This was the day before the rally and march to close Guantánamo, which I covered here, here and here, and it was an extremely well attended event, with over a hundred people in the audience — mostly campaigners from the various organizations involved in the January 11 protest, including Amnesty International, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, Code Pink and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Also present were: the attorney Tom Wilner — my colleague in the newly established “Close Guantánamo” campaign and website, with whom I had just taken part in a lunchtime event at the New America Foundation (also with Congressman Jim Moran and Col. Morris Davis) — and Darold Killmer and Mari Newman, attorneys from Denver whom I had asked to come along and speak about their clients, five Yemenis who are still held at Guantánamo.

The half-hour Q&A session that followed the screening was filmed, and I’ll be posting that soon, but first I’m posting below a short introduction I delivered while the staff at Busboys and Poets worked on technical issues involving the screening. While these were being resolved, I told the audience about the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and our petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, asking President Obama to fulfil his promise to close Guantánamo. The petition has a one-month deadline, which comes to an end on February 6, so please sign it if you haven’t done so already.

I also told the audience about the news from Guantánamo, via Ramzi Kassem, the attorney for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, which I had announced on my website that day. Shaker and other prisoners had made it clear that they would be holding a three-day protest and hunger strike, to let the world know that they were not happy that President Obama was getting away with portraying Guantánamo as a safe and humane facility, and also to show solidarity with those protesting in Washington D.C. and elsewhere in the US.

In addition, I spoke specifically about the need to create a campaign on both sides of the Atlantic to push for the release of Shaker Aamer, well known as the foremost defender in Guantánamo of the prisoners’ human rights, on the basis that the Obama administration no longer wants to hold him, and the British government has asked for him to be returned to his wife and family in the UK.

I noted that the Congressional restrictions on releasing prisoners to countries that lawmakers regard as dangerous (included in provisions in the horrendous National Defense Authorization Act, in which lawmakers also declared their intention to hold terror suspects in permanent military custody, without charge or trial), could not realistically extend to the UK, making Shaker the prime candidate for breaking the deadlock regarding the release of prisoners from Guantánamo.

As I also explained, in 2011, the restrictions were so successful that only one living prisoner — an Algerian who had his habeas corpus petition granted by the courts — was released, and two others left in coffins, having died at the prison.

My thanks to everyone who turned up to make the screening such a successful event, to Debra Sweet, the national director of the World Can’t Wait for organizing it, and to Palina Prasasouk for filming my talk, and to Justin Norman for editing it.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, and one of the attorneys for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, said that his client, who is held in isolation in Camp 5, told him on his last visit that the prisoners would embark on a peaceful protest and hunger strike for three days, from Jan. 10 to 12, to protest about the President’s failure to close Guantánamo as promised.

He explained that the men intended to inform the Officer in Charge ahead of the protest, to let the authorities know why there would be protests, and added that the prisoners were encouraged by the “expression of solidarity” from US citizens planning protests on Jan. 11, the 10^th anniversary of the opening of the prison.

Kassem also said that another of his clients, in Camp 6, where most of the prisoners are held, and where, unlike Camp 5, they are allowed to socialize, stated that prisoners throughout the blocks were “extremely encouraged” by reports of the protests in Washington D.C.

The prisoner, who does not wish to be identified, also said that banners and signs had been prepared, and that there would be peaceful sit-ins in the communal areas. He added that the prisoners were concerned to let the outside world know that they still reject the injustice of their imprisonment, and feel that it is particularly important to let everyone know this, when the US government, under President Obama, is trying to persuade the world that “everything is OK” at Guantánamo, and that the prison is a humane, state of the art facility.

He also explained that the prisoners invited the press to come to Guantánamo and to request interviews with the prisoners, to hear about “the toll of a decade” of detention without charge or trial, and said that they “would like nothing more” than to have an independent civilian and medical delegation, accompanied by the press, be allowed to come and talk to the 171 men still held.

In Camp 5, Shaker Aamer and the other men still held there will not be able to stage a sit-in, as they are unable to leave their cells, but they will participate in the protests by refusing meals.

No one knows how the authorities will respond to the protests, especially as the new commander of Guantánamo, Navy Rear Adm. David Woods, has gained a reputation for punishing even the most minor infractions of the rules with solitary confinement.

According to Kassem, prisoners have complained that the new regime harks back to the worst days of Guantánamo, between 2002 and 2004, when punishments for non-cooperation were widespread.

Of the 171 men still held at Guantánamo, 89 were “approved for transfer” out of Guantánamo by a Task Force of career officials and lawyers from the various government departments and the intelligence agencies, and yet they remain held because of Congressional opposition and President Obama’s unwillingness to tackle his critics. 36 others were recommended for trials, and 46 others were designated for indefinite detention without charge pr trial, on the basis that they are too dangerous to release, but that there is insufficient evidence against them to put them on trial.

That is a disgraceful position for the government to take, as indefinite detention on the basis of information that cannot be used as evidence indicates that the information is either tainted by torture, or is unreliable hearsay. It remains unacceptable that President Obama approved the indefinite detention of these men in an executive order last March, even though he also promised that their cases would be subject to periodic review.

Just as disgraceful, however, is the fact that all of the 171 prisoners still at Guantánamo face indefinite detention, as none of them can leave the prison given the current restrictions. That ought to trouble anyone who cares about justice and fairness, and the protests by the prisoners, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, ought to convey, more eloquently than any other method, why the pressure to close the prison must be maintained.

Note: For further information, and to sign up to a new movement to close Guantánamo, please visit the new website, “Close Guantánamo,” which you can join here, and also please sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

A photo released to the AP showed what appeared to be a claustrophobically tiny cell, and a military spokesman conceded that the cells in “Five Echo” are only half the size of the cells in the nearby Camp Five, and also “have a squat toilet in the floor, instead of a standard prison toilet found elsewhere in the prison.”

David Remes, an attorney in Washington D.C., who represents three men who have been held in “Five Echo,” described the camp as violating the Geneva Conventions, and called it “a throwback to the bad old days at Guantánamo.”

Some of those still held might dispute the inference that these are the “good old days,” when the 171 men still held are, for the most part, detained without charge or trial, in a facility that still reflects the Bush administration’s arrogant disregard for the law, however much the Obama administration may have tweaked conditions to allow prisoners regarded as cooperative to spend some of their time socializing, and, occasionally, allowing them to talk on the phone to their families.

The remaining prisoners are still not allowed family visits, unlike those convicted of the most horrendous crimes and held in prisons on the US mainland, and although the Obama administration has conceded that it wishes to release or does not wish to permanently detain 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners, they are effectively indistinguishable from the 82 others — recommended for trials or for indefinite detention with periodic reviews — because of obstruction by Congress, by the administration itself, and by the courts, which have made releasing any of these men almost impossible.

Lawmakers have specifically prevented the release of any prisoner unless the defense secretary signs a waiver indicating that there is no chance that any freed individual will be able engage in any act of recidivism — a condition recently described by Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s senior lawyer, as “onerous and near impossible to satisfy.”

In addition, 58 Yemenis are still held because of an unprincipled moratorium on releasing any Yemenis that was introduced by President Obama in January 2010, after it was discovered that the failed Christmas 2009 plane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been recruited in Yemen, and the D.C. Circuit Court has rewritten the rules of detention on ideological grounds, bringing the law into disrepute, but also ensuring that no prisoner can leave through having their habeas corpus petitions granted by the lower courts.

For those still held, Guantánamo is, therefore, closer to being the black hole conceived by the Bush administration than any other prison, where inmates are sentenced, and are released at the end of their sentences, or, if they are to be held for the rest of their lives, are, at least, told by a judge that they will be serving life without parole.

Even so, and with the proviso that the whole of Guantánamo still constitutes a uniquely disturbing example of arbitrary, indefinite detention, conditions in “Five Echo” do appear to be noticeably worse, in terms of discomfort, than conditions in general in Guantánamo. Officials claimed that, as a punishment block, it was “by its nature a worse place to be imprisoned than in the communal blocks where most detainees at Guantánamo are now held,” but they disputed the claim that it violated the Geneva Conventions. Army Col. Donnie Thomas, the commander of the guard force, said, “It is safe, humane and meets all the regulations” — although military spokespeople always say that.

Lawyers told the AP that “they did not believe any photos of the unit had been released previously,” and that the military had been “secretive” about “Five Echo,” which “was created in 2007 as an overflow disciplinary section,” but now, according to Col. Thomas, is used as an “extension” of Camp Five.” It was also noted that it “has not been included in media tours.”

Camp Five is a maximum-security block, modeled on the Miami Correctional Facility, a state prison in Bunker Hill, Indiana. It opened in May 2004, and its solid-walled cells once housed up to a hundred prisoners regarded as having the “greatest intelligence value,” according to a report in the Miami Herald. Now, however, the block only holds 25 prisoners at most, including, in a top tier block, described by the Herald as a “Convicts Corridor,” segregating the four prisoners (including the Canadian, and former child prisoner Omar Khadr), who have been convicted of war crimes — or have agreed to plea deals — in their trials by Military Commission. The AP explained that Camp Five was “now largely used for detainees who attack a guard or otherwise violate the rules,” and those who are regarded as “noncompliant.”

The identities of the prisoners held in Camp Five were not disclosed, although it is probable that they include up to a dozen men, regarded by the authorities as significant prisoners, capable of influencing their fellow prisoners, who were previously held in a special section in Camp Delta (where Camps One to Three were, but which is now closed), called “One-Alpha.” Col. Thomas seemed to indicate this when he said, “Quite frankly, detainees make the determination where they live. If they are compliant they live in Camp Six. If they are noncompliant they live in Camp Five.”

In contrast to Camp Five, Camp Six, which opened in December 2006, and was also modeled on a maximum-security facility in Lenawee County, Michigan, holds the majority of the remaining 171 prisoners, and has, since August 2010, been the block where prisoners are allowed to socialize, “with up to 20 hours a day of TV or radio broadcast through headsets,” as the Miami Herald described it, adding that “each of the 22-cell pods was organized according to broadcast preference with two pods having exclusively Quranic radio broadcasts from Saudi Arabia,” and another “made up predominantly of Yemeni soccer fans who dominated in matches in the communal recreation yard.”

The AP noted that the prisoners in Camp Six are “free to congregate with each other in a communal setting for 20 hours a day, and they have access to games, classes and 20 channels of cable television,” and also noted that the authorities claimed that the creation of the communal facilities was responsible for “a sharp drop in prisoners’ protests, hunger strikes and assaults on guards.”

Discussing “Five Echo,” Col. Thomas “declined to disclose the criteria” for its use, but said it was empty last week, although “he could resume using it at any time at his discretion.” He refused to say when it had last held prisoners, but David Remes explained that it had recently held Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who he represents, and who is one of the dozen or so prisoners regarded as being particularly influential. He stated that he “drew a diagram” of the cells, and “collected other details” following a meeting with Aamer, but “the notes were deemed classified by a government review team and he is not permitted to release them.”

Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer and a law professor at the City University of New York, who also represents Aamer, said he had described “abysmal conditions” in “Five Echo,” explaining that “the squat toilet is difficult to use, there are foul odors, bright lights shine on detainees and air conditioners keep it extremely cold.” Kassem said, “It is decrepit, filthy and disgusting. Those are the words he used to describe it.” He added that Aamer also told him the cells were not large enough to allow prisoners to pray, and said that the conditions were “akin to those of a Supermax prison in the United States.”

Explaining the circumstances in which the other prisoners are held, the Miami Herald noted that 15 or 16 “high-value detainees,” previously held in secret CIA prisons, where the use of torture was routine, are held in Camp Seven, which the media has never been allowed to visit, and that five Uighurs (Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province, who are awaiting an offer of a new home) are held in Camp Iguana, once used for three child prisoners, where they “can get greater privileges, including more phone calls, a prayer room, a Wii and a view of the Caribbean.”

No figures have been made available regarding the number of prisoners held in the Behavioral Health Unit, adjacent to the hospital, which “serves as the psychiatric ward for mentally ill or otherwise troubled detainees,” although it seems certain that it must be used to house some prisoners whose long detention has led to their complete mental collapse. The Miami Herald also noted, troublingly, that between three and five prisoners live “permanently” in Camp Echo “for reasons the military will not explain.”

A 24-cell block, Camp Echo is used for meetings between lawyers and their clients, but its cells were used in 2003-04 to hold prisoners in total isolation who were facing Military Commission trials, and it is also known that Shaker Aamer was held there for 18 months in total isolation from September 2005 to March 2007. For Camp Echo still to be used for detention, and for no explanation of its use to have been provided, is therefore genuinely disturbing.

On this basis, the conditions in “Five Echo” are just one small part of the problems — particularly involving indefinite detention, and the “hidden” prisoners in Camp Echo, Camp Five and Camp Seven — facing those still held in Guantánamo as the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison approaches, on January 11, 2012.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

One Year after Obama’s Promised Deadline to Close Guantánamo, Detained Man Describes Peaceful Protests against Indefinite Detention at the Prison

CCR Denounces Failure of All Three Branches to Close Guantánamo

Upon the anniversary of President Obama’s broken promise to close Guantánamo, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) reported that a man detained at the prison, who prefers to remain anonymous, told his attorney during an unclassified call of a spontaneous peaceful protest that has swept through Camp 6, where most of the remaining detainees are currently being held. He described signs the men have posted demanding justice and humane treatment.

The protest began because the government has been transferring — sometimes by force — detainees from the communal facility that had previously held most of the men, Camp 4, to the solitary-celled, Supermax-style facility of Camp 6. The detained man said the protest was inspired by news of the recent revolution in Tunisia. The detainees object to the move because of worse conditions in Camp 6, and because of their accurate perception that the move is a signal that the Obama administration has no plans to send them home anytime soon. See below for more information on the protest, language from the protest signs and excerpts from the unclassified attorney call with the detained man who reported the protest. CCR also released the following statement:

In the last presidential election, both candidates campaigned on a promise to close Guantánamo — an international symbol of injustice that both men acknowledged was damaging U.S. foreign policy and national security interests. Today, on the first anniversary of President Obama’s failed deadline to close Guantánamo, it is clear that all three branches of government have effectively abandoned that goal.

The President continues to make hollow assertions that closing Guantánamo is the right thing to do and will make the U.S. safer. Yet, he has shown no willingness to use political capital to pursue that goal against strident opposition from demagogues in Congress and the media. In the absence of presidential leadership, both parties in Congress continue to block transfers out of Guantánamo, even for men who have successfully challenged the legality of their detention or who have been cleared for release by the administration’s own thorough review process. With the Supreme Court now largely removed from the picture, thanks to the likely recusal of Justice Elena Kagan from cases involving detainee affairs because of her previous role as Solicitor General, the Court of Appeals for D.C. — the most deferential in the country to executive claims of authority — has raised the burden on detained men seeking relief through the courts to levels even higher than the government has requested.

As the men detained at Guantánamo enter their tenth year of imprisonment without charge, we call on President Obama to show political and moral leadership and publically recommit to rapidly closing Guantánamo. All the remaining men must be charged and fairly tried or released. The blanket ban on repatriations to Yemen must be lifted, and the men who cannot return to their home countries for fear of torture and persecution must be safely resettled. President Obama must also make good on his promise to seek repeal of the recently passed congressional restrictions on the transfer of detainees out of Guantánamo.

Excerpts from an Unclassified Attorney Call Regarding the Protest

“Conditions in Camp 6 are difficult. There are many men kept in each block – twenty per block. Everything is chaotic. The recreation space is tight. Treatment from the guards has worsened. This internal [recreation] walk has walls that are so high you can barely see the sky.”

“We decided to protest … The entire camp made sign boards saying ‘it’s unacceptable to keep detaining us because of what’s going on outside,’ [meaning, incidents like the Detroit underwear bomber or unrest in Yemen]. Why are we being punished for the bad acts others are doing outside?”

“The construction work going on here is giving us the impression that we are going to be here forever. People detained here are feeling this.”

In Tunisia, “After 23 years of injustice, finally people decided to liberate themselves and seek freedom. Now we need to struggle for ourselves.”

“We have children, wives, families. It is not only Americans who are human beings. Our families are crying and asking, ‘Where are our fathers? Where are our sons?’ We want to be treated like human beings.”

“We can no longer tolerate this situation. It seems to us we are being treated in a very racist way, exactly how black Americans were treated. We’re 100 Yemenis, 10 Saudis — and we don’t know why they are keeping us here.”

“Honestly we have lost any trust in the American government. But we still have some hope. A mistake was made and maybe it will be corrected. It’s not a shame to make a mistake. The shame is to continue [the same way after the mistake]. The American government needs to understand that it made a mistake and correct the mistake. Shame on the American government. They are acting like the Tunisian dictators.”

“I am not the only one who is talking like this. There are many, many people inside who are very frustrated with what is happening inside the camp. They can’t understand this hatred [coming from the administration].”

“The world outside of America is made of human beings too. But we are being treated like animals. We’re being indefinitely detained here.”

Of the protesters in front of the White House and Department of Justice on January 11, which marked the beginning of a decade of arbitrary detentions at Guantánamo: “We’d like to thank the protesters from the depths of our hearts. They are asking for justice even though they are not imprisoned.”

Protest Signage

The detained man reported that the men at Camp 6 were peacefully protesting by hanging signs: “These signs are posted everywhere — the doors where the visitors [to Camp 6] come in, the doors where the journalists come, the signs are everywhere.”

Moreover, he said, “The signs that people posted are in English — everything is in English.” These men have been detained without charge for so long that many of them have learned how to write in English during their years of detention: “Yes, indeed, most of us have learned English, reading and writing, from the books we have read here. Everything [the protest signage] was written by the detainees themselves.”

Some of the signs posted say the following:

“We are human beings, exactly like you. We have wives, children, fathers and mothers. Let us go to them.”

“You cannot detain us because of what other people are doing outside. Release us.”

“Give us our rights inside the camp. If you don’t want to give us our rights, get us out of here.”

“Until when are we going to stay here?”

“Close this camp of discrimination and racism.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Even if the Obama administration had not taken this inexplicable — or deeply cyncial — step, Latif would still be held, because of a moratorium on releasing any Yemeni prisoners from Guantánamo, which was issued by President Obama last January after a hysterical response to the news that the failed Christmas Day plane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been recruited in Yemen. This is unforgivable in and of itself, as it consigns the 58 Yemenis “approved for transfer” by the President’s Guantánamo Review Task Force to the status of political prisoners, detained through an unacceptable belief in the collective guilt of the Yemeni people.

With just ten days to go before the 9th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, Latif’s attorney, David Remes, has released an unclassified letter from his client, in which Latif expresses his despair at his abandonment by the US justice system — and by his own country.

I am cross-posting the letter below, in the hope of awakening outrage in the hearts of at least some members of the American public who have decided that the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo is somehow irrelevant.

A letter from Guantánamo, by Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif

To Attorney David Remes who dedicated his efforts to work on my dead case. The case that has been buried by its makers under the wreckage of freedom, justice, and the malicious and cursed politics.

Testimony and Consolation

I offer my dead corpse to the coming Yemeni delegation.

They agreed on the torture and agonies that I went through all those years.

They knew that I am innocent and at the same time ill and that I left my country to seek treatment.

This is also a message to the Yemeni people who bear the responsibility of my death in front of God and the responsibility of all of the other Yemenis inside this prison. This prison is a piece of hell that kills everything, the spirit, the body and kicks away all the symptoms of health from them.

A Testimony of Death

A testimony against injustice and against the propagandists of freedom, justice and equality.

Adnan Farhan Abdulatif while in the throes of death.

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Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

In my introduction to that article, I noted how Jason and Jeff contributed significantly to a growing body of work demonstrating that the detention program in Guantánamo, and in the “high-value detainee” program in the CIA’s secret prisons, involved human experimentation, of which medical experiments like the antimalarial project were just a part. Much more remains to be uncovered, but their article was part of a number of reports this year which have begun to shed light on this disturbing aspect of the detainee program. Human experimentation first came to light prominently in “Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program,” a report published by Physicians for Human Rights in June, and another important part of the story emerged in October, when Jason and Jeff (who has spent many years placing the “War on Terror” detention and interrogation policies in the wider context of CIA experimentation since the 1950s) published an article on Truthout entitled, “Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program,” revealing how the program had been given the green light by Cheney’s deputy in March 2002.

In this latest article, cross-posted below, Jason and Jeff focus on the role played by Capt. Albert J. Shimkus, “the former commanding officer and chief surgeon for both the Naval Hospital at Guantánamo Bay and Joint Task Force 160, which administered health care to detainees,” in approving the “mass presumptive treatment” policy, which reveals some dubious claims about Cuban fears of an malaria epidemic and the prevailing rate of malarial infection in Afghanistan at the time Guantánamo opened, and also reveals many examples of how US government concerns about the anti-malarial drug never made it to Guantánamo — or were, perhaps, deliberately ignored.

Key to this article is the discovery of a January 23, 2002, “Infection Control” Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) which “called for the mass presumptive treatment of malaria using mefloquine.” As Jason and Jeff explain:

The “Infection Control” SOP, which was signed by Shimkus and has not been previously released, says, “detainees are native to a region plagued by a number of infectious diseases. It is estimated that a number of these detainees will carry one or more of these illnesses upon arrival … Empiric therapies will include … mefloquine 1250 mg.”

Medical literature usually describes “empiric therapy,” or presumptive treatment for malaria, as the administration or self-administration of antimalarial drugs for symptomatic individuals, or occasionally groups of at-risk patients, who do not have access to laboratories or medical facilities and in whom malaria cannot be formally diagnosed.

At Guantánamo, however, all detainees, whether they had symptoms or not, were given laboratory tests to determine if they had malaria, and doctors were accessible “24/7″ in the event symptoms started to surface, Shimkus said, calling into question the rationale for mass presumptive treatment.

Ex-Guantánamo Official Was Told Not to Discuss Policy Surrounding Antimalarial Drug Used on Detainees
By Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout, December 20, 2010

Military officials were instructed not to publicly discuss a decision made in January 2002 to presumptively treat all Guantánamo detainees with a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug that has been directly linked to suicide, hallucinations, seizures and other severe neuropsychological side effects, according to a retired Navy captain who signed the policy directive.

Capt. Albert J. Shimkus, the former commanding officer and chief surgeon for both the Naval Hospital at Guantánamo Bay and Joint Task Force 160, which administered health care to detainees, defended the unprecedented practice, first reported by Truthout earlier this month, to administer 1250 mg of the drug mefloquine to all “war on terror” detainees transferred to the prison facility within the first 24 hours after their arrival, regardless of whether they had malaria or not.

The 1250 mg dosage is what is used to treat individuals who have malaria and is five times higher than the prophylactic dose given to individuals to prevent the disease. One tropical disease expert has said there is absolutely no “medical justification” to support the military’s decision to presumptively treat all Guantánamo detainees for malaria with high doses of mefloquine.

Mefloquine is also known by its brand name Lariam. It was researched by the US Army in the 1970s during the Vietnam War and licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1989. Since its introduction, it has been directly linked to serious adverse effects, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, confusion, bizarre dreams, nausea, vomiting, sores, hallucinations and homicidal and suicidal thoughts.

Although there were two media reports in 2002 that quoted Shimkus saying “war on terror” detainees were given antimalarial medication, neither he nor any other military or Pentagon official ever disclosed to lawmakers or military personnel who raised questions about the efficacy of mefloquine, that mass presumptive treatment was the policy in place at Guantánamo.

“There were certain issues we were advised not to talk about,” Shimkus told Truthout in an interview, explaining the reason the policy was never publicly disclosed. He could not recall who told him not to discuss the issue.

Shimkus, who is now an associate professor of national security studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, said officials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Navy Environmental Health Center (NEHC) and the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland, which is part of the Defense Intelligence Agency, were all involved in the discussions that resulted in the issuance of a January 23, 2002, “Infection Control” Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that called for the mass presumptive treatment of malaria using mefloquine.

Detainees started arriving at Guantánamo two weeks earlier and were held in a detention center known as Camp X-Ray.

The “Infection Control” SOP, which was signed by Shimkus and has not been previously released, says, “detainees are native to a region plagued by a number of infectious diseases. It is estimated that a number of these detainees will carry one or more of these illnesses upon arrival … Empiric therapies will include … mefloquine 1250 mg.”

Medical literature usually describes “empiric therapy,” or presumptive treatment for malaria, as the administration or self-administration of antimalarial drugs for symptomatic individuals, or occasionally groups of at-risk patients, who do not have access to laboratories or medical facilities and in whom malaria cannot be formally diagnosed.

At Guantánamo, however, all detainees, whether they had symptoms or not, were given laboratory tests to determine if they had malaria, and doctors were accessible “24/7″ in the event symptoms started to surface, Shimkus said, calling into question the rationale for mass presumptive treatment.

Shimkus said the NEHC bore the primary responsibility for recommending that mefloquine be administered to all detainees in treatment doses, but there was consensus among the various government agencies about using the drug in this way.

“There was no one that said, ‘Captain, this is not the way to go,’” Shimkus said. “I did not do anything in isolation. Any policy would have been approved by a higher authority” up the medical chain of command.

Shimkus could not recall the names of the officials from the various government agencies who agreed with and signed off on the policy. Nor could he identify his immediate medical supervisor, a colonel at United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is responsible for contingency planning and operations in Cuba, who Shimkus said would have also been involved in the decision.

Cuban Government Concerns

Shimkus said one of the reasons that factored into the decision to presumptively treat war on terror detainees with mefloquine was concerns raised by the Cuban government.

In an interview with Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg in February 2002, Shimkus said he and other medical officers stationed at Guantanamo met with Cuban doctors and government officials on February 8, 2002, to “reassure the government that suspected terrorist prisoners are not introducing malaria into” Cuba, “which has been free of the mosquito-borne disease for 50 years.”

Rosenberg reported on February 22, 2002, that steps taken to prevent the spread of malaria at Guantánamo included “impregnating the uniforms of both prisoners and troops who handle prisoners with mefloquin [sic] and other agents to kill the parasite.” The Herald‘s February 22, 2002, report was the first and only time mefloquine use at Guantánamo has ever been mentioned. But Rosenberg’s report did not state that Shimkus had already signed a policy directive authorizing mass presumptive treatment.

Shimkus told Truthout he could not recall specific details of his discussions with the Cubans. He did not respond to follow-up questions about Rosenberg’s characterization regarding the use of mefloquine.

Just three days prior to the publication of the Herald‘s report, Navy Capt. Alan “Jeff” Yund appeared before the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB) and was queried about malaria at Guantánamo.

But Yund, the Navy’s liaison officer to AFEB, did not disclose that mefloquine was being administered to detainees. He said he believed detainees who were infected with the disease would be treated on a case-by-case basis with a different antimalarial drug known as primaquine, and that other steps would be taken to protect against mosquitoes.

Yund told Truthout via email that he did not refer to mefloquine during the AFEB briefing because, “I do not recall being involved in any consultations regarding the use of mefloquine at Guantánamo and do not recall being aware that it was being used there.”

Yund declined to comment further.

Shimkus could not say why Yund was unaware that mefloquine was being used as a form of mass presumptive treatment at Guantánamo.

The use of mefloquine at Guantánamo was not mentioned during numerous other AFEB briefings, particularly one held in May 2003, where concerns were raised by members of the board about the drug’s severe neuropsychiatric side effects, which US military personnel who had taken mefloquine in 250 mg prophylactic doses had been complaining about.

Red Flags Raised

Shimkus said he was aware of the alternatives and noted that at one point the antibiotic drug doxycycline and Malarone were under consideration, but the latter had only been approved by the Department of Defense in 2000 and had not been in widespread use yet. Mefloquine, Shimkus said, was considered efficient and effective.

But at an April 16, 2002, meeting of the Interagency Working Group for Antimalarial Chemotherapy, which included Defense Department representatives, participants concluded that study designs on mefloquine were flawed or biased and based on “sensational or [at] best marketed information.”

The Working Group, which included representatives from the State Department, the CDC and FDA, stated, “Sufficient evidence exists to raise the question whether the neuropsychiatric adverse events of mefloquine are frequent enough and severe enough to warrant limiting its use.” The group called for additional research, and warned, “Other treatment regimes should be carefully considered before mefloquine is used at the doses required for treatment.”

Additionally, in October 2002, William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary for defense, admitted that “recent press articles and scientific studies have raised concerns regarding the adverse effects associated with mefloquine use.”

Winkenwerder’s admission was made in a letter written in response to questions raised by John McHugh, then chair of the subcommittee on military affairs for the House Armed Services Committee. The letter said, “recent peer-review reports” showing adverse events levels associated with mefloquine are “much higher than previously reported.” Winkenwerder told McHugh, now secretary of the Army, that the CDC had initiated a review in 2001, which was then still underway, of all chemoprophylactic drugs, including mefloquine.

Shimkus said he did not believe Winkenwerder was part of the consulting team who signed off on administering treatment doses of mefloquine to detainees. But Shimkus said the policy was “well-known in the [military] medical community.” Winkenwerder did not respond to calls for comment.

The use of mefloquine as a mass presumptive treatment at Guantánamo continued until at least July 2005, despite the presence of ongoing warnings.

In June 2004, the CDC issued a new set of guidelines on malaria treatment, which warned that mefloquine “is associated with a higher rate of severe neuropsychiatric reactions when used at treatment doses,” and recommended that mefloquine be used “only when … [other] options cannot be used.”

As far back as 1990, the CDC warned in a set of recommendations for malaria prevention for travelers that mefloquine should not be used for presumptive self-treatment “because of the frequency of side effects, especially dizziness, which has been associated with therapeutic dosages of mefloquine.”

“This was a one time treatment only [for detainees],” Shimkus said. “My focus on mefloquine was specifically for preventing malaria from occurring.”

However, other Guantánamo documents obtained by Truthout say that on February 28, 2002, 59 detainees allegedly refused to take medication, including antimalarial drugs, and noted that the “series must start over.” It is unclear whether this included readministration of mefloquine, or whether the “series” described included further antimalarial doses of primaquine or cholorquine, also administered to the detainees.

Maj. Remington Nevin, an Army public health physician, who formerly worked at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center and has written extensively about mefloquine, previously told Truthout the decision to administer high doses of the drug, even as a one-time treatment “is, at best, an egregious malpractice.”

Nevin added, “many dozens of detainees, possibly hundreds” likely experienced side effects “as severe as those intended through the application of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’”

Truthout was unable to locate a single malaria expert who was willing to go on the record to defend the government’s policy of mass presumptive treatment of the disease using mefloquine or any other antimalarial drug.

Shimkus told Truthout that, “clinically,” he could not recall if any detainees experienced any side effects associated with taking mefloquine, but if they did, that data would have been noted in their medical records.

“We have robust medical records,” Shimkus said. “If anything occurred that was a cause for concern it would have been documented in their medical records.”

But the government has refused to release Guantánamo detainees’ medical records to the media or to their attorneys citing, among other reasons, privacy concerns.

As first documented in a separate report on mefloquine use at Guantánamo published earlier this month by Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Policy and Research, medical files for detainee 693 [Salah al-Salami], released by the Defense Department in connection with his alleged suicide at the prison facility in June 2006, contradict Shimkus’s assertions. Those records show that two weeks after the detainee was given mefloquine in June 2002, he was interviewed by Guantánamo medical personnel and reported that he was suffering from nightmares, hallucinations, anxiety, auditory and visual hallucinations, sleep loss and suicidal thoughts.

A Guantánamo medical officer who interviewed the detainee, however, did not state that the detainee may have been experiencing mefloquine-related side effects in notes he took evaluating the detainee’s condition.

Shimkus dismissed the significance of the medical officer’s failure to connect the detainee’s psychological state to the possible side effects resulting from mefloquine, stating that the medical officer may have been unaware “the patient had taken [the drug], because there was a lot of turnover of staff at that point.”

Scott Allen and Vince Iacopino, medical doctors affiliated with Physicians for Human Rights, a doctors’ organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said, “the questionable use of mefloquine for malaria prevention at Guantánamo underscore the need for transparency of detention policies and procedures” at the prison facility.

“Benefits Outweighed Risks”

Shimkus, who is a nurse by training, acknowledged that the mass presumptive treatment of malaria using mefloquin was unprecedented. However, he said the “benefits outweighed the risks.”

When asked, Shimkus did not indicate that contraindications for the use of mefloquine, such as pre-existing cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, seizures, or other mental illness, which would have heightened mefloquine’s side effects, were ever pursued for the individual detainees. He simply reiterated that the benefits of administering treatment doses of mefloquine outweighed the risks.

Yet, when told that the Defense Department took a radically different approach a decade earlier, when thousands of Haitian refugees housed at Guantánamo were first tested to determine if they had malaria and, only then, were given a treatment dosage of a different medication, chloroquine, if they had the disease, Shimkus said war on terror detainees “were a different cohort of individuals.”

“You have to remember that this was in the context of February 2002,” Shimkus said. “The detainees came from Afghanistan and other areas that may have been chloroquine resistant.”

Moreover, in two articles published in 2002, Shimkus claimed statistics showed that 40 percent of Afghanistan’s population was infected with malaria. But according to figures from the World Health Organization, in 2002, the number infected in Afghanistan was about 13 percent.

Shimkus also indicated that malaria cases at Guantánamo could have led to a public health crisis at the base, and reintroduction of malaria into Cuba. Once an outbreak begins, Shimkus told Truthout, one “loses control” of the situation and there is an epidemic.

However, when the CDC examined the influx of tens of thousands of refugees to the United States from hyper-epidemic sub-Saharan Africa, where the falciparum form of malaria kills more than a million people yearly, they concluded that “sustained malaria transmission” in a nonmalarial endemic country, like the US, from this population “would be unlikely.”

Still, the CDC called for mass presumptive treatment (with a drug other than mefloquine) of these refugees before they came to the US — mainly because they feared many US doctors wouldn’t recognize malaria symptoms — but noted that such mass presumptive treatment from other parts of the world, including Afghanistan, was not recommended, because “the risk and cost of post-arrival presumptive treatment currently outweighs the potential benefits.”

Of the more than 700 detainees held at Guantánamo, only four tested positive for malaria, all in January and February 2002.

But Shimkus still defended the mass administration of mefloquine, saying, “One [infection] is too many.” Shimkus said he believes he and other military officials “made the right policy decisions based on the information we had to prevent the introduction of malaria” in Cuba and protect the health of the detainees.

Shimkus said after he retired from the military he became involved with the Open Society Institute, funded by the Soros Foundation, and has since taken a role in the work the organization has done to raise awareness about abusive interrogation measures contained in the Army Field Manual.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As has been clear for many years, since prisoners and former prisoners began speaking about the conditions of their confinement, medical and psychiatric personnel were intimately involved in a regime that involved withholding medical treatment for those who refused to “cooperate” with their interrogators — in other words, by providing false confessions — and the entire interrogation program — the one based on torture and coercion rather than the one favored by the law enforcement agencies, who stuck to non-violent rapport-building techniques — was directed by psychologists from the SERE program (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) taught in US military schools, which involved using torture techniques to train military personnel to resist interrogation if captured, and which was reverse-engineered for use in the “War on Terror.”

These techniques — and the chilling theory of “learned helplessness” that underpinned it, which was designed to destroy the minds of prisoners so thoroughly that they became utterly dependent on their jailers — were intended to “break” prisoners so that they would confess, but it should also have been obvious that they would most effectively secure false confessions, rather than anything resembling the truth. For some involved in the program, this was not obvious — and this blindness to reality remains a problem that afflicts all those who still argue that the use of torture is a valuable tool — but for others the production of false confessions was very useful indeed.

This can be seen in particular in a false confession extracted from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of an Afghan training camp, who was rendered to Egypt, where he was tortured until he confessed that Saddam Hussein had met al-Qaeda representatives to discuss the use of chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later retracted his false confession — before he was eventually flown back to Libya, where, last May, he died, allegedly by committing suicide in prison — but this was of no concern to Dick Cheney, who used his tortured lies to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Beyond this specific example of the use of torture to extract false confessions to justify an illegal war, it has also become apparent that the detention program in Guantánamo, and in the “high-value detainee” program in the CIA’s secret prisons, involved human experimentation. This came to light prominently in “Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program,” a report published by Physicians for Human Rights last June, and another important part of the story emerged in October, when the journalist Jason Leopold and the psychologist and blogger Jeff Kaye (who has spent many years placing the “War on Terror” detention and interrogation policies in the wider context of CIA experimentation since the 1950s) published an article on Truthout entitled, “Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program,” revealing how the program had been given the green light by Cheney’s deputy in March 2002.

Jason and Jeff have just published another exposé for Truthout, demonstrating how every single prisoner at Guantánamo was forced to “take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called ‘pharmacologic waterboarding.’” The article reveals another chilling aspect of Guantánamo as a laboratory for human experimentation, and also confirms what former prisoners have been stating for many years, although without the detailed evidence unearthed by Kaye and Leopold. In my book The Guantánamo Files, for example, I included the following passages, which will undoubtedly resonate with those who read the cross-posted article that follows:

Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed [three British citizens commonly known as "the Tipton Three"] described an incident in August 2002 when medical staff toured the cell blocks asking the prisoners if they wanted an injection, “although they wouldn’t say what it was for.” They said that most of the prisoners refused, but the medical staff then returned with an ERF team who forced them to have the injections anyway. Ahmed said that the drug made him feel “very drowsy,” and added, “I have no idea why they were giving us these injections. It happened perhaps a dozen times altogether and I believe it still goes on at the camp. You are not allowed to refuse it and you don’t know what it is for.”

Abdullah al-Noaimi [from Bahrain] told his lawyers that within his first few days at Guantánamo he “was injected with an unknown substance which made him depressed and despondent. He was unable to control his thoughts and his mind raced. He was also unable to control his body and fell to the floor.” He was then placed in isolation for three days, where medical staff administered an unknown medicine “that made him feel drunk,’ until he refused to take it any more, and on another occasion was given pills which “caused him to hear voices.” When he told his interrogators that he “felt like he was losing his mind,” their only response was, “Yeah, we know.”

Controversial Drug Given to All Guantánamo Detainees Akin to “Pharmacologic Waterboarding”
By Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout, December 1, 2010

The Defense Department forced all “war on terror” detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called “pharmacologic waterboarding.”

The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not.

The revelation, which has not been previously reported, was buried in documents publicly released by the Defense Department (DoD) two years ago as part of the government’s investigation into the June 2006 deaths of three Guantánamo detainees.

Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, who was stationed at Guantánamo at the time of the suicides in 2006, and has presented evidence that demonstrates the three detainees could not have died by hanging themselves, noticed in the detainees’ medical files that they were given mefloquine. Hickman has been investigating the circumstances behind the detainees’ deaths for nearly four years.

Interviews with mefloquine and malaria experts and a review of peer-reviewed journals and government documents show there were no preexisting cases where mefloquine was ever prescribed for mass presumptive treatment of malaria.

All detainees arriving at Guantánamo in January 2002 were first given a treatment dosage of 1,250 mg of mefloquine, before laboratory tests were conducted to determine if they actually had the disease, according to a section of the DoD documents entitled “Standard Inprocessing Orders For Detainees.” The 1,250 mg dosage is what would be given if the detainees actually had malaria. That dosage is five times higher than the prophylactic dose given to individuals to prevent the disease.

Maj. Remington Nevin, an Army public health physician, who formerly worked at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center and has written extensively about mefloquine, said in an interview the use of mefloquine “in this manner … is, at best, an egregious malpractice.”

The government has exposed detainees “to unacceptably high risks of potentially severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including seizures, intense vertigo, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, aggression, panic, anxiety, severe insomnia, and thoughts of suicide,” said Nevin, who was not speaking in an official capacity, but offering opinions as a board-certified, preventive medicine physician. “These side effects could be as severe as those intended through the application of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’”

Mefloquine is also known by its brand name Lariam. It was researched by the US Army in the 1970s and licensed by the Food and Drug Administration in 1989. Since its introduction, it has been directly linked to serious adverse effects, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, confusion, hallucinations, bizarre dreams, nausea, vomiting, sores and homicidal and suicidal thoughts. It belongs to a class of drugs known as quinolines, which were part of a 1956 human experiment study to investigate “toxic cerebral states,” as part of the CIA’s MKULTRA mind-control program.

The Army tapped the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) to develop mefloquine and it was later licensed to the Swiss pharmaceutical company F. Hoffman-La Roche. The first human trials of mefloquine were conducted in the mid-1970s on prisoners, who were deliberately inoculated with malaria at Stateville Correctional prison near Joliet, Illinois, the site of controversial antimalarial experimentation in the early 1940s.

The drug was administered to Guantánamo detainees without regard for their medical or psychological history, despite its considerable risk of exacerbating pre-existing conditions. Mefloquine is also known to have serious side effects among individuals under treatment for depression or other serious mental health disorders, which numerous detainees were said to have been treated for, according to their attorneys and published reports.

In 2002, when the prison was established and mefloquine first administered, there were dozens of suicide attempts at Guantánamo. That same year, the DoD stopped reporting attempted suicides.

By February 2002, there were at least 459 detainees imprisoned at Guantánamo. In March of that year, according to the book, “Saving Grace at Guantánamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior,” by Montgomery Granger, “the situation” at the prison began “deteriorating rapidly.”

“There is more and more psychosis becoming evident in detainees,” wrote Granger, an Army Reserve major and medic who was stationed at Guantánamo in 2002. “We already have probably a dozen or so detainees who are psychiatric cases. The number is growing.”

“Presumptively Treating” Malaria

Though malaria is nonexistent in Cuba, DoD spokeswoman Maj. Tanya Bradsher told Truthout that the US government was concerned that the disease would be reintroduced into the country as detainees were transferred to the prison facility in January 2002.

A “decision was made,” Bradsher said in an email, to “presumptively treat each arriving Guantánamo detainee for malaria to prevent the possibility of having mosquito-borne [malaria] spread from an infected individual to uninfected individuals in the Guantánamo population, the guard force, the population at the Naval base or the broader Cuban population.”

But Granger wrote in his book that a Navy entomologist was present at Guantánamo in January and February 2002 and during that time only identified insects that were nuisances and did not identify any insects that were carriers of a disease, such as malaria.

Nevertheless, Bradsher said the “mefloquine dosage [given to detainees] was entirely for public health purposes … and not for any other purpose” and “is completely appropriate.”

“The risks and benefits to the health of the detainees were central considerations,” she added.

But a September 13, 2002, DoD memo governing the operational use of mefloquine said, “Malaria is not a threat in Guantánamo Bay.” Indeed, there have only been two to three reported cases of malaria at Guantánamo.

The DoD memo, signed by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder, was sent to then-Rep. John McHugh, the Republican chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Military Personnel. McHugh is now Secretary of the Army.

A Senate staff member told Truthout the Senate Armed Services Committee was never briefed about malaria concerns at Guantánamo nor was the committee made aware of “any issue related to the use of mefloquine or any other anti-malarial drug” related to “the treatment of detainees.”

When questions were raised at a February 19, 2002 meeting of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB) about what measures the military was taking to address malaria concerns at Guantánamo, Navy Capt. Alan J. Lund did not disclose that mefloquine was being administered to detainees as a form of presumptive treatment.

Yund said the military gave detainees a different anti-malarial drug known as primaquine and noted that “informed consent” was “absolutely practiced” prior to administering drugs to detainees, an assertion that contradicts claims made by numerous prisoners who said they were forced to take drugs even if they protested. Yund did not return calls for comment.

Bradsher declined to respond to a follow-up question about who made the decision to presumptively treat detainees with mefloquine.

An April 16, 2002, meeting of the Interagency Working Group for Antimalarial Chemotherapy, which DoD, along with other federal government agencies, is a part of, was specifically dedicated to investigating mefloquine’s use and the drug’s side effects. The group concluded that study designs on mefloquine up to that point were flawed or biased and criticized DoD medical policy for disregarding scientific fact and basing itself more on “sensational or best marketed information.”

The Working Group called for additional research, and warned, “other treatment regimes should be carefully considered before mefloquine is used at the doses required for treatment.”

Still, despite the red flags that pointed to mefloquine as a high-risk drug, the DoD’s mefloquine program proceeded.

In fact, a June 2004 set of guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says mefloquine should only be used when other standard drugs were not available, as it “is associated with a higher rate of severe neuropsychiatric reactions when used at treatment doses.”

According to the CDC, “‘presumptive treatment’ without the benefit of laboratory confirmation should be reserved for extreme circumstances (strong clinical suspicion, severe disease, impossibility of obtaining prompt laboratory confirmation).”

A CDC spokesman refused to comment about the “presumptive treatment” of malaria at Guantanamo and referred questions to the DoD.

Nevin said, if “mass presumptive treatment has been given consistently, many dozens of detainees, possibly hundreds, would almost certainly have suffered such disabling adverse events.”

“It appears that for years, senior Defense health leaders have condoned the medically indefensible practice of using high doses of mefloquine ostensibly for mass presumptive treatment of malaria among detainees from the Middle East and Asia lacking any evidence of disease,” Nevin said. “This is a use for which there is no precedent in the medical literature and which is specifically discouraged among refugees by malaria experts at the Centers for Disease Control.”

Even proponents of limited mefloquine usage are seriously questioning the logic behind the DoD’s actions. Professor James McCarthy, chair of the Infectious Diseases Division of the Queensland Institute of Medicine in Australia, who is an advocate of the safe use of mefloquine under proper safeguards, and takes it himself when traveling, told Truthout he was unaware of the use of mefloquine for mass presumptive treatment as described by the DoD, but could imagine it under certain circumstances.

However, when informed that lab tests were available and the detainees were screened for the blood product G6PD, used to determine the suitability of certain antimalarial drugs, McCarthy found the DoD’s use of mefloquine at Guantánamo difficult to understand and “hard to support on pure clinical grounds as an antimalarial.”

Treatment, Torture or an Experiment?

Another striking point about the DoD’s decision to presumptively treat mostly Muslim detainees with mefloquine beginning in 2002 is that it is the exact opposite of how the DoD responded to malaria concerns among the Haitian refugees who were held at Guantánamo a decade earlier.

Between 1991 and 1992, more than 14,000 Haitian refugees were held in temporary camps set up at Guantánamo. A large number of Haitian refugees — 235 during a four-month period — were diagnosed with malaria. But instead of presumptively treating the refugee population at Guantánamo, the DoD conducted laboratory tests first and only the individuals who were found to be malaria carriers were administered chloroquine.

Another example of how the DoD approached malaria treatment differently for other subjects is in the case of Army Rangers who returned from malarial areas of Afghanistan between June and September 2002 and were infected with the disease at an attack rate of 52.4 cases per 1,000 soldiers.

However, the Rangers did not receive mass presumptive treatment of mefloquine. They were given other standard drugs after laboratory tests, according to documents obtained by Truthout.

Nevin said the DoD’s treatment of Haitian refugees represented “a situation that arguably presented a much higher risk of disease and secondary transmission, but one which US medical experts stated at the time could be safely managed through more conservative and focused measures.”

Why did the government use the “conservative and focused” approach in treating Haitian refugees and the Army rangers, but then revert to presumptive mefloquine treatment in the case of the Guantánamo detainees, who — a month after the prison facility opened in January 2002 — were stripped of their protections under the Geneva Conventions?

According to Sean Camoni, a Seton Hall University law school research fellow, “there is no legitimate medical purpose for treating malaria in this way” and the drug’s severe side effects may actually have been the DoD’s intended impact in calling for the drug’s usage.

Camoni and several other Seton Hall law school students have been working on a report about mefloquine use on Guantánamo detainees. Their work was conducted independently of Truthout’s investigation.

A copy of the newly-published Seton Hall report, “Drug Abuse? An Exploration of the Government’s Use of Mefloquine at Guantánamo,” says mefloquine’s extreme side effects may have violated a provision in the antitorture statute related to the use of “mind altering substances or other procedures” that “profoundly disrupts the senses or the personality.”

Legal memos prepared in August 2002 by former DoJ attorneys Jay Bybee and John Yoo for the CIA’s torture program permitted the use of drugs for interrogations. The authority was also contained in a legal memo Yoo prepared for the DoD less than a year later after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld convened a working group to address “policy considerations with respect to the choice of interrogation techniques.”

In September, Truthout reported that the DoD’s inspector general (IG) conducted an investigation into allegations that detainees in custody of the US military were drugged. The IG’s report, which remains classified, was completed a year ago and was shared with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for the Armed Services Committee, told Truthout at the time that the IG report did not substantiate allegations of drugging of prisoners for the “purposes of interrogation.”

The medical files for detainee 693 [Salah al-Salami, one of the three men who died in June 2006] released in 2008 shows that, two weeks after he first started taking mefloquine in June 2002, he was interviewed by Guantánamo medical personnel and reported he was suffering from nightmares, hallucinations, anxiety auditory and visual hallucinations, anxiety, sleep loss and suicidal thoughts.

The detainee said he had previously been treated for anxiety and had a family history of mental illness. He was diagnosed with adjustment disorder, according to the DoD documents. Guantánamo medical staff who interviewed the detainee did not state that he may have been experiencing mefloquine-related side effects in an evaluation of his condition.

Mark Denbeaux, the director of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, who conducted an independent investigation into the 2006 deaths of the three Guantánamo detainees, said in an interview “almost every remaining question here would be solved if the [detainees'] full medical records were released.”

The government has refused to release Guantánamo detainees’ medical records, citing privacy concerns in some cases, and assertions that they are “protected” or “classified” in other instances. The few medical records that have been released have been heavily redacted.

“A crucial issue is dosage” Denbeaux said. “Giving detainees toxic doses of mefloquine has mind-altering consequences that may be permanent. Without access to medical records, which the government refuses to release, the use of mefloquine in this manner appears to be grotesque malpractice at best, if not human experimentation or ‘enhanced interrogation.’ The question is where are the doctors who approved this practice and where are the medical records?”

Bradsher did not respond to questions about whether the government kept data about the adverse effects mefloquine had on detainees.

An absolute prohibition against experiments on prisoners of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions, but President George W. Bush stripped war on terror detainees of those protections. Some of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” also had an experimental quality.

At the same time detainees were given high doses of mefloquine, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz issued a directive changing the rules on human subject protections for DoD experiments, allowing for a waiver of informed consent when necessary for developing a “medical product” for the armed services. Bush also granted unprecedented authority to the secretary of Health and Human Services to classify information as secret.

Briefings on Side Effects

As the DoD was administering mefloquine to Guantánamo prisoners, senior Pentagon officials were being briefed about the drug’s dangerous side effects. During one such briefing, questions arose about what steps the military was taking to address malaria concerns among detainees sent to Guantánamo.

Internal documents from Roche, obtained by UPI in 2002, indicated that the pharmaceutical company had been tracking suicidal reactions to Lariam going back to the early 1990s.

In September 2002, Roche sent a letter to physicians and pharmacists stating that the company changed its warning labels for mefloquine.

Roche further said in one of two new warning paragraphs that some of the symptoms associated with mefloquine use included suicidal thoughts and suicide and also “may cause psychiatric symptoms in a number of patients, ranging from anxiety, paranoia, and depression to hallucination and psychotic behavior,” which “have been reported to continue long after mefloquine has been stopped.”

Military Struggles

Cmdr. William Manofsky, who is retired from the US Navy and currently on disability due to post-traumatic stress disorder and side effects from mefloquine, said those are some of the symptoms he initially suffered from after taking the drug for several months beginning in November 2002 after he was deployed to the Middle East to work on two Naval projects.

In March 2003, “I became violently ill during a night live-fire exercise with the [Navy] SEALS,” Manofsky said. “I felt like I was air sick. All the flashing lights from the tracers and rockets … targeting device made me really sick. I threw up for an hour straight before being medevac’d back to the Special Forces compound where I had my first ever panic attack.”

For three years, he had to walk with a cane due to a loss of equilibrium. Numerous other accounts like Manofsky’s can be found on the web site lariaminfo.org.

In 2008, Dr. Nevin published a study detailing a high prevalence of mental health contraindications to the safe use of mefloquine in soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. Responding in part to concerns raised by the mefloquine-associated suicide of Army Spc. Juan Torres, internal Army presentations confirmed that the drug had been widely misprescribed to soldiers with contraindications, including to many on antidepressants.

A formal policy memo in February 2009 from Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker removed mefloquine as a “first-line” agent, and changed the policy so that mefloquine would not be prescribed to Army personnel unless they had contraindications to the preferred drug, the antibiotic doxycycline. Nor could mefloquine be prescribed to any personnel with a history of traumatic brain injury or mental illness.

By September 2009, the policy was extended throughout the DoD.

New prisoners are no longer arriving at Guantánamo and the prison population has been in decline in recent years as detainees are released or transferred to other countries. Currently, the detainee population at Guantánamo is 174.

But Nevin said the justification the Pentagon offered for using mefloquine to presumptively treat detainees transferred to the prison beginning in 2002 “betrays a profound ignorance of basic principles of tropical medicine and suggests extremely poor, and arguably incompetent, medical oversight that demands further investigation.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In an article following the ruling, “Barbaric: 86-Year Sentence for Aafia Siddiqui,” I presented the outline of Dr. Siddiqui’s story, and how the sentence hinted at a cynical cover-up by the US authorities, as follows:

Such a disproportionate sentence would be barbaric, even if Aafia Siddiqui had killed the soldiers she shot at, but as she missed entirely, and was herself shot twice in the abdomen, it simply doesn’t make sense. Moreover, the sentencing overlooks claims by her lawyers that her fingerprints were not even on the gun that she allegedly fired, and, even more significantly, hints at a chilling cover-up, mentioned everywhere except at Aafia’s trial earlier this year. Seen this way, her sudden reappearance in Ghazni in July 2008, the shooting incident, the trial and the conviction were designed to hide the fact that, for five years and four months, from March 2003, when she and her three children were reportedly kidnapped in Karachi, she was held in secret US detention — possibly in the US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan — where she was subjected to horrendous abuse.

More of Aafia Siddiqui’s story can be found in my earlier articles here and here, and also, of course, on the website of the Justice for Aafia Coalition. Post-sentencing, she is now held in the Federal Medical Facility in Carswell, Texas, a notorious establishment described in an article by Yvonne Ridley for Cageprisoners as the “Hospital of horror.” Please visit this JFAC page for details about how to send letters of support.

I’m pleased to report that videos of my interview with Shafiq and Ruhal are now available, via YouTube, and are posted below. I thank Maryam Hassan for encouraging me to do my first ever live interview in the host’s chair, rather than as an interviewee, and also for preparing an excellent list of questions, which I modified and expanded on, to encourage Shafiq and Ruhal not only to talk about their experiences in US custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, which are harrowing enough on their own terms, but also to help the audience to imagine the brutality to which Aafia Siddiqui would have been subjected, the effects of isolation and torture, the establishment of a climate of cruelty and despair in which false confessions can be extracted, and the effects of isolation from one’s family — in Aafia Siddiqui’s case, her three young children.

In the first of the three videos, I asked Shafiq and Ruhal about the brutal conditions in the US prison at Kandahar airport, where they were taken following their capture in Afghanistan in November 2001, after they had survived a notorious massacre of prisoners in container trucks and a stay in the Northern Alliance’s brutal and overcrowded Sheberghan prison. I also asked them what they knew about the US prison at Bagram airbase, where Aafia Siddiqui was held, and asked them about the isolating effect of not only being prohibited from receiving any visitors, but of not even receiving letters from their family — or only receiving letters that were heavily censored.

In the second video, Shafiq and Ruhal talked about the despair they felt in Guantánamo when it became clear that the British government had no intention of helping them. I also spoke about how torture is both illegal and counter-productive, and asked Shafiq and Ruhal to explain how the use of torture can lead to false confessions, which allowed them to explain how, in Guantánamo, they eventually made false confessions after being subjected to the “frequent flier program,” a program of prolonged sleep deprivation that involved being moved from cell to cell every few hours, being held in isolation for five months, where they were given very little food, being short-shackled in painful stress position for two to three days at a time, when they were obliged to urinate and defecate on themselves, and being subjected to extremely loud music.

In the third video, Shafiq and Rasul explained how their treatment in Guantánamo led them to think of committing suicide, and, following up on how they were forced into making false confessions, I noted how false confessions don’t necessarily lead to prisoners being released from Guantánamo. I also asked Shafiq and Ruhal to explain more about the circumstances that led to their release, and Shafiq explained how, on the date that they were supposedly filmed at a training camp with Osama bin Laden, he was attending university in the UK (although he also explained that British agents suggested that he might have traveled on a false passport).

I also asked Shafiq and Ruhal to discuss how receiving medical treatment at Guantánamo was entirely dependent on cooperation with the interrogators (in other words, making false confessions). This allowed them to explain how Omar Khadr, the Canadian who was just 15 years old when he was seized (and who was recently convicted in a trial by Military Commission), was one of the many prisoners deprived of medical treatment because he would not make false confessions, even though his wounds were “horrific,” and they couldn’t understand how he was still alive. They explained that they regularly heard him crying in an isolation cell, and also explained that he had been subjected to the “frequent flier program,” adding that, although he is now 24 years old, he “still has that child mentality,” In a moving finale, Ruhal reflected on the barbarity of separating Aafia Siddiqui from her children, and on how they may have been used in an attempt to secure her compliance, as the authorities at Guantánamo had no qualms about abusing child prisoners.

I do hope that you have the time to watch the videos below, and to circulate them if you find Shafiq and Ruhal’s testimony to be as powerful as I did. I’m honored that they agreed to take part in the event, and grateful that we also had some time to hang out and have a meal together, away from the ghosts of Guantánamo and Kandahar that are still with them, five and a half years after they were released.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

At Guantánamo last week, following Omar Khadr’s acceptance of a plea deal in which he followed a script dictated by the Obama administration and pleaded guilty to invented war crimes including being an “alien unprivileged enemy belligerent,” who had committed murder in violation of the laws of war, the Military Commission circus moved on to a sentencing phase, in which the prosecution and the defense produced witnesses for the deliberations of a seven-member military jury.

Following the often inexplicable rules of the Military Commissions, the jury members made their own decision about an appropriate sentence for the Canadian, delivering a sentence of 40 years on Sunday. This was a largely symbolic victory for the government, and would only have had any practical significance if it had been  less than the eight years negotiated as an open secret at the heart of the plea deal, but it was still deeply shocking, and particularly so in light of some little-reported facts about Khadr’s case that emerged during his sentencing hearings last week, regarding his appetite for learning and his openness to positive, constructive thinking about the world.

As I explained in a previous article, one of the prosecution’s key witnesses last week was a dubious psychiatrist, Michael Welner, who attempted to portray Khadr as an unrepentant terrorist, and, at one point during his generally hysterical appearance in the Guantánamo courtroom, claimed that Khadr had “read only Harry Potter and the Quran,” and had memorized the latter while “marinating inside [the] radical Islamic community” in Guantánamo.

Even leaving aside, for a moment, the slanderous nature of his comments about the atmosphere within Guantánamo (which is belied by the accounts of those released from the prison — most recently here), and also leaving aside the problems with al-Qaeda terrorists reading the pagan adventures of Harry Potter (which I discussed here), Michael Welner’s appraisal of Khadr’s reading habits was exposed as a lie by Khadr’s defense team.

In what was described by Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald as “a feisty and at times disorganized cross-examination,” one of Khadr’s lawyers, Air Force Maj. Matthew Schwartz, got Welner to “pull from his notes more of [Khadr’s] reading list,” revealing that he had also read Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, and “unnamed thrillers by John Grisham and steamy novels by Danielle Steel.”

If further proof was needed that the attempt to portray Khadr as an unreconstructed terrorist was thoroughly deceptive, this came with the exposure to the court, by Khadr’s defense team, of a two-year exchange of letters between Khadr and Arlette Zinck, an English professor at King’s University College in Edmonton.

In his letters, as the Edmonton Journal explained on Saturday, Khadr “expressed his gratitude” to Zinck “to know I am not alone now,” and discussed other books he had read, including Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. As the Journal also explained, having obtained copies of the letters, which are available here and here, “He often signed off saying he hoped to meet Zinck and King’s students one day and possibly attend the small Christian college.”

The fact that Nelson Mandela’s book left a deep impression on Khadr can be seen from his reference to Mandela in a statement he delivered to the court on Thursday, when he said, “During my time here, as Nelson Mandela says, in prison, the most thing you have is time to think about things. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. I came to a conclusion that hate, first thing is, you’re not going to gain anything with hate. Second thing, it’s more destructive than it’s constructive. Third thing: I came to a conclusion that love and forgiveness are more constructive and will bring people together and will give them understanding and will solve a lot of problems.”

The Journal also noted that, in a letter in April this year, Khadr wrote a page on his thoughts about the book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah, which must have affected him profoundly, as Beah was forced to fight in Sierra Leone as a boy soldier at the age of 13, and, as the Journal described it, “committed terrible violence but survived and was rehabilitated.”

Without dwelling on how neither the US nor Canadian governments had fulfilled their obligation to rehabilitate him, under the terms of the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which obliges signatories to “[r]ecogniz[e] the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities,” and to ensure “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict,” Khadr wrote:

After I’ve finished reading A Long Way Gone, I was struck by the simplicity, truthfulness and the straight-from-the-heart fact of it. A Long Way Gone is the best example to what humans have reached from horrors they committed to the way they cured it and especially in the child field, a treatment that guaranteed success and cureness, a way that leaves no traces of the horrors that have scarred the soul.

In the most powerful passage, which ought to cause undying shame to those in the United States who have persisted with prosecution of Khadr, or, like the Canadian government, have washed their hands of him, he wrote:

Children’s hearts are like a sponge that will absorb what is around it, like wet cement, soft until it is sculptured in a certain way. A child’s soul is a sacred dough that must be shaped in a holy way.

Describing the relationship between Khadr and Zinck, the Journal explained that Zinck “took on the role of professor, urging Khadr to do a lot of reading and writing so he can one day apply to university as a mature student. She also wrote from her faith, urging him to react to his difficult surroundings with love and strength and remember that ‘God keeps you close.’”

In a telephone interview from Guantánamo on Friday, Zinck said that she “began writing to Khadr in November 2008 because her Christian faith asks people to comfort those in need, including prisoners,” and explained that her inspiration came from the Gospel According to St. Matthew, chapter 25, verse 35, in which “Christ commands His disciples to comfort the sick, feed the hungry and thirsty and provide support for prisoners,” adding that, “Out of that grew the idea to encourage Omar to get an education.”

Describing how it became clear that Khadr is a “voracious reader,” Zinck also explained that the young man she came to know through the letters was a “polite, thoughtful, intelligent person.”

As a result of the exchange of letters, a group of students at King’s University College organized a public meeting to discuss Khadr’s case, at whch 700 people turned up, who “actively pushed” for him to receive a fair trial.

Moreover, on Friday, Khadr told his sentencing hearing at Guantánamo that he would like to attend King’s University College, and Zinck told the hearing she would “write a letter of recommendation for Khadr if he applied to attend the college.”

The following are excerpts from the letters between Zinck and Khadr.

October 23, 2008, Khadr to Zinck:

I got your letter and picture, was very surprised by them. So thank you very much for them, I’m in your debt and what you showed is more than I expected and that you are a true friend and as they say: The true friend is not in the time of ease but in the time of hardship.

January 22, 2009, Khadr to Zinck:

I have received your response so thank you very much … Your letters are like candles, very bright in my hardship and darkness. About myself, what can I say? We hold on to hope in our hearts and the love from others to us and that keeps us going until we reach our happiness.

October 18, 2009, Zinck to Khadr, as part of “a long letter with daily lesson plans and writing assignments, urging him to choose a novel, Huckleberry Finn or Harry Potter, and write an essay”:

See if you can do a little bit each day. You want to strike a balance between challenging yourself and to do a little more than is easy and putting undue pressure on yourself … [D]on’t feel discouraged about the time you are spending in Guantánamo right now. Live it fully. Be kind to those around you. Know that there are many of us here at home who are thinking about you. Right now you have time to read slowly and think deeply. Believe it or not this is a blessing if you will see it as such. I hope this modest plan will help to give your studies shape. Everything is an opportunity to learn, Omar. Some of the world’s most important stories have been written by men in prison. Your circumstances will teach you things that other people will never know. Be a good student of the lessons that life is presenting to you right at this moment. They are precious, uniquely yours and irreplaceable.

February 5, 2010, Zinck to Khadr:

Whenever you are lonesome, remember you have many friends who keep you in their prayers. Each morning at 9 o’clock, I include you in mine. I know you are likely busy and preoccupied these days but I hope you have had time to do some reading. Reading provides an education that no school can provide. Will you take a few minutes sometime before Mr. Edney [one of Khadr’s Canadian civilian lawyers] leaves to write me a one-page essay on whatever aspect of Huckleberry Finn most interests you. Attached are a few words on how to write a good essay … When you come home you can apply to university as a mature student. I wish we could correspond more regularly. I have tried to send a letter by way of Amnesty International but I suspect that did not reach you. Take care, dear Omar, and let me know which books you are going to read next.

February 17, 2010, Khadr to Zinck:

About me, I’m OK. More nonsense (novel) reading than good reading. Here is the list of books I’ve read since our last letter: Great Expectations, The Broker (John Grisham,) A Long Way Gone, Three Cups of Tea, the four books of Twilight series. [Khadr added that he was reading Grisham novels before he got back to “school stuff”]. The problem is some things here are so stressful you need some novels to get you out of this place. Educational things need more peace of mind. But I guess I have to do with what I have, some of this and some of that. On a separate paper, I will try to write something about the book you asked me but don’t get surprised. It’s my first time to write such a thing.

May 23, 2010, Khadr to Zinck:

Thank you for your letter and thanks for the compliment, I don’t think I deserve it. Before I end, I say again your letters are one of the most important things for me down here. I treasure them and reread them, they mean a lot.

July 18, 2010, Zinck to Khadr, on the eve of pre-trial hearings:

Omar, are you sure that this is the moment to fire your US lawyers? … The problem is that the moment you fire your lawyers, the forces of evil and injustice win … [T]hings are moving behind the scenes even if we can’t see them. We need to have faith that something good may yet happen. As you know, Omar, you are a pawn in a high stakes game of chess. If you quit before the trial begins, you lose … Be strong, Omar. Stand tall … Choose to be loving, patient, kind. As Mahatma Gandhi has said, we each need to be the change that we want to see in the world … You have done a wonderful job to date of seeing the best in everyone around you and finding ways to be fully human in an environment that seeks at every turn to deny your humanity. The strongest, most compelling thing you can do is react with LOVE to everything and everyone you encounter. This will take every ounce of strength you have but you will not be alone as you do this important work. God keeps you especially close when people are mean. He takes our suffering and makes something beautiful with it. If you ask for God’s help, He will provide you with strength you did not know you could muster.

Note: The picture of Omar Khadr above is a courtroom sketch by Janet Hamlin, and is reproduced courtesy of Janet Hamlin Illustration.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners. Cross-posted on The Public Record and Uruknet.

On arrival, however, they were taken to a deportation centre, where, according to reports, conditions were little better than in Guantánamo, and after five months they embarked on a hunger strike to protest about the Slovakian government’s failure to clarify their status and arrange for them to be rehoused. They were subsequently given a home in a small town in central Slovakia where, two weeks ago, Cageprisoners director and former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg met up with them and interviewed Adel el-Gazzar about his extraordinarily harrowing story of torture, abuse, amputation, courage and hope. This is a remarkable interview with a clearly remarkable man, and I’m delighted to cross-post it below, as Adel’s story is one that leapt out at me while I was researching The Guantánamo Files, in that it so obviously involved incompetence and injustice, and also involved a very articulate individual.

Moazzam Begg: Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem, can you please introduce yourself?

Adel el-Gazzar: My name is Adel Fattough Ali el-Gazzar. I am from Egypt. I was born in 1965, in Cairo. I am a father of four. I used to work as an accountant in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia. 

Moazzam Begg: How did you come to be captured by the Americans?

Adel el-Gazzar: I was captured in 2001 after the September 11 attacks. I had been working in Quetta, Pakistan with the Saudi Red Crescent. I was helping the refugees who, after the American attack in Afghanistan, numbered hundreds of thousands escaping from war. Their lives were very miserable; no clean water, no medicine, no food, no tents, no blankets. I was helping to provide them with food, medicine and basic necessities. I was in Chaman, a small border town between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A night raid was launched by the Americans and they hit the refugee camp, our camp.

Moazzam Begg: They attacked with helicopters and with military vehicles?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes we actually couldn’t see the helicopters and vehicles, we were just hearing the sounds of exploding shells.

Moazzam Begg: Were there many casualties?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes, several, and I was injured myself. I sustained a deep injury to my left leg and fell on the ground. Within two or three minutes I was unconscious and when I woke I found myself in a small hospital with some other injured. Some may have been killed too. I remember one kid aged eight or nine with us in the hospital. I spent about two hours or three hours in this hospital then we were moved to the main hospital in Quetta.

Moazzam Begg: You were still in Pakistani custody at this time?

Adel el-Gazzar: Actually I didn’t know exactly where I was, just that I was in hospital. Many doctors came to see me and check my situation. They told me that I needed some instant surgery so I went to the operating room. I went four or five times, I think, I’m not sure, but it was not custody, it was a hospital. But there were some officials who came and questioned me — I believe from Pakistani intelligence — taking basic details about me. After a couple of weeks I started to notice some Americans in the hospital.

Moazzam Begg: You received severe injuries to your leg. Can you describe what had happened?

Adel el-Gazzar: I asked the doctor exactly what happened to me. He said that it was shrapnel from a rocket that shattered my leg; it destroyed the tibia completely. Then they put an external clamp to help join the bone together.

Moazzam Begg: Where did you go to next after this hospital?

Adel el-Gazzar: I spent seven days in this hospital. Then I was transferred to Makkah hospital, which belonged to the Saudi Red Crescent. The treatment was very, very good. Many doctors from different branches came to visit me and treat my injuries. I remained in the hospital for over a month.

Moazzam Begg: At what point did you know the Americans were involved?

Adel el-Gazzar: One week before that time a CIA agent came to the hospital to question me but I refused to answer. I had done nothing wrong, but I began to feel that maybe I will get transferred to the Americans. We had begun to hear that they were looking for Arabs.

Moazzam Begg: How did you imagine the Americans might treat you?

Adel el-Gazzar: I knew something about their history so I was under no illusions. I started to hear on the radio about what they are doing in Guantánamo, but I didn’t imagine for a second that I would be sent there.

Moazzam Begg: You had already heard about Guantánamo?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes, I saw some pictures and reports about it, but as I said, thoughts of that place were far from my head. To be honest at this time the treatment on the Pakistani side was really very good. Even the governor of Quetta used to visit us, sometimes twice a day, and he was showing his sympathy. Not only him, I received hundreds of visitors within these thirty-five days — people I don’t know. They just came and tried to help, gave me money, clothes and food every day. The Pakistani visitors were very kind.

Moazzam Begg: Some non-Pakistanis who later ended up in Guantánamo also stated that they were treated similarly in Pakistan. Why then do you think the Pakistanis handed you over to the Americans?

Adel el-Gazzar: It was out of their [ordinary people’s] control. A young man from Pakistani intelligence started to visit us from time to time. He never asked any questions, he just apparently wanted to offer his help. Then one evening he came crying tears, saying that it was my last night in Pakistan. At this point the surgeons were still trying to see if they could save my leg; an operation was due the next day. But the man said I was going to leave today. I asked him where I was going and he said he couldn’t tell me. I felt something bad was about to happen.

Moazzam Begg: Did you think it was the Americans at the time?

Adel el-Gazzar: I started to suspect something but there was no reason to believe it. The governor came and said he had had a meeting and they had decided that as this hospital didn’t have enough facilities for the operation I was to be moved to another hospital also in Quetta.

Moazzam Begg: Were you by yourself or was anyone with you?

Adel el-Gazzar: There were four others with me. All were injured. We were taken to Quetta airport and we saw the Americans. They took us out of the ambulance on stretchers and the Americans came wearing gloves.

Moazzam Begg: What did the Pakistanis say to you?

Adel el-Gazzar: This time they were very bad in the ambulance. They kicked me and put a hood on my head. Their behaviour had completely changed. I started to shout and protest, saying we were all Muslims. They said, “Shut up, don’t talk, you are a terrorist!” Then the Americans came, searched me and put me onto the aeroplane. Unbelievably they taped me all around my body to the stretcher and put a hood over my face.

Moazzam Begg: What was going through your mind as you were handed over to the Americans?

Adel el-Gazzar: I was thinking that it was the end of my life or I will face a very bad time in the future.

Moazzam Begg: And your family had no idea what was going to happen?

Adel el-Gazzar: Nothing, I had been on the phone talking to my wife earlier from the hospital, crying, saying to her I’m sorry, forgive me, I think this is the last time in my life I will speak to her, please pray for me. And she was crying, saying, “What’s happening, what’s happening?” And then they took the phone from me.

Moazzam Begg: What kind of “welcome” did you receive in Kandahar?

Adel el-Gazzar: It was a terrible night.  We reached Kandahar around midnight. It was very, very cold and raining heavily. Then they took me from the plane and put me into a tent. The tent had some holes in the top so the rain was pouring on to my face. I couldn’t see much but the constant roar of the engines meant that flights were coming in day and night. Then medics came and cut off all my clothes and bandages on my injury with scissors and left me naked. They were screaming at me that I deserved what was happening to me, and that I am about to die as a terrorist.

Moazzam Begg: How long did you remain in this state?

Adel el-Gazzar: About 24 hours. I was completely naked. Without a blanket, without anything. I felt I was about to die just from the cold. Then they moved me from this tent to another. Once I reached the second tent they started to beat me, on my head, my stomach, my back, my hands and legs. They kicked my injured leg and I was screaming in agony but they just laughed and danced like it was a joke. The following day they gave me some clothes and then the interrogations began properly.

Moazzam Begg: What were they asking you?

Adel el-Gazzar: About basic details in the beginning, but this was the first of many. The second one was long: they asked me why I came to Pakistan, how they captured me, al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, the Taliban. Things I couldn’t answer. They mentioned some names I didn’t even know.

Moazzam Begg: What was the feeling you got from the other prisoners about the future?

Adel el-Gazzar: Nothing, we were just talking and laughing with each another — despite the hardships. We were not thinking about Guantánamo, because they came to us many times and said in just a few days everybody will go home. Even when they took us on the plane to Guantánamo we thought that they were taking us home

Moazzam Begg: Did the Americans give you any idea that they were in fact sending everybody to Guantánamo?

Adel el-Gazzar: No idea. I was more concerned about my leg, because I had severe pain and the environment was dirty, so I was worried that it might get infected. The American doctors were telling me it had to be amputated. I resisted, arguing with them about what the Pakistani surgeons had said, that they could save my leg. I even showed them the X-rays that I had kept. The Americans just laughed and said the Pakistanis didn’t know anything about medicine and treatments. In the end one of them admitted that they could save my leg but the operation would costs thousands of dollars and that America was a “poor country.” It was amputation or nothing.

Moazzam Begg: What was the journey to Guantánamo like?

Adel el-Gazzar: It took about 20 hours or more. I was on a stretcher with my face covered and my body taped, as before. I was trying to sleep because that was the best option, but of course it was very difficult. The pain and discomfort was excruciating. I pleaded with a medic for a sedative, which I got. I woke up in Guantánamo.

Moazzam Begg: What is your first memory of Guantánamo?

Adel el-Gazzar: I remember being thirsty, and I asked for water. It was a sunny day, very sunny. Then I was forcibly stripped naked again while they washed my body.

Moazzam Begg: You remained in Camp X-Ray on the stretcher in the cell?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes, I spent 25 days in X-Ray. I was taken to the hospital for amputation.

Moazzam Begg: How did you respond to this?

Adel el-Gazzar: Of course I refused in the beginning. The doctor said it was up to me but that they couldn’t do anything to save my leg but amputate it. I explained what I’d been told in Pakistan but I got the same as answer as I’d had in Kandahar: Pakistanis didn’t know anything, the leg had to go. As the days passed the pain increased and the colour of my leg started to turn grey — almost black. I asked them to clean the wound, and to change the dressing every day and night but they wouldn’t do it. When I asked them in the morning for a new dressing they said they will do it in the afternoon, and in the afternoon they said they will do it in the morning, like that.

Moazzam Begg: So you would go through days without having it cleaned?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes, but worse than that. The wound was open and big — without any kind of treatment besides basic dressings. They forced us to take showers so the wound got wet many times. The pain became almost unbearable. One day I remember I was crying terribly from the pain. A doctor turned up with painkillers but he said, “I will give you the medication, and your pain will be gone within 10 minutes, but first you need to sign a confession that you’re a member of al-Qaeda.” I told him I’m not a member of al-Qaeda and cannot confess to a lie. He put the medication in his pocket and walked off. However, most of the other prisoners advised me correctly that I had no option but to accept the amputation as it had passed the stage of being saved and had become gangrenous and could spread higher up the leg the longer it was left. I finally gave in. Ten days later a doctor came with consent papers for me to sign. The next day I was taken to the hospital.

Moazzam Begg: How did you feel knowing your leg was gone?

Adel el-Gazzar: After the anaesthesia wore off I looked at my leg, but couldn’t find it. I started to cry. The doctor came to me and he was trying to be sympathetic, saying, “Its fine, don’t worry, you’ll have an artificial leg one day and you’ll be able to walk, don’t worry.”

Moazzam Begg: So you spent all this time waiting for an artificial leg living in a wheelchair?

Adel el-Gazzar: They gave me crutches. I spent about 70 days in hospital after the amputation because the leg got infected. I was put on a long term of antibiotics, to make sure the gangrene didn’t spread. I returned to the hospital many times.

Moazzam Begg: How long after you the amputation were you given a prosthetic leg?

Adel el-Gazzar: About six months later.

Moazzam Begg: Are you aware of how many other prisoners received amputations whilst they were in Guantánamo?

Adel el-Gazzar: There were 13 people. All were legs except one guy from Morocco, he lost his left hand. There was also a brother from Saudi Arabia [Abdullah al-Anazi, released in September 2007]. He lost both legs.

Moazzam Begg: Do you think that this number of amputations happened because the wounds were so bad or because the medical treatment was inadequate?

Adel el-Gazzar: Most of the wounds were not so bad. There were some that were very bad, but, for example, I remember there was a man from Turkistan [Uighur], his name was Ahmad [Abdulahad, released in Palau in October 2009], who had just a very small wound, no broken bones or anything, and they told him the only solution was to amputate his leg. I was pleading with him not to accept it but they were trying to show us that it is a hopeless case and that there is no treatment. And the treatment in the hospital was very bad, not from the doctors, but from the MPs [military police]. They would sing and dance in front of us while we were in pain. We were constantly shackled to the cots and were not allowed to talk or even look in a particular direction. Despite our pain and condition we were expected to sleep at fixed times.

Moazzam Begg: What would they do if you contravened these rules?

Adel el-Gazzar: They would kick you in the head, take your blanket, withhold food, threaten you with more abuse and threaten to withhold our treatment if we failed to comply.

Moazzam Begg: After all that you had endured, especially the amputation, how did you manage to keep your faith strong?

Adel el-Gazzar: First I believed that everything was qadr [fate], so that put everything before the will of God. I am sure that He never does anything wrong to his slaves, He is always doing the best for them. I believed it was best for me to be amputated. Perhaps if I still had two legs I might have used them to do something wrong. So I pray Allah protects me not to do any bad in the future.  In the beginning I was sorry about losing a limb, especially when I started to suffer physically, going to the bathroom, walking, doing any physical activity. I thought to myself it would be a difficult time in the future — for the rest of my life. But, subhan Allah [Glory be to God], after a few days I was completely satisfied and I started to deal with the new situation happily, and now I’m okay, I put on my [prosthetic] leg like it’s no big deal.

Moazzam Begg: During this time did you manage to get any letters to or from your family?

Adel el-Gazzar: No. For the whole first year I never got anything. The first letter I received was in August 2003. It was via the Red Cross, from my father and my wife. They told me that they know I’m in Guantánamo and they were trying to give me some solace: to be strong and patient and not to worry about them. My father passed away in 2007 — while I was still in prison.

Moazzam Begg: Did your family know that your leg had been amputated by this time?

Adel el-Gazzar: I didn’t have it in me to tell them, for several years.

Moazzam Begg: The interrogators wanted to break the prisoners but you say in fact you were “rebuilt” there. Did the Americans not achieve what they wanted?

Adel el-Gazzar: They failed. I found that the Muslims can be very, very strong if they believe in God and His power. And the Americans are nothing against the Muslims united as a nation. It was a struggle between us and them — not a struggle of weapons but a struggle, a battle of wills. An example of this could be seen every day at maghrib [sunset] when their national anthem collided with our athaan [call to prayer.] But I believe they lost. They followed orders — we followed our hearts. I left Guantánamo stronger in my faith and perseverance than ever before.

Moazzam Begg: You saw many brothers from different parts of the world going through similar hardships, very young and very old people. How did it make you feel about yourself?

Adel el-Gazzar: There were some people in very bad situations compared to me but we were like one family. Like the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) said, “The example of the believers in the compassion to one another is like that of one body. If one part is harmed, the entire body is affected.” We were like that. The moment we heard that a brother is suffering in a different camp, we did not ask about his nationality, race, culture, education, school of thought or age. We just care that he is a Muslim and we need to support him, and this is a part of our religion. We were really one man. This is what we are trying to inform the nation: just to be one body. We have One God, one Quran, one shari’ah. So we should not be divided.

Moazzam Begg: As a group, what did you do to try and challenge the abuses and lack of human rights afforded to you?

Adel el-Gazzar: We were always on strikes, not only hunger strikes, but resisting all the rules, even if we were told to hang the towel on one side or the other [of the cell]. The Americans at first were really surprised.

Moazzam Begg: Would you say that the prisoners there were organised? How did they manage to sustain this resistance?

Adel el-Gazzar: The suffering made us, the detention made us. We were not organised. We were just one body, one heart, but it was from God

Moazzam Begg: The Americans have maintained that this is strategy taught from the Al-Qaeda training manual on how to resist. How would you respond?

Adel el-Gazzar: This is a big lie, they were lying to themselves and they were trying to lie to the others. It was not like that. I think that there are no members of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban over there. And as I told you they made a big mistake by capturing us. They told all the other nations that “we destroyed the mujahideen” and there will be no more al-Qaeda, no more Taliban in the future, and then they told themselves that it was a mistake and they couldn’t fix it.

Moazzam Begg: In Guantánamo there was a large variety of people from many countries. How did you all communicate?

Adel el-Gazzar: We tried to learn each other’s languages and even if we couldn’t we have a language in common. We still have faith, and it doesn’t matter where you are from or what language you speak as long as you are Muslims together and we are one together. So because of this I never had any communication problems.

Moazzam Begg: There are still 174 prisoners left in Guantánamo, after almost nine years without charge or trial. What do you think is the solution for them?

Adel el-Gazzar: Most of the people would like to go back to their countries — about 90 from Yemen, 10 from Saudi Arabia, 10 from Algeria and so forth. There are a handful of course who cannot return home and they should be provided for at all levels. But I don’t know why they don’t want to send these people back. There is something “under the table,” as I said, but they should close the place down and send the people who can return back to their homes.

Moazzam Begg: At the beginning of this year you and two other men were released and sent here to Slovakia. What were your feelings when you were informed that you were about to be released?

Adel el-Gazzar: The first thing I did was I cried like a [new] born baby. And I was really very, very happy that I was going to leave Guantánamo, but I was also very sad that I was going to leave my brothers behind in such a place. And I was wondering about how I was going to live in another country, start a new life with an uncertain future.

Moazzam Begg: Did you know you were coming to Slovakia?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes, but I didn’t know anything about Slovakia. It is the first time I’ve ever been in Europe. I was thinking about my family — would I be able to bring them here or not? I was also wondering whether I would be able to adapt to a new life in Europe, as it is completely different to my life in Egypt. I had mixed feelings — between happiness and sadness: because I’m leaving [Guantánamo] and because I’m leaving my brothers. Generally though, I was happy.

Moazzam Begg: One thing that’s common amongst former prisoners is that in addition to their families they are constantly concerned about the affairs of other prisoners — or former prisoners. Why do you think this is the case?

Adel el-Gazzar: We already lived together for many years. I lived with my brothers in Guantánamo more than I lived with my own wife and children. So we really became a big family. Some of the brothers are older than me — some are younger. I saw the older ones equivalent to my father and the younger ones like my brothers or sons. Imagine a family that consists of 800 or so — everyone tries to take care of one another. We had the same feelings; we suffered under the same circumstances and troubles — good or bad.

Moazzam Begg: Prisoners have recently been resettled to countries all over Europe. Some are of course better than others. Do you think the Americans thought this process through properly?

Adel el-Gazzar: As I said, I am thankful for having been released, but I know they don’t care; they just send us to these countries to somehow uphold the reputation of America as a kind nation, especially when everyone knows how much they have been involved in torture around the world. Also, so the European countries will control them more than the original countries of the prisoners. The most difficult thing for me returning to a foreign county, not that of my own origin, is that in Guantánamo I was with my family (the Muslim prisoners), but here in Slovakia I have no family, no wife, no kids and no Muslims. There are no mosques here and only a couple of Muslims around. Every Friday for prayers I have to travel four hours to the capital and four hours back.

Moazzam Begg: You say your faith was the most important thing back in Guantánamo. Are you now weaker than you were there?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes, but I am compensating for it by trying to be closer to Allah by praying, reading Quran more and also reading useful books. I am also able to contact my family and friends abroad so it decreases the loneliness a little.

Moazzam Begg: What advice would you give to the relatives of prisoners facing similar trials?

Adel el-Gazzar: Look at things from an optimistic viewpoint not a pessimistic one; look at it like a test from God to see how patient you are and just remain close to God, as He is the only one who can take you through all the way to the finish and protect you. If you are going through the hardships read Quran, fast, pray and remain faithful. As long as your heart is free, they can arrest your body but not your soul.

Moazzam Begg: What is the thing you miss the most from life before Guantánamo?

Adel el-Gazzar: I miss the mosques and going there five times a day and the Muslim community who helped and protected you. I also miss my family. It is very hard to talk to my kids as they are teenagers but we love each other even though we do not know each other.

Moazzam Begg: What could the Americans have done to make it easier with your family?

Adel el-Gazzar: I don’t expect anything from the Americans, but I do from the Muslim community. They should practice helping people in a bad situation. But I am not expecting anything from the Muslim countries [leadership] as they are all the same, following the Americans, just the community by itself.

Moazzam Begg: Did you come across any guards who were decent and treated you like humans. If so, what advice would you give them?

Adel el-Gazzar: Yes, I met some very nice and sympathetic guards. My advice to any young soldiers who went to the army believing they were doing a good thing is don’t listen to the media in your country, search for the real facts. My advice for people who want to help but don’t would be that asking from God is a strong weapon but also you need to use tools such as doing something practical and achieving your goals by actually getting up and helping.

Moazzam Begg: Looking back, what is the most memorable part of your experience?

Adel el-Gazzar: The most beautiful days? Actually, I don’t know if you will believe me but the whole eight years was a very nice time, it was real. If I had the choice to go back to Guantánamo I will go. It is really a very big experience for me: first I learned more about myself — both good and bad. Before Guantánamo I did not recognise this. I was able to rebuild myself again there. And I was very close to God and able to memorize the whole Quran in 27 days.

Moazzam Begg: What do you think ordinary people should be doing to help relieve the suffering of the prisoners?

Adel el-Gazzar: Everyone released from Guantánamo is looking for the support of the people, not only financial but moral support. Life outside Guantánamo is cold — very, very cold. Therefore we need to feel warmth [from people]. We are all duty bound to help relieve the suffering of the oppressed — even if we were once oppressed ourselves, especially if we were. But as we are still struggling to stand up our help is sought by our brothers who are in a worse situation. And there are always people in a worse situation.

Moazzam Begg: Brother Adel, may Allah reward you with the best for all you have endured and ease your hardships with sustenance and tranquility.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.