember whether the target letter | 2:02:03 | |
is because of lawyers, that your lawyer, | 2:02:04 | |
you're gonna get a lawyer, an attorney, | 2:02:06 | |
or it's because of the military commissions. | 2:02:08 | |
Anyway, news came that we're gonna have lawyers and so forth | 2:02:11 | |
and we're gonna get legal representatives, et cetera. | 2:02:15 | |
Now, you know, these are civilian lawyers, et cetera. | 2:02:18 | |
I didn't believe it until I saw the lawyer myself. | 2:02:22 | |
- | Well- | 2:02:29 |
- | Yeah? | |
Interviewer | I guess what I'm thinking is, | 2:02:30 |
after you said to them you want to go home, | 2:02:31 | |
if that somehow changed? | 2:02:33 | |
You might not have known it, | 2:02:35 | |
but if that made a difference to them, | 2:02:36 | |
and they started looking to see whether you could come home? | 2:02:39 | |
- | No, no, it wouldn't have made a difference. | 2:02:42 |
They don't really care. | 2:02:44 | |
They don't really care. | 2:02:45 | |
That wouldn't have been it. | 2:02:46 | |
If you want to know specifically the time | 2:02:48 | |
when I knew, in a way, when I believed them, | 2:02:50 | |
because I mean, the military came | 2:02:54 | |
and then they had their announcement, | 2:02:55 | |
but you don't believe them because they always lie to you. | 2:02:56 | |
You know, they took one detainee on the plane itself, | 2:02:59 | |
telling him he's going home, going home. | 2:03:02 | |
And then they tried to interrogate him on the plane, | 2:03:03 | |
and then they took him back to, you know, his cell. | 2:03:06 | |
Was when, okay. | 2:03:09 | |
I know his name, but I forgot his name now. | 2:03:15 | |
Okay, from Reprieve. | 2:03:19 | |
- | Clive? | 2:03:21 |
- | Clive, that's it. | |
- | Clive Stafford Smith. | 2:03:22 |
- | How could I forget his name? | |
Interviewer | He came to visit you? | 2:03:24 |
- | No, he, what he did in Camp Echo, | 2:03:25 |
he would act like he didn't know | 2:03:28 | |
which cell to go to, which cage. | 2:03:29 | |
So he'd just go into any one, | 2:03:31 | |
and he happened to go into mine. | 2:03:33 | |
And, you know, I happened to be waiting | 2:03:34 | |
for someone like, you know, to come. | 2:03:36 | |
So he kind of looked at me, | 2:03:39 | |
and then he didn't recognize me at first. | 2:03:40 | |
And he said, you know, "Who are you?" | 2:03:43 | |
And (laughs) I think he was a bit surprised | 2:03:44 | |
that I spoke English to him. | 2:03:45 | |
You know, like, and I'm thinking to myself, | 2:03:46 | |
this is like an interrogator. | 2:03:48 | |
And he said, "Oh, don't worry. | 2:03:49 | |
The news is true, you're going home." | 2:03:52 | |
And then like, he kind of had to leave | 2:03:54 | |
'cause he was in the wrong cage, but he did that. | 2:03:55 | |
And then obviously Gita Guitierrez, | 2:03:57 | |
she came and, you know, I think she told me as well | 2:04:00 | |
that the news is true. | 2:04:03 | |
And whether she came and told me or not, I can't remember. | 2:04:05 | |
And then they took us out of Camp Echo, | 2:04:06 | |
and then into population again, Camp Delta again. | 2:04:09 | |
But they separated us, | 2:04:11 | |
'cause we were the military commission people. | 2:04:12 | |
So they had us separate. | 2:04:14 | |
Interviewer | Us meaning you and Mozan? | 2:04:16 |
- | Well, us meaning the military commission people | 2:04:18 |
from the actual, the rest of the detainees, in that regard. | 2:04:20 | |
But obviously you don't really believe them. | 2:04:24 | |
I didn't really believe them. | 2:04:27 | |
Even when they come to measure you up. | 2:04:29 | |
They've done that to many detainees. | 2:04:31 | |
I think they did to Mozan when he first got to Camp Echo. | 2:04:33 | |
'Cause they asked me whether I got measured up | 2:04:38 | |
for a suit or something like that. | 2:04:40 | |
You know, I don't know. | 2:04:42 | |
But they do that for military commissions as well. | 2:04:43 | |
But you know, I didn't really believe it | 2:04:47 | |
until it was actually happening. | 2:04:48 | |
And you know, that's the best policy you can have. | 2:04:52 | |
You know, they can tell you whatever. | 2:04:55 | |
But until you set foot and you're free, | 2:04:56 | |
that's the only time, you know. | 2:05:00 | |
Interviewer | When you were taken out of Echo | 2:05:01 |
and sent it back, did you feel better, just to leave Echo? | 2:05:02 | |
Did you think that was a good start? | 2:05:05 | |
- | Yeah. | 2:05:07 |
I mean, Camp Delta is, you know, | 2:05:08 | |
it's not the best of places to be. | 2:05:11 | |
But you know, you can get by. | 2:05:13 | |
You can get by. | 2:05:15 | |
Interviewer | By the way, how did you know | 2:05:16 |
that one man was taken and told he was going home | 2:05:18 | |
and then just interrogated on the plane and put back? | 2:05:21 | |
- | Oh, because the stories get around. (laughs) | 2:05:24 |
The stories, the detainees will tell you the story. | 2:05:26 | |
I mean, he obviously told other people, | 2:05:30 | |
and then they pass on the story. | 2:05:31 | |
They shout over the blocks and then pass it on. | 2:05:33 | |
Or you get moved enough to get the new news | 2:05:35 | |
from other people in the next camp. | 2:05:37 | |
Interviewer | Do you know who that detainee was? | 2:05:39 |
- | I don't. | 2:05:41 |
I don't know who that detainee was. | 2:05:41 | |
But you probably can find out, you know, | 2:05:42 | |
if you speak to someone who was close to them. | 2:05:44 | |
Interviewer | So it sounds like things, | 2:05:48 |
I guess I just want to just ask this. | 2:05:53 | |
So after you told the, | 2:05:55 | |
that you were willing to talk, | 2:05:57 | |
do you know how much time passed | 2:05:59 | |
before you finally got moved to? | 2:06:00 | |
- | Oh, it had to be a year or something. | 2:06:04 |
Interviewer | Another year? | 2:06:05 |
So you had another year | 2:06:06 | |
- | It had to be | |
- | still in Echo? | 2:06:07 |
- | at least a year. | |
Had to be at least a year, yeah. | 2:06:08 | |
Interviewer | But you were better in Echo then, | 2:06:09 |
because least you weren't having, | 2:06:10 | |
except for that one incident, the panic attacks? | 2:06:11 | |
- | Because they took me out of building four. | 2:06:13 |
Building four. | 2:06:17 | |
Interviewer | And now you were with other people again? | 2:06:17 |
- | No, I mean, in a different kind of, | 2:06:19 |
I'm still in Echo, so you're still isolated. | 2:06:21 | |
The guards changed, so they weren't the same mean ones. | 2:06:23 | |
The whole push for the military commissions | 2:06:26 | |
kind of flopped, I think. | 2:06:28 | |
And it just became like, you know, everyday. | 2:06:30 | |
And then like for instance, the guards, | 2:06:32 | |
you'd speak to them and you know, | 2:06:34 | |
the others were just mean. | 2:06:36 | |
They didn't want to speak to you. | 2:06:37 | |
The way the other buildings were set up | 2:06:38 | |
was that the guard would be closer to you. | 2:06:40 | |
So obviously, you know, | 2:06:42 | |
you couldn't avoid having conversation with them. | 2:06:43 | |
So when you have conversation, then the barriers go down. | 2:06:46 | |
They didn't have this idea that, you know, | 2:06:49 | |
you're such a bad person, whatever, like you know. | 2:06:50 | |
I know what you did, you know, | 2:06:53 | |
it's about, you're nearly there | 2:06:55 | |
to have your head being chopped off, | 2:06:57 | |
you know, like by the military commissions, | 2:06:59 | |
it's just a long drawn process. | 2:07:01 | |
They found you there, you know, and then that was it. | 2:07:02 | |
So that was their life for them. | 2:07:05 | |
And then, you know, it wasn't good. | 2:07:07 | |
Because like for a long time in Camp Echo, | 2:07:09 | |
I didn't see sunlight | 2:07:12 | |
except from coming under the door. | 2:07:13 | |
Recreation, they used to take us out at night and so forth. | 2:07:16 | |
You know, yeah, for a long time. | 2:07:19 | |
Interviewer | Could you see the Red Cross | 2:07:21 |
during that time? | 2:07:22 | |
- | I don't remember seeing the Red Cross during that time. | 2:07:31 |
Interviewer | And the British Consulate, | 2:07:34 |
did they come by in there? | 2:07:35 | |
- | Yeah, they came a little. | 2:07:36 |
Interviewer | But they didn't... | 2:07:39 |
- | They didn't care, they didn't care. | 2:07:41 |
The guy didn't care. | 2:07:43 | |
He once said to me, "I don't care | 2:07:43 | |
about your emotional health, | 2:07:45 | |
all I want to know about is your physical health." | 2:07:45 | |
And when you told him about what was happening, | 2:07:47 | |
he tried to put it, construct it in a way | 2:07:49 | |
that, you know, he just constructed it | 2:07:51 | |
in a way that was in favor of the administration. | 2:07:53 | |
So I was telling him about my thumb, | 2:07:55 | |
the color, you know, like on my thumb, | 2:07:56 | |
started to discolor | 2:07:59 | |
because of not being out in the sunlight, you know. | 2:08:01 | |
Like a patch here started, you know, because I'm black. | 2:08:04 | |
So it started to go, you know, like non-black. | 2:08:06 | |
I told him about that. | 2:08:10 | |
He just wanted to construct it in a different way. | 2:08:12 | |
Like, you know, it was the soap or something like that. | 2:08:14 | |
He didn't want to hear, he didn't want to hear anything. | 2:08:16 | |
He didn't care. | 2:08:17 | |
Didn't want to know about emotional mental health. | 2:08:19 | |
Just wanted to know about physical health, | 2:08:21 | |
and all you're supposed to say is, | 2:08:22 | |
you know, I'm fine, I'm great, | 2:08:23 | |
you know, they're treating me wonderfully. | 2:08:24 | |
Interviewer | So I ask most of the men I speak to, | 2:08:26 |
how did you endure that? | 2:08:29 | |
Was there something in you that kind of, | 2:08:30 | |
I think you obviously said part of it, | 2:08:33 | |
by saying that you finally decided | 2:08:37 | |
you were gonna talk to the interrogators | 2:08:38 | |
to help you, is that, is there anything else | 2:08:40 | |
that kind of kept you going through that time? | 2:08:42 | |
I mean, like- | 2:08:47 | |
- | The first thing, | |
the first thing that will keep you going, | 2:08:48 | |
not the first thing in terms of importance, | 2:08:52 | |
just | 2:08:54 | |
in a sense of chronologically, maybe, | 2:08:59 | |
is your innocence. | 2:09:02 | |
Because an innocent man incarcerated, | 2:09:04 | |
that keeps you buoyed in a way. | 2:09:09 | |
It keeps your head up, keeps a sense of your self-respect. | 2:09:11 | |
You feel that you're being mistreated, unjustly, | 2:09:15 | |
and injustice won't last, it won't get its way. | 2:09:20 | |
You know, the truth will prevail in that way. | 2:09:23 | |
That's the first thing, chronologically. | 2:09:27 | |
The second thing is... | 2:09:30 | |
You know, it's, | 2:09:36 | |
there's many, you can look at it | 2:09:38 | |
in many different levels, but | 2:09:39 | |
on a personal level, I saw it as, you know, | 2:09:45 | |
this is from, this is what Allah has decreed for me, | 2:09:48 | |
what God has decreed for me. | 2:09:52 | |
There's a reason for him decreeing this for me. | 2:09:54 | |
And you know, you can't, | 2:09:56 | |
there's a wisdom and mercy behind it, | 2:09:58 | |
and I don't understand it. | 2:10:00 | |
I don't understand why I'm going through this situation, | 2:10:01 | |
but I know that, you know, | 2:10:04 | |
that there's a reason why God has put me here | 2:10:05 | |
and through this situation. | 2:10:08 | |
In that way, you have to humble yourself. | 2:10:09 | |
And you know, I'm a revert to Islam. | 2:10:11 | |
So I haven't been Muslim like the whole of my life. | 2:10:14 | |
I reverted when I was 19 years old. | 2:10:16 | |
And you know, reading Malcolm, | 2:10:18 | |
I actually read Malcolm X over there, | 2:10:21 | |
'cause one of the soldiers gave it to me. | 2:10:22 | |
You know, you know, | 2:10:25 | |
in the book "Malcolm X," he says, | 2:10:27 | |
"Only guilt admitted accepts truth." | 2:10:29 | |
And that resonates with me, | 2:10:31 | |
because the reason why I became Muslim was, | 2:10:32 | |
you know, I mean, I was 17. | 2:10:34 | |
Well, actually I was 19. | 2:10:36 | |
And I looked back on my life, which was very short. | 2:10:38 | |
And I said to myself, you know what, | 2:10:40 | |
you're not really a good guy. | 2:10:42 | |
You can't say to yourself, you're such a great guy. | 2:10:43 | |
So you need to just humble yourself | 2:10:46 | |
and you know, like, you know, | 2:10:47 | |
try to seek repentance and so forth. | 2:10:49 | |
So when you're in that situation, | 2:10:51 | |
if someone has an arrogant attitude to the situation, | 2:10:52 | |
they say, "I don't deserve this, | 2:10:55 | |
and why is God treating me like this?" | 2:10:56 | |
They won't survive. | 2:10:58 | |
But if you think to yourself, you know what, you know, | 2:10:59 | |
"I'm not the best of people, | 2:11:01 | |
and you know, like I can't challenge God in this situation." | 2:11:02 | |
You know, I can't say, "I'm the best, | 2:11:06 | |
I'm the greatest person on earth. | 2:11:07 | |
Therefore being treated like this | 2:11:08 | |
is such a great injustice." | 2:11:10 | |
You know, that you can't do that. | 2:11:12 | |
So you had to humble yourself in a way, | 2:11:13 | |
and accept it, and not be arrogant in front of God. | 2:11:14 | |
So that was one aspect. | 2:11:20 | |
And the last aspect was, | 2:11:21 | |
not so much in Camp Delta, because I didn't realize | 2:11:25 | |
how much the soldiers were suffering. | 2:11:30 | |
But my thing was, if they're suffering, | 2:11:32 | |
then I'm willing to suffer too. (laughs) | 2:11:35 | |
So in Camp Echo, they used to whine. | 2:11:38 | |
You know, they only had us to talk to, | 2:11:41 | |
'cause the other soldiers won't listen to them. | 2:11:43 | |
And if they did listen, then you know, | 2:11:45 | |
they would just say, "Serves you right." | 2:11:46 | |
So, you know, they have to whine to us, | 2:11:48 | |
and I realized how much they were suffering. | 2:11:50 | |
And you know, that kind of, I thought to myself, | 2:11:52 | |
you know what, if it was just us suffering | 2:11:54 | |
and you guys having it good, | 2:11:56 | |
that would be hard to deal with. | 2:11:57 | |
If we're suffering and you're suffering, | 2:11:59 | |
then you know, like fine, bring it on. (laughs) | 2:12:00 | |
Yeah. | 2:12:03 | |
Interviewer | And another thing I ask is, | 2:12:04 |
I have only a few more questions, | 2:12:07 | |
and we're just about done. | 2:12:09 | |
But you know, there's always, | 2:12:09 | |
there's a lot of negativity that you've experienced | 2:12:13 | |
that comes out of Guantanamo. | 2:12:16 | |
And you can, if you want, just tell me some more of that. | 2:12:17 | |
But sometimes people think there was something positive | 2:12:20 | |
that came out of that experience. | 2:12:23 | |
And I often wonder if you could ever... | 2:12:24 | |
- | Okay, it's, you know, okay. | 2:12:33 |
In Islam, you know, there's a general trend, | 2:12:37 | |
like not a trend, but kind of... | 2:12:40 | |
How to put it? | 2:12:44 | |
It's like... | 2:12:45 | |
Okay, okay. | 2:12:49 | |
Islamically, you know, there's the tradition | 2:12:50 | |
of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. | 2:12:53 | |
He says, "Paradise." | 2:12:54 | |
Paradise, that's, you know, | 2:12:57 | |
like I think Christians call it heaven. | 2:12:58 | |
But we make a distinction | 2:13:00 | |
between heavens as in skies and so forth. | 2:13:01 | |
But heaven, "Paradise is surrounded by hardship, | 2:13:04 | |
and hellfire is surrounded by ease." | 2:13:07 | |
So, you know, Islam tries to instill in you | 2:13:11 | |
that if you're going through hardship, | 2:13:15 | |
you're actually going through that veil to paradise, | 2:13:17 | |
that in order to get to paradise, | 2:13:20 | |
you have to go through hardship. | 2:13:21 | |
So, you know, Guantanamo, if you said to me, | 2:13:23 | |
"You know what, do you want to go to Guantanamo?" | 2:13:26 | |
This, that, and the other, et cetera, | 2:13:28 | |
and you have a choice, I would say no. | 2:13:29 | |
I would say no, I would say that now. | 2:13:31 | |
You know, I would never want to go to Guantanamo. | 2:13:33 | |
You know, as human beings, that's how we are. | 2:13:36 | |
But sometimes God doesn't give us the choice. | 2:13:39 | |
And you know, the positive thing | 2:13:42 | |
that comes out of Guantanamo, I guess, | 2:13:44 | |
is that, that you know, you go through hardship | 2:13:47 | |
and then you realize, for me, it's been... | 2:13:50 | |
Right now, I look at the world in a different way. | 2:13:55 | |
I really, it's like the veil has been lifted off the world. | 2:13:57 | |
And what I see, you know, what the world is, | 2:14:02 | |
it is about, it is pain, it is suffering. | 2:14:06 | |
Guantanamo is the real face of the world and life. | 2:14:09 | |
That's how I see it. | 2:14:12 | |
Coming back, that veil has been placed back, | 2:14:16 | |
and I'm expected to like accept society | 2:14:19 | |
as though, you know, | 2:14:23 | |
things like Guantanamo Bay aren't happening, | 2:14:24 | |
or you know, even worse. | 2:14:25 | |
But I can't do that, because I've seen beyond the veil. | 2:14:28 | |
So that's another thing, that it's shown me the reality. | 2:14:31 | |
That, you know, before Guantanamo, | 2:14:33 | |
before this happening, maybe I was kind of deluded in a way, | 2:14:35 | |
that the world is a place | 2:14:39 | |
that, you know, in reality as I see it, | 2:14:42 | |
that's not the way the world is. | 2:14:45 | |
Interviewer | Is there, since we're just about done, | 2:14:50 |
is there something else that maybe I didn't ask you? | 2:14:52 | |
That, you know, 'cause you're very thoughtful. | 2:14:55 | |
And if there's something else that maybe, to finish? | 2:14:58 | |
- | Yeah, well, | 2:15:04 |
I mean, there's a lot to say. | 2:15:06 | |
You know, there's a lot. | 2:15:09 | |
In Guantanamo, I wrote down a lot of it | 2:15:10 | |
before, you know, we were released. | 2:15:13 | |
So- | 2:15:17 | |
- | Will you make it | |
into a book, or you just have notes? | 2:15:18 | |
- | No, I just have notes. | 2:15:20 |
And you know, I've just, | 2:15:21 | |
I've just recently typed them up. | 2:15:23 | |
'Cause they were handwritten. | 2:15:25 | |
They're, all of them are not there, | 2:15:27 | |
but a large chunk of of what happened is there. | 2:15:28 | |
So that's the reason why there's a lot of detail. | 2:15:30 | |
Because when I wrote it | 2:15:34 | |
would have been in the same situation, | 2:15:36 | |
and you know, there would have only been three years passed, | 2:15:39 | |
and obviously you're in the same situation, | 2:15:41 | |
so your mind doesn't. | 2:15:43 | |
When you leave, then you start forgetting things | 2:15:43 | |
because you're not in the same situation. | 2:15:45 | |
The neurons are not used and so forth in that regard. | 2:15:46 | |
So there is a lot, and you know. | 2:15:50 | |
So I can't really identify anything in particular, | 2:15:52 | |
'cause we've covered like just generally what's happening. | 2:15:55 | |
And I know you can only do so much | 2:15:58 | |
with, you know, like just speaking for me. | 2:15:59 | |
Interviewer | I have one question, though. | 2:16:01 |
How did it feel reading those notes after all these years? | 2:16:03 | |
- | To tell you the truth, | 2:16:06 |
it has taken me five years to deal with. | 2:16:07 | |
Five years. | 2:16:11 | |
First of all, when they brought me here, | 2:16:12 | |
I was really depressed. | 2:16:14 | |
I was really, I was really sad. | 2:16:15 | |
And I've made a conscious effort not to deal with it, | 2:16:17 | |
because the way I am is that, you know, | 2:16:22 | |
with kind of things that are emotionally hard to deal with, | 2:16:24 | |
I know I can box them away. | 2:16:28 | |
So I can put it in a little box and put it away. | 2:16:29 | |
And it's up, I'm gonna have to deal with it, | 2:16:31 | |
but it's my choice when I deal with it. | 2:16:33 | |
And it's taken me five years, taken me five years. | 2:16:35 | |
I've kept myself busy. | 2:16:38 | |
So when I came out, I just, | 2:16:39 | |
I did my, you know, I went, | 2:16:42 | |
I went back to college, to university. | 2:16:43 | |
And that was like, that's already four years. | 2:16:47 | |
And it's only now I've started working with Cageprisoners. | 2:16:50 | |
And that is the part of the process | 2:16:53 | |
where I'm unpackaging things. | 2:16:54 | |
And in fact, this is part of the process as well, | 2:16:56 | |
where I'm actually talking about it. | 2:16:58 | |
But I really kept away away from, you know, | 2:17:00 | |
even looking at the news | 2:17:02 | |
or seeing that kind of thing in the paper and that. | 2:17:04 | |
I didn't keep up to it. | 2:17:06 | |
I just tried to shut it out, you know, as best as I could. | 2:17:08 | |
So the questions were, again? | 2:17:12 | |
Interviewer | Are you finding it, then, | 2:17:14 |
therefore valuable to read those notes | 2:17:15 | |
and to talk about it? | 2:17:17 | |
- | Yeah. | |
So it's taken me this long. | 2:17:18 | |
And you know, it's only like in the last, | 2:17:20 | |
in last week that I actually picked up those notes | 2:17:24 | |
and started going through them in detail, | 2:17:26 | |
typing them up. | 2:17:29 | |
I'm having to type them up for a reason. | 2:17:31 | |
But that's when, and it has been hard. | 2:17:34 | |
Because you read about things that, you know just, | 2:17:36 | |
it reminds you of things that happened to you | 2:17:40 | |
that you kind of buried away and tried to forget. | 2:17:42 | |
And it is hard to read those things. | 2:17:44 | |
But you know, I'm not helping myself | 2:17:46 | |
by not actually dealing with it. | 2:17:49 | |
And you know, if I don't deal with it, | 2:17:50 | |
I'm gonna have to deal with it sometime. | 2:17:52 | |
So this is part of the process. | 2:17:53 | |
So it's been hard reading those notes. | 2:17:55 | |
But you know, I've kind of- | 2:17:58 | |
Interviewer | But it's important for you | 2:17:59 |
to do that, right now? | 2:18:00 | |
- | It is. | |
After five years, I'm opening the package now. | 2:18:02 | |
Interviewer | I think we're done, | 2:18:10 |
unless there's something you want to close with. | 2:18:11 | |
That was an amazing interview. | 2:18:14 | |
- | Okay, I think that's fine. | |
- | We're very thankful | 2:18:16 |
- | All right, thank you. | |
- | and very honored. | 2:18:17 |
- | You're welcome. | |
All right, thanks. | 2:18:19 | |
Man | Can we just do run time, or? | 2:18:20 |
Interviewer | Can we just be quiet for- | 2:18:21 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund