NYT/OpEd: Detainees in Despair
- From: Coatzocoalcos <coatzocoalcos8@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 05:11:12 GMT
Op-Ed Contributor
Detainees in Despair
By MOURAD BENCHELLALI
New York Times
Published: June 14, 2006
Lyon, France
Picture:
http://tinyurl.com/na3o5
Matt Rota
I WAS released from the United States military's prison camp at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, in July 2004. As I was about to board a plane that would take me
home to France, the last detainee I saw was a young Yemeni. He was
overwhelmed by emotion.
"In your country, Mourad, there are rights, human rights, and they mean
something," he said. "In mine they mean nothing, and no one cares. So when
you're free, don't forget what you've been through. Tell people that we are
here."
I now know that this Yemeni was not among the three prisoners who committed
suicide at Guantánamo last weekend, but since then his words have been
echoing in my head. Although I'm now a free man, the shared pain endlessly
takes me back to the camp.
In the early summer of 2001, when I was 19, I made the mistake of listening
to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream
vacation. His friends, he said, were going to look after me. They did ?
channeling me to what turned out to be a Qaeda training camp. For two
months, I was there, trapped in the middle of the desert by fear and my own
stupidity.
As soon as my time was up, I headed home. I was a few miles from the
Pakistani border when I learned with horror about the attacks of 9/11. Days
later, the border was sealed off, and the only way through to Pakistan and a
plane to Europe was across the mountains of the Hindu Kush. I was with a
group of people who were all going the same way. No one was armed; most of
them, like me, had been lured to Afghanistan by a misguided and mistimed
sense of adventure, and were simply trying to make their way home.
I was seized by the Pakistani Army while having tea at a mosque shortly
after I managed to cross the border. A few days later I was delivered to the
United States Army: although I didn't know it at the time, I was now labeled
an "enemy combatant." It did not matter that I was no one's enemy and had
never been on a battlefield, let alone fought or aimed a weapon at anyone.
After two weeks in the American military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, I
was sent to Guantánamo, where I spent two and a half years. I cannot
describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture; but the worst
aspect of being at the camp was the despair, the feeling that whatever you
say, it will never make a difference.
You repeat yourself over and over again to interrogators from the military
intelligence, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. The first time you hear "Your case is
being processed," your heart, seizing on the hopeful possibilities in those
words, skips a beat. After months of disappointment, you try to develop an
immunity to hope, but hope is an incurable disease.
I remember once an interrogator warming me up during several sessions for a
polygraph test I was going to take, that was, according to him, infallible.
After I took the test, I was left alone in the interrogation room; an hour
later, the interrogator returned. "Congratulations," he said grimly. "You
have passed the test." And he gave me a box of candy.
In the outside world, I thought, the difference between telling the truth
and lying, between committing a crime and not committing it, is the
difference between being in jail and being free. In Guantánamo, it is a box
of candy.
I was eventually released and I will go on trial next month in Paris to face
charges that I've never denied, that I spent two months in the Qaeda camp. I
have a court date, I'm facing a judge, and I have a lawyer, unimaginable
luxuries in Guantánamo. I didn't know the three detainees who died, but it
is easy for me to see how this daily despair and uncertainty could lead to
suicide.
During my captivity, I saw many acts of individual rebellion, from screaming
to hunger strikes and suicide attempts. "They are smart, they are creative,
they are committed," said Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who commands the camp.
"They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this
was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged
against us."
I am a quiet Muslim ? I've never waged war, let alone an asymmetrical one. I
wasn't anti-American before and, miraculously, I haven't become
anti-American since. In Guantánamo, I did see some people for whom jihad is
life itself, people whose minds are distorted by extremism and whose souls
are full of hatred. But the huge majority of the faces I remember ? the ones
that haunt my nights ? are of desperation, suffering, incomprehension turned
into silent madness.
I believe that a small number of the detainees at Guantánamo are guilty of
criminal acts, but as analysis of the military's documents on the prisoners
has shown, there is no evidence that most of the 465 or so men there have
committed hostile acts against the United States or its allies. Even so,
what I heard so many times resounding from cage to cage, what I said myself
so many times in my moments of complete despondency, was not, "Free us, we
are innocent!" but "Judge us for whatever we've done!" There is unlimited
cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and unable
to punish the guilty.
Mourad Benchellali has written a book about his experience in a Qaeda camp
andat Guantánamo Bay, with Antoine Audouard, who assisted in the writing of
this article and translated it from the French.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/opinion/14benchellali.html
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