Briefly, the Uighurs are Muslims from Xinjiang province in north-western China, an area subjected to persecution by the Chinese government. The 22 Uighurs who ended up at Guantánamo were, for the most part, refugees who had been thwarted in their attempts to reach Turkey or Europe in search of work, or who, in some instances, nursed futile hopes of rising up against their oppressors. None had any involvement with al-Qaeda, terrorism or militancy against the United States, and they only ended up in Guantánamo because the rundown settlement in which they had been living in the mountains of Afghanistan was bombed by US forces, and, after they fled to Pakistan, they were sold to US forces by Pakistani villagers.

It was clear from the beginning that prisoners whose only enemy was the Chinese government should never have been held at Guantánamo, but they were used as pawns in negotiations with the Chinese government prior to the invasion of Iraq, and although five of the Uighurs were found a new home in Albania in May 2006, it took until 2008 — and a humiliating court defeat — for the Bush administration to give up its claim that the other 17 were “enemy combatants.” As a result, their habeas corpus petitions were granted in October 2008, but although a judge ordered them to be released in the United States, the Bush administration, and then the Obama administration disagreed, and appealed the ruling, securing a favorable response in February 2009 from the right wing judges in the D.C. Circuit Court.

President Obama, fearing Republican criticism, then turned down a plan by White House Counsel Greg Craig, which involved bringing a handful of the Uighurs to live in the US, not only because it was the right thing to do, but also because it would help to persuade other countries to take cleared prisoners who, like the Uighurs, could not be repatriated safely. That was in May 2009, and there was then an unseemly scramble — largely hidden form public view — to find new homes for the Uighurs in case the Supreme Court decided to take their side (although in the end the Supreme Court refused to do so).

Four of the Uighurs were rehoused in Bermuda in June 2009, six others in Palau in October 2009, and two others were given new homes in Switzerland in March 2010. Five others remain, having refused any of the new homes offered to them, and their cases will be discussed soon in prisoner profiles on the recently established “Close Guantánamo” website.

For now, however, I’m cross-posting below an article written for Der Spiegel by Seema Saifee, an attorney in New York who represents four of the 22 Uighurs who have been held in Guantánamo. One of her clients — Abdulrazaq — is still in Guantánamo, and his case will be profiled soon on the “Close Guantánamo” website. However, Seema also represents three of the six Uighurs released in Palau in October 2009 — Ahmad Tourson, Abdulghappar Abdulrahman and Adel Noori — and it is their story, and particularly that of Ahmad Tourson, that was publicized through the article in Der Spiegel.

As she explains, both the governments of the US and Palau “acknowledged that the remote island was not durable as a long-term refuge,” and was only “intended as a way station, a means to leave Guantánamo, a temporary solution until another country offered …sustainable resettlement.” However, “That hope has shrivelled,” because, even though Palau “is far from paradise,” and the Uighurs “cannot find work that provides a living wage,” there is “no reasonable prospect of future resettlement” for the men.

Exchanging One Prison for Another
By Seema Saifee, Der Spiegel, January 19, 2012

On her sixth birthday, Muslima had one wish: to see her dada. On that day, Ahmad Tourson, her father, was trying to sleep. But slumber was a luxury in the windowless metal box to which he was consigned for 22 hours a day, sometimes 24. On Muslima’s sixth birthday, Ahmad was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He had been there for her last five birthdays as well.

But in June 2008, after Muslima turned six, sunlight shone on the steel vault to which Ahmad was confined. Over six years of courtroom battles and cruel conditions of confinement later, the hundreds of men the US executive claimed the power to hold indefinitely won the right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. Ahmad’s case was to be heard by a US federal judge.

In consequence, the US government withdrew any pretense that Ahmad was an “enemy combatant,” admitting it had no basis to hold the man and his 16 Uighur countrymen, all from China. With the case thus abandoned, remedy was the sole question remaining. The Uighurs sought their only possible remedy: freedom in the United States.

On the day of the hearing, US District Judge Ricardo Urbina decried assertions by then-President George W. Bush’s top lawyers that executive discretion was almighty. He invited the president’s lawyers — several times — to explain what the security risk would be to the nation should the Uighurs be freed in the US. “You’ve had seven years to study this issue,” the judge admonished. The US government could not produce one single example.

At Liberty’s Doorstep

Judge Urbina concluded that the detention of the Uighurs was illegal. Understanding that the men could not be returned to their native China, which would likely have tortured, or even executed, the members of the minority ethnic group, and that diplomatic efforts to lobby (and re-lobby) nearly 100 countries for their humanitarian resettlement had failed, Judge Urbina ordered the 17 men freed to the United States. Release was mandated within 72 hours.

The prospect of freedom, once outside his reach, was now within Ahmad’s grasp. The Uighurs, whose young faces had developed wrinkles from years of indefinite detention, imagined boarding a plane to freedom. A contingent of US marshals flew to Guantánamo to escort the men to their new home. Ahmad was at liberty’s doorstep.

But 42 hours before Ahmad’s scheduled release, the US government won an emergency stay to shelve the Uighurs’ release until the case could be reviewed by a higher court. On appeal, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that US federal courts exercising habeas jurisdiction were impotent to release men at Guantánamo whose confinement was admittedly unlawful. The Great Writ was defiled. Liberty, said the D.C. Circuit, had no guardian.

Ahmad embarked on his eighth year of indefinite detention because US judges concluded they did not have the power to end it. And two presidents agreed. In Guantánamo’s Orwellian land of doublespeak, Ahmad was not detained, said Bush; the US military was “harboring” him (inside a chain-link fence surrounded by barbed wire) because he “chose” not to return to China (a country whose government would have put a bullet in his head), and the president would honor this choice out of executive grace (as the US claimed it had no legal obligation not to refoule him to a country that tortures), until a safe nation granted him refuge (so long as that nation’s president did not reside on Pennsylvania Avenue). And, once he entered office, President Barack Obama spun the same tale.

Not a Durable Refuge

In the summer of 2009, the US State Department negotiated Ahmad’s resettlement with the Republic of Palau, an isolated, impoverished island in the middle of the South Pacific. After multiple years of shopping Ahmad to foreign sovereigns, the US found a remote island, the only nation, it said, to offer him refuge. (Any nation that previously considered granting Ahmad asylum quickly reneged when Chinese diplomats threatened cessation of economic ties. Palau, however, is one of a small contingent of countries that maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.)

The US and Palauan governments acknowledged that the remote island was not durable as a long-term refuge. Ahmad’s relocation there, they said, was intended as a way station, a means to leave Guantánamo, a temporary solution until another country offered him sustainable resettlement. Ahmad thus accepted his only opportunity to leave Guantánamo, with the hope, one day, of finding a permanent refuge.

That hope has shriveled. Today, two years since his release and 10 years since he was sold into US custody, Ahmad remains in limbo in Palau. Despite his and the US State Department’s assiduous efforts, he has no reasonable prospect of future resettlement. And the remote island is far from paradise.

Ahmad holds a diploma from a technical college in China. He has experience as a management technician at an oil refinery and as a restaurant owner. He has advanced English language skills. But, in Palau, Ahmad cannot find work that provides a living wage. He is excluded, under Palauan law, from access to the same job opportunities available to Palauan citizens. What is more, he is not covered by Palau’s minimum wage law, which is, itself, a trifling $2.50 an hour. Ahmad has no path to citizenship; under Palau’s constitution, citizenship is conferred only to individuals with native Palauan ancestry. Even if Ahmad could access gainful employment, Palauan employers have refused to hire him. Many raise concerns about losing customers; others call the men terrorists. With a population of just 20,000, the entire island knows the Uighurs. The men cannot blend in; they suffer a unique prominence they would not face in most nations.

Seeking Refuge in Kabul

The scale tips further. Ahmad is a transtibial amputee. Before he was sent to Guantanamo, Ahmad had been living as a refugee in Kabul. Like many Uighurs, he had suffered persecution under China’s control. Ahmad was lashed with electric sticks and his wife was threatened with a forced abortion by Chinese authorities. With modest resources, Ahmad sought asylum in neighboring countries, but most Central Asian nations had deals to deport Uighur refugees to China.

But Afghanistan did not forcibly repatriate Uighurs to China. The nation was (at that time) a safe and accessible shelter for Uighurs. Thus, in 2000, Ahmad took refuge in Kabul. Over a year later, the US and NATO began combat operations in Afghanistan. US cargo planes dropped leaflets from the skies offering significant rewards to locals for catching “enemies.” Ahmad, who was searching for safety for his two-year-old son and pregnant wife, was traded to US forces for $5,000. He was taken to an Afghan prison where his left leg was shattered in a bombing. Once in Guantánamo, his leg was amputated below the knee. In the prison, Ahmad, a young man in his early 30s, was consigned to a walker.

Amputees require lifetime prosthetic care, routinely available in many nations. But no level of prosthetic care exists in Palau. Indeed health care is so limited that Palauan nationals must travel overseas to obtain specialized or emergency care. But Ahmad is unable to travel outside Palau — even for medical care. He has no reasonable means of procuring travel documents or permission to enter another nation. According to orthopedists, without access to this essential prosthetic care, Ahmad will not achieve full mobility. Life on the island is, and will remain, untenable.

Stranded in Palau

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Handbook, resettlement as a durable solution must be accompanied by a meaningful prospect of local integration, which involves more than safety from refoulement [being forcibly returned to torture]. Local integration includes the enjoyment of legal, economic, medical, and social rights, none of which are available to Ahmad in Palau. Indeed, the limitations of the conditions in Palau are precisely the reason the island was not proposed as a durable solution and why relocation there was intended to be temporary only.

Ahmad wants to forget the years he spent without charge at Guantánamo, but he can’t. The sheer isolation of Palau, which has no Uighur or refugee population of any kind, reminds him hauntingly of Guantánamo. And one memory he can never forget is that of the 171 men who remain at Guantánamo, including five of his countrymen.

Ahmad’s only ray of dawn during this dark decade came in 2010, when he was reunited with his family. Muslima, who was born after Ahmad’s capture, embraced her dada for the first time shortly before she turned nine. But the rosy-cheeked girl, whose radiant smile hardship has not obscured, is stateless. She has been mandated as a refugee by the UNHCR. But with no reasonable prospects of resettlement in another nation, she may remain stranded in Palau for the rest of her life.

Note: To listen to Seema Saifee discussing Ahmad Tourson’s story, please listen to the interview here on Canada’s CBC Radio.

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.

In December, following six months of pressure from his lawyers — at the London-based legal action charity Reprieve — the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces agreed to hear his case on December 27, in an appeal for a new trial, and on December 30, as AllAfrica.com reported, “The Military Court of Cassation accepted the claim of Adel Fattouh al-Gazzar for the re-trial,” noting that “Hafez Abu Seada, attorney at law, submitted the claim after Adel was sentenced to three years in prison.”

On January 16, Adel was freed, although the English-speaking media did not report the story, and I did not discover it until last week, when Moazzam Begg told me about it while we were in Brussels for a screening at the European Parliament of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the documentary film that I co-directed with Polly Nash.

In searching for further information, I came across some video interviews conducted in Arabic immediately after Adel’s release, which I’ve cross-posted below, and when I put out a request for an Arabic speaker to translate the first, a two-minute teaser for the longer program, to get a flavour of what Adel was discussing, for those who, like myself, do not speak Arabic, a friend through Facebook, Aboubakr Seddik Ouahabi, offered to help and translated it. My thanks to him for his assistance.

Interviewer: Today, we’re visiting a brother of ours, who’s been released by the grace and the mercy of Almighty Allah. He was also detained previously in Guantánamo, so by the will of Allah, we will get to know him closely.

Adel al-Gazzar: Your brother in Islam, for the sake of Allah, Adel al-Gazzar. I was in Afghanistan, before the events of 9/11. I was working with the Saudi Red-Crescent, providing relief for the Afghans on the Pakistani-Afghan border. The complex, which I was working at with the Saudi Red-Crescent on the Pakistani-Afghan border, was hit, and they started putting us in ambulances on the basis of relocating us to the newer hospitals, or the bigger ones, which have better equipment. To do what? To do the surgical operations, but we were surprised to find ourselves in the airport of Quetta city, and the Pakistani regime handed us over to the American Marines.

[Adel also spoke about the longstanding claims that female interrogators had used their menstrual blood to humiliate prisoners, which some sources have said was not actually blood, but a substitute.]

Adel al-Gazzar: The hardest situation, which we were humiliated at, was when one of the American female interrogators, a criminal, and she was on her menstruation period, she was menstruating, put her hand in the place of the menstruation, then she took out the menstruation blood and she desecrated the Quran with it, the pages of the Holy Quran, and she desecrated with this blood the face of the brother, whom she was interrogating.

I want to say to those who’ve been deceived, deceived by the United States, and those deceived by the countries which are applying the democratic systems and the like, that these people … there might be some rights preserved between themselves, however, if the matter relates to others, especially to Muslims, then there’ll be no rights, and there’ll be no respect for any human values, or religious ones, or even those rights which they signed themselves.

America has deceived the world with a bunch of movies, which they believed due to the excess repetition of them, and America deceived the world with a group of … I mean, by the American Constitution as an example, and the values mentioned in it, but actually such a thing isn’t applicable in the real world, and I have a lot of evidence, arguments and proof, I mean besides my own story, evidence proving that.

*****

This is hopefully enough for non-Arabic speakers to get a flavour of Adel’s commentary. Certainly, he was in high spirits following his release, finally reunited with his family after ten long years. Below is the full, 47-minute interview with him in Arabic, plus another, shorter interview recorded around the same time with another interviewer.

Note: Please visit the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and sign up to join a growing body of people demanding that President Obama fulfill his unfulfilled promise to close the prison. Please also 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 to secure a response from the President.

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.

Lawyers and NGOs aware of Algeria’s poor human rights record disagreed, as did some of the Algerian prisoners themselves, to the extent that the last two Algerians sent home — Abdul Aziz Naji in July 2010 and Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed in January 2011 — had actively resisted being sent home, and had taken their cases all the way to the US Supreme Court, which had paved the way for their enforced return by refusing to accept their appeals.

In assessing whether or not it was safe for Algerians to be repatriated from Guantánamo, the US government was required to weigh Algeria’s established reputation for using torture against the “diplomatic assurances” agreed between Washington and Algiers, whereby, as an Obama administration official told the Washington Post at the time of Naji’s repatriation, the Algerian government had promised that prisoners returned from Guantánamo “would not be mistreated.” The US official added, “We take some care in evaluating countries for repatriation. In the case of Algeria, there is an established track record and we have given that a lot of weight. The Algerians have handled this pretty well: You don’t have recidivism and you don’t have torture.”

According to research I undertook after Abdul Aziz Naji’s enforced repatriation, by speaking to the men’s attorneys, the US government was able to justify its claims because there had been no recorded incidents of torture amongst the ten Algerians previously released from Guantánamo. Although they were held incommunicado for 12 days by the Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS), as permitted under Algerian law, none of them reported being physically abused. In addition, although they all faced dubious trials after their return — generally about 15 months after their repatriation — and although they also suffered prejudice because of the perceived “taint” of Guantánamo, they had not been convicted on trumped-up charges, and had been released after their trials.

I cannot guarantee that I was able to ascertain the exact details of what happened to each of the ten men, but until two weeks ago the most troubling information from Algeria relating to the Guantánamo prisoners appeared to be the 20-year sentence delivered in absentia against Ahmed Belbacha, one of the four Algerians cleared for release but still held, on trumped-up charges of “membership of a terrorist group active overseas.” As far as his lawyers can ascertain, this sentence only came about because Belbacha had been vocal in his opposition to being repatriated, based on his fears about the government, and about the Islamists who had prompted him to flee the country in the first place when they threatened him while he was working for a government-owned oil company.

On January 16, however, any comfort to be gleaned from the Algerian government’s refusal to imprison those returned from Guantánamo for the other Algerians who do not wish to be repatriated — and who, by my reckoning, are Nabil Hadjarab (PDF), Motai Saib and Djamel Ameziane (PDF), who were all cleared for release by military review boards under the Bush administration — dissipated when, as AFP reported, Abdul Aziz Naji received a three-year sentence “for membership of an extremist group active overseas.”

As AFP explained, “The prosecution had sought a 10-year prison sentence and a 5,000-euro ($6,330) fine” for Naji (described as Nadji Abdelaziz). Following the ruling, Naji’s lawyer, Hassiba Boumerdassi, said she would appeal, describing it as “an unprecedented ruling” in Algeria, although AFP pointed out that there was a precedent — the in absentia sentence against Ahmed Belbacha, and those who have studied what happened when Algerians were repatriated from the UK with “assurances” a few years ago are even less convinced. As a friend with close knowledge of the Algerians’ cases explained to me, one of them “was given the same sentence with the same accusation in 2007 when he returned home and another is still serving an 8 year sentence on his return.” She added, “Yet the Home Office claims that Algeria is now a country where it is safe to return the Algerian detainees here despite some of them still bearing the torture marks of Algeria’s torture chambers,” and the echoes with the US government’s view of the “safety” of Algeria are surely not coincidental.

Neverthless, this was the first sentence delivered in person against a former Guantánamo prisoner, and, as the legal action charity Reprieve noted in a follow-up report, Naji, an amputee “who is suffering from serious health complications due to the amputation of his leg,” has had his worst fears confirmed with his conviction. As Reprieve also noted, the charge against him “derived from the unsubstantiated accusations the US administration made against him in 2002.”

In an appeal, the NGO Cageprisoners also noted that, although Naji “returned to his family and tried to start a new life,” he “was deprived of any identity documents and suffered from depression, anxiety and other symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder due to his treatment in American custody.” Cageprisoners also explained that he was under “judicial supervision” and “had to sign a register every week at the local police station,” and also explianed that on the day of his trial he had been arrested without warning and taken to the court.

Reprieve added that, during his trial, “the prosecutor presented no evidence of Mr. Naji’s guilt — rather, the judge simply questioned him and produced a guilty verdict,” and also noted that he “is being held in the notorious El Harache prison in Algiers, where violent abuse of prisoners has been reported by Amnesty International.”

Reprieve also stated:

His family is deeply concerned about his rapidly deteriorating health, and his lawyer reports that his condition has become critical and is worsening by the day. He has not had access to adequate medical treatment while in prison.

Mustafa Bouchachi, the president of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights, visited Mr. Naji in prison on Wednesday and attested to Mr. Naji’s critical health condition. He reports that Mr. Naji is on hunger strike as “the only way that he has to protest his unjust treatment — first by the US authorities in Guantánamo and now in his own country.” Mr Naji further explained that his imprisonment in Algeria is bringing back to him his horrible and unjustified years in Guantánamo.

Katie Taylor, of Reprieve’s “Life After Guantánamo” project, added, “It is outrageous that Mr. Naji is being punished again for the same discredited accusations that the US used to hold him in Guantánamo for eight years without charge or trial — this time in his own country. Algerian authorities must restore his right to a fair trial and overturn his conviction on faulty charges for which the prosecutor did not even bother to introduce evidence.”

As Reprieve also noted, Abdul Aziz Naji is represented in the US by Ellen Lubell and Doris Tennant, who prepared the following profile with the Center for Constitutional Rights:

Mr. Naji was born in Batna, Algeria in 1975. After sixth grade, he began work in his father’s blacksmith shop and later completed his required military service in the Algerian Army. After his service, Mr. Naji, like many young Muslims, travelled to Mecca on pilgrimage and then, during early 2001, worked briefly with a reputable Pakistani charity, providing humanitarian assistance to needy Muslims and Christians in Kashmir. Offering to volunteer his services was important to his religious beliefs. While carrying food and clothing to poor villages one night with a group of other volunteers, Mr. Naji stepped on a landmine (one of many unexploded ordnance that lace the region) and sustained a serious injury, resulting in the loss of his lower right leg. He was taken to a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan where he was treated for several months and fit with a prosthetic leg. He spent many months after that in rehabilitation, living with a few generous families in the city who offered to board him.

An amputee with few resources and in need of the most basic assistance, Mr. Naji was directed by acquaintances to an Algerian in Peshawar to help find a wife. While visiting this man in May 2002, he and his host were arrested during a raid of the man’s house by Pakistani police, one of the many house raids in the area. The reason for the arrests was never explained. In fact, the Pakistanis told Mr. Naji that they would release him. But instead, he was taken by Americans stationed in Peshawar and transferred first to Bagram and then to Guantánamo where he was held for eight years without charge or trial before being forcibly repatriated to Algeria.

Note: In the hope of securing clemency from the Algerian government, Cageprisoners has drafted the following message to the Algerian Minister of Justice:

Monsieur le Ministre,

A la suite d’informations reçues de l’organisation britanique de défense des droits de l’Homme CagePrisoners, je vous exprime ma vive préoccupation concernant l’affaire d’Abdel Aziz Naji arrété le 16 janvier 2012 et condamné le jour même à trois ans de prison, accusé d’appartenir à un groupe terroriste opérant à l’étranger. Il apparaît que cette condamnation n’a pas été prononcée dans des conditions compatibles avec celle d’un procès équitable.

Alors que l’Egypte a mis fin à la détention injuste d’Adel Al-Gazzar, alors que des anciens détenus tunisiens de Guantanmo ont pu regagner leur pays d’origine en toute sécurité et alors que les nouvelles autorités tunisiennes se sont engagées à tout faire pour obtenir la libération de ses cinq citoyens toujours détenus sur l’île cubaine, l’Algérie incarcère un homme qui a déjà passé 8 ans à Guantanamo sans procès, et ce sur la base de vagues accusations et, semble t-il, de manière expéditive.

Je vous demande donc la libération immédiate d’Abdel Aziz Naji.

Je vous prie de recevoir l’expression de mes salutations distinguées.

The message can be sent by email, or by post to: M. Tayeb Belaiz, Ministère de la Justice, 8 Place Bir Hakem, El-Biar, Alger. The phone number is (213) 021-92-41-83 and the fax number is (213) 021-92-17-01.

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.

At the time, seven Tunisians had left Guantánamo, to face a variety of fates. Two had been repatriated in 2007, although both had then been imprisoned following show trials, two others were in Italy, where they had been delivered from Guantánamo to face trials in November 2009, and three others had been resettled in early 2010 in three other countries — namely, Slovakia, Albania and Georgia.

Soon after the fall of Ben Ali, the interim Tunisian government announced an amnesty for all political prisoners, paving the way for the return of exiled members of the Islamist party Ennahdha, and also the release of 55-year old Abdallah Hajji (also identified as Abdullah bin Amor), the former Guantánamo prisoner who was still imprisoned after a show trial. It also transpired that the other returned and imprisoned ex-Guantánamo prisoner, Lotfi Lagha, had actually been freed under President Ben Ali in June 2010.

Around the same time, one of the Tunisians sent to Italy, Mohammed Tahir Riyadh Nasseri, was convicted of criminal association with the aim of terrorism and sentenced to six years in prison, which seems harsh, especially as, just days later, on February 7, another judge delivered a completely different ruling in the case of Adel Ben Mabrouk (also identified as Adel Ben Mabrouk Bin Hamida Boughanmi), the other Tunisian sent to Italy from Guantánamo in November 2009. Although he too was convicted of criminal association with the aim of terrorism, the judge gave him a two-year suspended sentence and ordered his immediate release from jail, after taking into account “the eight years Mabrouk spent in Guantánamo in ‘inhumane conditions,’ plus a year and a half in Italian prison,” as his lawyer described it, even though he did not, at that point, have a passport or any kind of travel or identity papers.

On April 20, he returned to Tunisia, and after his return an Italian journalist traveled to Tunis to interview him, as I reported here.

On the third anniversary of President Obama’s failed promise to close Guantánamo, and the first anniversary of the fall of President Ben Ali, another Tunisian who returned home — Rafiq al-Hami, also identified as Rafik Hammi and Rafik al-Hammi — who had been released in Slovakia in January 2010, and had returned to his home country last March, appeared in a report on Guantánamo’s Tunisians on Al-Jazeera, and also in a longer video on the Guardian‘s website, both of which are posted below.

Al-Hami had spoken at a press conference in October last year, called by the interim government to campaign for the release of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, when he said, “The years I spent in detention were unimaginable. I never knew if I would be able to return to my family and my homeland, and I was never informed of why I was being held, or given a chance to defend myself at trial. Since my return to Tunisia, I have finally been reunited with my family and have been able to experience normal life again. I have very high hopes for my future here.”

However, I had never seen what he looked like until these films were released. A quiet, bookish man with an almost secret smile that his long years of torture could not erase, he was clearly never a threat to anyone, and it is salutary to recall that he was actually brutalized not only in Guantánamo, but also in three “black sites” run by the CIA, where, as he explained in a lawsuit 2009, “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.”

Many years before, he had told his tribunal in Guantánamo that he was tortured for three months in the “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan, where, he said, “I was threatened. I was left out all night in the cold … I spent two months with no water, no shoes, in darkness and in the cold. There was darkness and loud music for two months. I was not allowed to pray … These things are documented. You have them.”

In the two and a half minute feature on Al-Jazeera, al-Hami spoke briefly about his experiences, and the report also noted the story of Adel Hakeemy, still held in Guantánamo, who was “accused of training al-Qaeda members, but all charges against him were dropped last year,” as Al-Jazeera explained. His brother Imad also spoke, as did Polly Rossdale of Reprieve, the legal action charity whose lawyers represent most of the Tunisians at Guantánamo.

In the seven minute video for the Guardian, in which Rafiq al-Hami spoke about his abuse, Adel Hakeemy’s brother appeared again, as did his mother. Most poignantly, his brother showed a photo of the daughter he has never met. Also included were the sister and mother of Hisham Sliti, also still held, and Cortney Busch of Reprieve was on hand to provide a good explanation of the circumstances surrounding the men’s ongoing detention, and the need for pressure to secure their release.

Ten years after Guantánamo opened, it is sad to see these stories of men still held, even though they were cleared for release by military review boards under President Bush, and even though the reason they fled Tunisia in the first place — because of their opposition to, and persecution by President Ben Ali — has come to an end, and they could be safely repatriated without any problems.

POSTSCRIPT: Below, via Tunisia Live, which reported on a press conference in Tunis on January 11 to call for the return of the prisoners, is another interview with Rafiq al-Hami, in which he described the forms of torture used by the US authorities, and also explained that he spent five years in solitary confinement:

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.

The screening has been arranged by Jean Lambert (UK Green MEP), with the support of Sarah Ludford (UK Liberal Democrat MEP) and Ana Gomes (Portuguese Socialist MEP), and the purpose of the screening is to raise awareness of the continued existence of Guantánamo, and its mockery of universal notions of fairness and justice, ten years after the prison opened, on January 11, 2002. Given President Obama’s very public failure to close the prison as promised, it is essential that other countries step forward to take cleared prisoners who cannot be safely repatriated, and one of the main purposes of the screening and the visit of Moazzam Begg and Andy Worthington is to encourage EU countries to re-engage with the process of resettling prisoners that was so successful in 2009 and 2010.

The screening is free, but anyone who wishes to attend needs to contact Rachel Sheppard, the Parliamentary Assistant to Jean Lambert MEP. If those wishing to attend do not already have an access badge for the European Parliament, they need to provide their full name, date of birth, nationality, passport number or ID card and number and also specify the type of document (passport, ID card) so that access badges can be arranged. Without an access badge, those wishing to attend the screening will not be allowed.

Moazzam Begg and Andy Worthington will be available to talk to the press along with Jean Lambert MP, Sarah Ludford MEP and Ana Gomes MEP. Moazzam and Andy will be available before the screening (between 4 pm and 6.30 pm) and afterwards (after 9 pm), and also on Wednesday morning, and, as mentioned above, they are hoping to have the opportunity discuss the need for European countries to revisit the generosity shown in 2009 and 2010, when many offered new homes to cleared Guantánamo prisoners who could not be safely repatriated.

171 prisoners are still held in Guantánamo, and 89 of these have been cleared for release by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force. 58 of these men are Yemenis, whose release is being prevented by President Obama, and by Congress, but others remain in need of new homes, and it is only the absence of offers from, for example, countries in Europe, that is preventing them from finally being freed.

As Guantánamo recently marked the 10th anniversary of its opening, with no sign of when, if ever it will close, given Congressional opposition, and the President’s refusal, or inability to assert his authority, it would be a powerful humanitarian gesture if European countries once more agreed to take cleared prisoners, to help to close this shameful icon of the Bush administration’s misguided “war on terror.”

Below are biographies:

Moazzam Begg is the director of the NGO Cageprisoners, and the author, with Victoria Brittain, of the book Enemy Combatant. He was held in US custody in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo from January 2002 until March 2005, when he was released without charge or trial.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, the author of The Guantánamo Files, and the co-director of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.” He is well-known as a world authority on Guantánamo. His website is AndyWorthington.co.uk, and he is also on the steering committee of the newly launched campaigning website, “Close Guantánamo.”

Polly Nash is a senior lecturer at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, and the co-director of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.”

About the film

“‘Outside the Law’ is a powerful film that has helped ensure that Guantánamo and the men unlawfully held there have not been forgotten.”
Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK

“[T]his is a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy.”
Joe Burnham, Time Out

As featured on Democracy Now!, ABC News and Truthout. Buy the DVD here (£10 + £2 postage in the UK, and worldwide) or here if in the US ($10 post free).

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a documentary film, directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, telling the story of Guantánamo (and including sections on extraordinary rendition and secret prisons) with a particular focus on how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes, who was released in December 2007), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), and journalist and author Andy Worthington, and also includes appearances from Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, Shakeel Begg, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

Focusing on the stories of three particular prisoners – Shaker Aamer (who is still held, despite being cleared for release), Binyam Mohamed (who was released in February 2009) and Omar Deghayes — “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Andy Worthington or Polly Nash.

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.

I hope to write more about this event and others in the coming days, but for now, while I’m absolutely delighted to be here, meeting up with old friends, making new friends and campaigning for the closure of Guantánamo where it matters the most, I’m also pleased to note that a number of compelling events have been lined up in London, which I’m delighted to publicize below:

Saturday January 7, 2012, 2-4pm: Shut Guantánamo – End 10 Years of Shame
Public Rally, Trafalgar Square, London, at the top of the steps outside the National Gallery.
This event is organized by the London Guantánamo Campaign, the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and CND.

Speakers include:
Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP (Liberal Democrat)
Louise Christian (solicitor for Guantánamo prisoners)
Lindsey German (Stop the War Coalition)
Kate Hudson (Chair, CND)
Joy Hurcombe (Save Shaker Aamer Campaign)
Cortney Busch (Reprieve)
Victoria Brittain (journalist, Patron of Cageprisoners)
Kanja Sesay (NUS)

See the website here. Also, please sign the London Guantánamo Campaign’s petition for the release to the UK of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, and Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian national who fears being repatriated, and who lived peacefully and productively in the UK from 1999 to 2001.

For more details, please email or call 07809 757176. Also see the Facebook page.

Tuesday January 10, 2012, 10.30 am: Press launch of the “Laa Tansa: Never Forget” Guantánamo timeline project
Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ.
“Laa Tansa: Never Forget” is a major online project, undertaken by Cageprisoners over the last six months, to provide the most detailed interactive timeline of Guantánamo to date, for which I played a major role researching prisoner profiles, as featured in my ongoing series, “The Complete Guantánamo Files.”

Speakers:
Moazzam Begg (former Guantánamo prisoner and director of Cageprisoners)
Mousa Zemmouri (former Guantánamo prisoner, Belgium)
Murat Kurnaz (former Guantánamo prisoner, Germany)
Walid Haj (former Guantánamo prisoner, Sudan)
Saad al-Azemi (former Guantánamo prisoner, Kuwait)
Colonel Talal al-Zahrani (the father of Yasser al-Zahrani, who died at Guantánamo in June 2006)
Clive Stafford Smith (Director of Reprieve)

See the website here. For further information, please email or phone 020 3167 4416.

Wednesday January 11, 2012, 6 pm: “Guantánamo Remembered: 10 Years”
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.
On the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, Cageprisoners, Reprieve and the Islamic Human Rights Commission co-host an event to reflect on the impact of a decade of Guantánamo on the lives of those held in the prison and their families.

Speakers:
Moazzam Begg (former Guantánamo prisoner and director of Cageprisoners)
Sami El-Hajj (former Guantánamo prisoner, works for Al-Jazeera)
Mousa Zemmouri (former Guantánamo prisoner, Belgium)
Murat Kurnaz (former Guantánamo prisoner, Germany)
Walid Haj (former Guantánamo prisoner, Sudan)
Saad al-Azemi (former Guantánamo prisoner, Kuwait)
Colonel Talal al-Zahrani (the father of Yasser al-Zahrani, who died at Guantánamo in June 2006)
Michael Ratner (President of the Center for Constitutional Rights)
Clive Stafford Smith (Director of Reprieve)
Massoud Shadjareh (Director of Islamic Human Rights Commission)
Gareth Peirce (human rights lawyer)
Victoria Brittain (Patron of Cageprisoners)
Asim Qureshi (Executive Director of Cageprisoners)

See the website here. For further information, please email or phone 020 3167 4416.

Thursday January 12, 2012, 6.30 pm: “Death in Camp Delta” – UK film premiere
Curzon Cinema (Soho), 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 5DY.

Cageprisoners hosts the UK film premiere of the Erling Borgen film, “Death in Camp Delta.” The film tells the story of Yasser al-Zahrani and two other prisoners who died in Guantánamo in June 2006, reportedly by committing suicide, although that version of events has been seriously challenged by former soldiers working at Guantánamo at the time. The film features former Guantánamo prisoners Omar Deghayes, Moazzam Begg, Sami al-Hajj (Al-Jazeera), Walid Haj, and Colonel Talal al-Zahrani.

Speakers:
Erling Borgen (Filmmaker and director of “Death in Camp Delta”)
Moazzam Begg (former Guantánamo prisoner and director of Cageprisoners)
Talal al-Zahrani (the father of Yaser al-Zahrani, who died at Guantánamo in June 2006)
Cori Crider (Legal Director of Reprieve)

See the website here. For further information, please email or phone 020 3167 4416.

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.

As I have been explaining since the 9th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo a year ago, it is now appropriate to regard most of, if not all of the remaining 171 prisoners as political prisoners, given that the Obama administration, Congress and the judiciary have all made sure that Guantánamo may never close, and that few, if any of the remaining prisoners will ever be released, even though 89 of them were cleared for release (or, technically, “approved for transfer”) by the interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established in January 2009.

The situation is no better for the other 82 prisoners, who are either scheduled to face trials that, in most cases, show no signs of materializing, or, in 46 cases, have been specifically designated as prisoners to be held indefinitely without charge or trial by President Obama, in an executive order last March. Although the President promised periodic reviews for these prisoners, his executive order essentially enshrines the indefensible –  indefinite detention without charge or trial — as an official policy of his administration, even though he and senior officials have been at pains to point out that it applies only to these men, and is not to be construed as lending credibility to indefinite detention in general.

That is a not an entirely convincing argument, of course, but in stepping back and looking at the situation facing all the men still held, it is, I believe, appropriate to focus not only on the injustice specifically facing these 46 men, but, as I mentioned above, to describe all the remaining detainees as political prisoners, because it makes no difference whether they have been cleared or not, as it ends up with the same result — indefinite detention, with no end in sight.

While the stories of the British ex-prisoners — eight of whom came to the Observer‘s offices to be interviewed, and to take part in a photoshoot — are fascinating, as they recall their horrendous experiences in US custody, and their struggles to rebuild their lives, it is Shaker Aamer, the charismatic, eloquent activist for the prisoners’ rights, who hovers over the proceedings, and it is Shaker, of course, who, like the 170 other men still held at Guantánamo, can now be regarded as a political prisoner, unlikely to be freed even though the Obama administration cleared him for release, and even though the British government has asked for him to be returned to the UK, where he has a British wife and four children.

Below, I’m cross-posting Tracy McVeigh’s article about the released prisoners, and an additional Observer article about Shaker, in which, sadly, it is revealed that senior White House sources have said that the Obama administration “will not risk releasing Shaker Aamer” before the Presidential election in November, because, as one said, “We’ve taken enough hits from the right; we can’t risk any more.” The article also notes that the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta — and therefore, by extension, the administration as a whole — has been “unwilling” to secure Shaker’s release by overcoming the main obstacle to the release of cleared prisoners — Congressional demands that the defense secretary certifies that any country to which prisoners are to be released is “safe,” and that released prisoners will not be able to “return to the battlefield.”

Given that this involves the UK, America’s staunchest ally in the “war on terror,” it is depressing that the administration is unwilling to tackle Congress, and it is to be hoped, therefore, that there is genuine reason to be encouraged by the Observer also noting that, with regard to the UK, “it is believed that the foreign secretary, William Hague, has called an urgent meeting early in the new year to discuss what more the British government can do to bring Aamer home.”

Securing Shaker’s return is not only a matter of justice, of course; it may also be a matter of life or death, as his attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, noted after visiting him in November. In the Independent, Paul Cahalan, who has closely followed Shaker’s case, spoke to his father-in-law, Saeed Siddique, who also raised alarm bells about Shaker’s condition. “In the 10 years Shaker has been there he has become old,” he said. “His hair has turned white and he is very ill. His children are growing now and it is difficult for them. The youngest one is nine and has never met his dad. He doesn’t know why, and he tells his mum, ‘My father doesn’t love me because he never sees me.’” He added, “Since Shaker has gone, my daughter has become very ill. She has been treated for depression and hearing voices. When she is very bad, I have to look after her and the children for weeks. It is very hard for her and all the children. When he was captured, Shaker offered to let my daughter divorce him, but she said, ‘No, I will wait for you.’ She is still waiting.”

Britain’s Guantánamo survivors are suffering a toxic legacy
By Tracy McVeigh, The Observer, January 1, 2012

After years of imprisonment, victims of America’s ‘icon of lawlessness’ were released without charge, but their lives have been shattered.

They call each other “brother” and the warmth between them is tangible. Not close friends as such, they come from different walks of life, cultures and backgrounds, but have been thrown together by a shared experience. They are Britain’s survivors of Guantánamo, the detention centre that has been called the “gulag of our times”.

All were imprisoned, interrogated and held without charge or trial; some allege that they were tortured; all have suffered lasting effects to their mental and physical health.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first detainees arriving at Guantánamo Bay detention camps, where the open-mesh and barbed-wire cells became synonymous with the abuse of human rights and the scandal of illegal rendition. The camp was called an “icon of lawlessness” by Amnesty International because inside its high-security fences all conventions of international justice, from the Geneva Convention to access to legal representation, were ignored.

Still in operation despite Barack Obama’s pre- and post-election pledges to close it, Guantánamo now houses 171 prisoners, including the last remaining British resident, Shaker Aamer. In total nine British citizens and six British residents were among the 779 adults and children imprisoned in Guantánamo camps, built on a US naval outpost on the southeastern tip of Cuba to house the “enemy combatants” of George Bush’s war on terror.

All bar Aamer were released back to the UK without charge. All were interviewed by the British authorities on their return and allowed to go back to whatever remained salvageable of their lives and were later awarded out-of-court compensation for their extrajudicial ordeal. Four have had their travel outside the UK restricted.

Any involvement the men may or may not have had with the fighting in Afghanistan or with any terror plots has never been proved. Most, says Guantánamo expert and author Andy Worthington, were “a bunch of nobodies”.

“One tries to stay very objective in taking an overview of Guantánamo, but at the end of the day it’s pretty evident that all but a handful of the people caught up in the trawling approach the Americans took post-9/11 in Afghanistan were not terrorists,” he said.

“Some were hanging out in Afghanistan because it was a cheap place to live or study, some young idealistic men might have gone to training camps to get involved in fighting against the Northern Alliance but, not to be too flippant, it was a bunch of boy scouts with AK47s. A combination of drifters and footsoldiers. The Americans were so busy cranking up the significance of what they were doing and hanging on to people they should have let go, it became a colossal waste of resources.”

On 14 February, 43-year-old Aamer will have spent 10 years in Guantánamo, without charge or trial, and two years after he was cleared for release by the US authorities. The day will be the 10th birthday of the youngest of his four children, Faris, who has never met his father. The family, who live in Battersea, south London, have had a difficult time coping. Aamer’s wife, Zin, suffers from depression and the children have been badly bullied because of who their dad is. Faris is struggling at school.

In a recent letter to the outside world from Aamer and six other prisoners, he wrote: “After these years of hardship that we have spent here, we want you to consider our cases as soon as possible and give us the right to a just and a public trial or set us free without restriction.”

Aamer, who worked for an Islamic relief organisation in Bosnia and Afghanistan, claims he was told by MI5 officers he could either spy on jihadists in the UK or stay in American custody. The US has accused Aamer of being Osama bin Laden’s personal interpreter, although he denies ever meeting him. In 2007 he was cleared for release.

His continuing detention is causing great concern among human rights campaigners, MPs and the British government, which has petitioned the US for his immediate release. His lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith, who visited Aamer in November, has expressed deep concern about his declining health, made worse by several hunger strikes.

As part of the detainees’ financial agreement with the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, a sum is believed to have been set aside for Aamer, Britain’s last link to the discredited detention camp.

“We are all worried about Shaker,” said Asif Iqbal, 40, one of the “Tipton Three” who were among the first wave of British men to be released from Guantánamo in 2004 after two years in custody. All three were accused of visiting training camps for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and handling weapons. “We know what it is like to be there and there is only so long a man can survive. He was a figure of support to everyone in Guantánamo, he really looked out for people and fought for prisoners’ rights. That is probably why they won’t let him go now.”

Campaign groups such as Reprieve and Cageprisoners and charities such as the Helen Bamber Foundation are working to provide support for the traumatised men who return from Guantánamo.

“Coming back to Britain, you are branded, you live like a guilty man. You assume they are listening to every call, every conversation,” said Feroz Ali Abbasi, 31, from Croydon, who was imprisoned in Guantánamo in 2002 after being picked up in Afghanistan.

The US authorities say he fought alongside al-Qaida and the Taliban and attended training camps. His lawyers argue that Abbasi is one of a small group of idealistic young Muslim men who found themselves caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was released in 2005.

“When 7/7 happened I waited for them to kick down my door. I want to go to university and I’ve to think really carefully about what course I take. Can it be misconstrued, can it be linked to terrorism? When the authorities have behaved without logic, with such stupidness, you still believe they are after us, just waiting for an opportune moment,” he said.

“It’s hard when Britain didn’t look after you. I don’t think we [ex-detainees] are wanted in this country, we’re made not to feel wanted. But they took liberties in Guantánamo Bay, and if we do not speak out they will take liberties with someone else, Muslim or not.”

The experiences of being inside the camps have not left any of the detainees. Several who came to the Observer photoshoot still find it difficult to talk about what happened, including Tarek Dergoul, 34, from east London, who lost an arm and his toes in an US airstrike in Afghanistan where he said he was on a business trip to buy property. He has talked about his torture before, but today says he cannot and politely refused to be photographed. “Sometimes you can talk and sometimes it sticks in your throat,” he said.

Abbasi recognised how Dergoul is feeling: “For me, speaking English broke a lot of barriers, because if you speak to the guards you become a person. I had two years in isolation, so you had to talk to soldiers.

“I spent a lot of time analysing them and realised that for Americans they have to believe they are right. You have to be a terrorist. They assume you are both Taliban and al-Qaida, there is no doubt in their minds, and in their view they have a right to treat you badly, seeking their retribution.

“I remember looking through my cage at another man who had a wife and child and thought how lucky I was to be a single man so I could concentrate on myself surviving. You are on edge 24/7, your senses are tuned to what they will do to you next, a footstep, a bolt opening, the creak of a door. Once I’d left, my mind did strange things. I’d be walking down the street and see buildings on fire, cars on fire. I had this impulse to hit out at people, even my mother. It was very troubling. Over time I’m becoming myself, but I did forget who I was. You are in one consciousness all the time, one survival mode.”

The bonds created between the survivors are strong and all the men are here in order to support the campaign for the release of Shaker Aamer.

“The pain of Guantánamo is made much worse by the pain of people left there,” said Bisher al-Rawi, 44, an Iraqi living in Derby, who was released in 2007 after almost five years. “When Guantánamo started I was living in London and watching all about it on TV. Back then I truly believed that the people in Guantánamo were terrorists. It’s funny, but I did.”

Bisher said he was on a business trip to Gambia with his business partner, Jamil el-Banna, when he was arrested by the Gambian National Intelligence Agency in November 2002. They were later handed on to US authorities, who sent them to Bagram airbase and from there to Guantánamo Bay. US files show they were believed to have been in possession of bomb-making devices.

“It is like being thrown into a very dark grave. The level of fear it is possible to experience and survive is something terrible. I tried very hard to preserve my body and my mind and thought I had done a good job until I was released. The emotions involved are still very personal and overwhelming, there is a real deep pain. I try not to remember the faces of the people who hurt me, so I can concentrate on those who are left behind.”

Al-Rawi said he too was glad he did not have a family. “I’d been really hoping to get married and it didn’t work out; that was something I was very thankful for when I was in Guantánamo. The families suffered so much, I was glad that was not my family.”

The “no smoke without fire” approach has dogged all the survivors back in the UK. Omar Deghayes had to have CCTV fitted at his home by police because of months of racist attacks by local youths.

For Deghayes, 42, six years’ imprisonment in Guantánamo also destroyed his marriage. His wife in East Sussex wrote to him in prison, but her letters were never delivered and neither were his to her. Both believed they had been abandoned and she returned to her family in Afghanistan. It was, he has said, one of the cruellest things that happened to him during his detention.

The other was the loss of sight in one eye after a guard allegedly tried to gouge out his eyeballs with his fingers. Deghayes, a law graduate, fled Libya for the UK as a child after his father was executed by the Gaddafi regime. He had been living in Pakistan with his wife and child when he was picked up by the Americans.

Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Deghayes now lives in Brighton and works with human rights group Reprieve and other survivors of Guantánamo on the ongoing court cases against the UK government’s alleged complicity in human rights abuses at Guantánamo and other detention centres around the world.

An inquiry into the involvement of British intelligence services in torture and rendition has opened but is not due to begin calling witnesses until all those cases have concluded. All the British detainees, and charities including Amnesty International, have announced they will boycott the Detainee Inquiry, headed by Sir Peter Gibson, because of concerns that it will not be open and transparent.

“We may never get a public inquiry and examination of what happened at Guantánamo,” said Worthington. “But we do know it has left a toxic legacy. Guantánamo was an aberration.”

Abbasi’s verdict was simple and damning: “Guantánamo was an excuse to take away the rights of ordinary people. It must not happen again.”

Last British resident held in Guantánamo Bay faces another year’s captivity
By Tracy McVeigh, The Observer, January 1, 2012

The last British resident being held in Guantánamo Bay faces at least another year in detention because of wrangling in a US presidential election year. Senior White House sources have said the Obama administration will not risk releasing Shaker Aamer before November. “We’ve taken enough hits from the right; we can’t risk any more,” one said. Another said: “There will be no rocking of boats from now on in.”

As the 10th anniversary of the opening of the detention camp in Cuba approaches, it is believed that the foreign secretary, William Hague, has called an urgent meeting early in the new year to discuss what more the British government can do to bring Aamer home.

He will complete his 10th year in Guantánamo on 14 February, although he has never been charged or faced trial. His British wife, Zin, last saw her husband when she was pregnant with their fourth child. Aamer has never met his son, Faris.

Campaigners are stepping up efforts to draw attention to Aamer’s case, after his British lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith, found the 43-year-old former charity worker in poor health during a visit to the prison in November.

“I do not think it is stretching matters to say he is dying in Guantánamo Bay,” said Stafford-Smith, director of the human rights charity Reprieve. Although Aamer was cleared for release by the US authorities in 2007 there have been no further moves to return him to the UK. He was first picked up in Afghanistan in 2001 where he said he worked for an Islamic charity. But the US suspected him of both Taliban and al-Qaida connections, accusing him of being a translator for Osama bin Laden.

New US legislation has also proved to be a stumbling block to his release with the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, now responsible for certifying that Britain is a safe place for him to return to, and that he will commit no crimes there — something Panetta has been unwilling to do.

Stafford-Smith said: “Britain has the best record of any country with former Guantánamo prisoners, with nobody released committing any offence, and Shaker Aamer has never committed a crime of any kind. Why does Britain pretend it has a special relationship if a British resident is still in this shameful position?” He said Aamer had suffered “unfathomable abuse”.

Jane Ellison, Tory MP for Battersea, where Aamer’s wife and children live, is writing to Barack Obama to urge his immediate release. “People forget that behind this is a family in deep distress and a man in poor health,” she said. This is a human tragedy as much as a political embarrassment. The family of Shaker Aamer are hurting and they need him home.”

She has tabled several questions in the Commons drawing attention to Aamer’s plight and believes the UK Government is committed to bringing him home but is up against a lack of political will in the US.

“After 10 years, the bottom line should be that if they aren’t going to charge him, they should release him. That is the way we have conducted ourselves in Britain since the Magna Carta.”

But Aamer’s own campaigning spirit may be working against him. “The irony is that Shaker may be the victim of what he has done inside Guantanámo rather than anything he might be suspected of doing previous to his captivity. He has been a thorn in the side of the prison authorities, organising hunger strikes and fighting for prisoners’ rights. By all accounts he is a charismatic and eloquent man,” said investigative journalist and author Andy Worthington.

*****

The following is also from the double-page feature in the Observer:

The men America freed

Asif Iqbal, 40, of Tipton, West Midlands

Released in March 2004 after two years. On arrival at Guantánamo, a soldier told him: “You killed my family in the towers and now it’s time to get you back.”

Jamil el-Banna, 59, a Palestinian from Jordan

Has UK refugee status. He has five children, the last one born while he was in captivity. Released in 2007.

Jamal al-Harith, 45, from Manchester

A backpacker arrested by the Taliban who ended up in US detention. The web designer was freed in 2004 after two years.

Feroz Ali Abbasi, 31, from Croydon, south London

UK citizen born in Uganda. In 2002 the British Court of Appeal found his detention “legally objectionable”. Freed in 2005.

Bisher al-Rawi, 44, Iraqi-born

British resident living in Derby with wife and two young children. Picked up in Gambia in 2002 and freed in 2007.

Shafiq Rasul, 44, of Tipton, West Midlands

Released March 2004. US supreme court case Rasul vs Bush established detainees could challenge whether their detention is constitutional.

Rhuhel Ahmed [Ruhal Ahmed], 40, of Tipton, West Midlands

Held without trial or charge for more than two years. One of the Tipton Three who released a report detailing abuse and torture.

Martin Mubanga, 38, from Wembley, north London

Victim of extraordinary rendition, held for 33 months accused of al-Qaida links after his passport was found in a Pakistan base.

Moazzam Begg, 43, from Birmingham

After three years in US custody, he is now director of the London-based prisoners’ rights charity Cageprisoners Ltd and an outspoken critic of anti-terror legislation.

Tarek Dergoul, 34, from London

Claims to have gone to Afghanistan to buy up properties from fleeing refugees. Lost an arm and toes in an allied bombing raid. Although he attended the photoshoot to support his fellow detainees, he is deeply shy and politely refused to be photographed.

Omar Deghayes, 42, from Brighton

The Libyan-born British citizen was blinded, beaten and sexually assaulted between 2002 and 2007, despite having never been charged with an offence.

Richard Dean Belmar, 32, from London

Returned to the UK in 2005 after three years imprisonment, first in Pakistan, then Bagram and finally Guantánamo. Converted from Catholicism to Islam and had enrolled in a religious school in Afghanistan.

Binyam Mohamed, 33

An Ethiopian national who moved to the UK in 1994, he spent seven years in custody, four at Guantánamo. He was released in 2009. He is taking the government to court over British alleged complicity in his torture.

Sameur Abdenour [Abdulnour Sameur], 38, from London

Fled persecution from the military dictatorship in his native Algeria and was granted asylum in this country in 2000. He was detained in Guantánamo from 2002 to 2007.

… and one they still hold

Shaker Aamer, 43, Saudi-born

Next month Aamer will mark the 10th anniversary of his detention in Guantánamo. He worked as a legal translator in the UK and married a British woman in 1994. He claims to have been in Afghanistan working for a Saudi charity when he was picked up in 2002 and handed over to the Americans. He is thought to have angered the prison authorities by going on hunger-strike protests. He was cleared for release by the US in 2007 but remains in isolation.

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.

Mohammed was horribly abused in US custody, and was never held separately from the adult prisoners, even though that is a requirement of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which the US ratified a year after his capture. The Optional Protocol also requires its signatories to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict,” and not to punish them — but in fact just three of the 22 confirmed juvenile prisoners held at Guantánamo (those under 18 when their alleged crimes took place) were ever held separately from the rest of the prisoners, and treated humanely.

Mohammed’s fortunes only finally turned in January 2009, when Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of George W Bush in the District Court in Washington D.C., granted his habeas corpus petition and ordered his release, after finding that the government’s claims — primarily, that he had traveled to Afghanistan for jihad — were based on statements made by a mentally unstable prisoner who had provided demonstrably false information against numerous other prisoners, confirming what I and other researchers had discovered in the files made available to the public, and preempting what has been made even more obvious in the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in April (on which I worked as a media partner). Mohammed had also been subjected to one of the most idiotic allegations of all, which Judge Leon also recognized as idiotic — namely, that, was a member of an al-Qaeda cell in London in 1998, when he was just 11 years old. As his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, explained in his book, The Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice In Guantánamo Bay, “he must have been beamed over to the al-Qaeda meetings by the Starship Enterprise, since he never left Saudi Arabia by conventional means.”

Since the release of the WikiLeaks files, I have been analyzing them in depth for an ongoing 70-part, million-word series entitled, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” which confirms that Guantánamo is a house of cards, built on the dubious statements of the prisoners themselves, or their fellow prisoners, either in Guantánamo or in secret prisons run by the CIA, in which the use torture, coercion and bribery was rife.

Following Mohammed’s court victory, he was released in Chad in June 2009, although he was imprisoned on his return, and was then effectively abandoned, as I reported here, here and here.

Now, however, the London Review of Books has published an extraordinary article based on interviews with Mohammed (described as Mohammed el-Gorani) conducted by Jérôme Tubiana, who has reported regularly from Chad, Sudan and Rwanda, and whose book Chroniques du Darfour was published last year. I’m cross-posting the article below, and I do hope that anyone interested in Guantánamo can find the time to read it, as Mohammed is a compelling interviewee — articulate, often funny, and sharp to comprehend the scale of the injustice to which he and the other Guantánamo prisoners were subjected.

Unflinchingly, he speaks of the hardship of his life as a foreign national in Saudi Arabia, the random nature of his capture in Pakistan, the unexpected brutality of his American captors on his transfer to Afghanistan, and the ways in which he and others fought back against this violence and tyranny in Guantánamo. He also speaks frankly about the difficulties of life after Guantánamo, and his brief escape to Sudan, which I had not heard mentioned before, and the article ends with notification that he has now left Chad for good, despite an agreement between the US and Chad which is supposed to guarantee that this poor young man, who was cleared of all wrongdoing by a US judge, is never allowed to leave the country.

I wish him the utmost success in his endeavors to find a new life.

Diary
By Mohammed el Gorani and Jérôme Tubiana, London Review of Books, December 15, 2011

We met every afternoon for two weeks in N’Djamena. After the midday prayer, I would pick him up in a taxi at the shop he hoped to turn into a laundry. We ate fish and rice in my hotel room — he would have been recognised outside — and he just talked, beginning at the beginning.

I was born in 1986 in Saudi Arabia, in Medina, the Prophet’s city. My parents came from North Chad — I don’t know exactly where. They left Chad for Saudi because they believe that if you live in a holy place, it’s easier to go to paradise. They were nomads, from the Gorare tribe. When they arrived in Medina, they took the tribe’s name as our family name, so I’m called Mohammed el Gorani, ‘the Goran’. My parents were camel herders and always had to keep moving to find grass. But when they arrived in Medina, my father did a lot of different jobs: washing cars, working in a shop belonging to a Saudi — you can’t have a shop if you’re not Saudi. There’s a lot of stupid rules about foreigners in Saudi Arabia. When my parents tried to send me to school, they said: ‘Is he Saudi?’

‘No, Chadian.’

‘There are no places left. Come back next month …’

When I was eight, I went to a school run by a man from Chad. He taught anyone who couldn’t go to a Saudi school. I was there four years until my father got ill. Then my brother and I, we had to start working. We washed cars and sold in the street cold water, prayer mats and beads — you can make good money during the Pilgrimage and the Ramadan. I went every month to Mecca with kids from Sudan and Pakistan to sell to the pilgrims. If the police came, we ran away. We had to be careful. If they capture you, they take your money and your stuff. Sometimes they take you to prison and your father had to come and sign a paper. Thus we paid for hiring our house, for the electricity. We changed house seven or eight times, but we always had electricity and tap water. Not like here in Chad.

He became friends with a Pakistani boy who lived near him. We called him Ali.

When I got 14, Ali asked me: ‘How long are you going to keep washing cars?’ He knew I wanted to be a dentist. All my friends had teeth problems, but there wasn’t a good dentist for non-Saudis — they just pull your teeth out. Also foreigners have no way to study after high school. Ali had taught me some Urdu, his mother tongue: numbers, words you need for selling, anything that’s useful with Pakistani pilgrims. Ali told me: ‘You’re good at languages. If you could speak English, you could work in a hotel in Mecca.’ His brother spoke English and had a good job in a hotel. Ali told me about English and computer lessons in Pakistan. ‘Go to Karachi. My uncles and cousins will welcome you, you just need to pay the lessons.’ I told my parents, they refused. My uncles said, ‘You’re crazy!’ but they knew if I decided something I would do it. My goal when I went to Pakistan was to help my family — life was getting difficult.

Without telling anyone, I went to Jeddah to ask for a passport at the Chadian Consulate. The consulate guy told me: ‘You need to change your name and lie on your age.’ I needed to be 18 and I was only 14 or 15. ‘And you need to pay me baksheesh.’ I had enough money. Every day I gave a part of my earnings to my family and saved the rest in a powdered milk tin that I buried in front of the house. On my last day in Medina, I went to see my Uncle Abderahman. I couldn’t say goodbye openly, but in my heart it was goodbye. It was 1 a.m., not a normal time to visit, as I was planning to leave the same night. I took his hands in mine and kissed his head, like we do in our tradition. In the morning, he told my mum I must have left.

‘Maybe he went to Jeddah, like he does usually,’ she said.

‘No, this time he’ll go far away.’

I took a plane to Karachi. Even Ali was surprised. I called his cousins and they came to the airport. Ali’s uncle taught in his house: the lessons lasted six months, three months of English lessons, and three months of English and computer lessons. I planned to go home after those six months. But two months after my arrival, there was 9/11. I didn’t pay attention — I was very busy with my lessons. Every day, I woke up, went to school, ate lunch, played football with the neighbourhood kids, studied, prayed. Every Friday, I went to pray in a big mosque not far from the house. Most of the people praying there were Arabs, because the imam was Saudi and spoke a good Arabic. One Friday, at the beginning of the sermon, we saw a lot of soldiers surrounding the mosque. After the prayers, they started questioning the people. They were looking for Arabs. They asked me: ‘Saudi?’

‘No, Chadian.’

‘Don’t lie, you’re Saudi!’ It must have been because of my accent. They put me on a truck and covered my head with a plastic bag. They took me to a prison, and they started questioning me about al-Qaida and the Talibans. I had never heard those words.

‘What are you talking about?’ I said.

‘Listen, Americans are going to interrogate you. Just say you’re from al-Qaida, you went with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and they’ll send you home with some money.’

‘Why would I lie?’

They hung me by my arms and beat me. Two white Americans, in their forties, arrived. They were wearing normal clothes. They asked: ‘Where is Osama bin Laden?’

‘Who’s that?’

‘You’re fucking with us? You’re al-Qaida, yes!’ They kept using the F-word.

I didn’t understand this word but I knew they were getting angry. A Pakistani was in the room, behind the Americans. When they asked if I was from al-Qaida, he nodded, to tell me to say yes. I wasn’t doing it, so he got mad. The Americans said: ‘Take him back!’ The Pakistani was furious: ‘They’re looking for al-Qaida, you have to say you’re al-Qaida!’ Then they put the electrodes on my toes. For ten days I had them on my feet. Every day there was torture. Some of them tortured me with electricity, others just signed a paper saying they had done it. One Pakistani officer was a good guy. He said: ‘The Pakistani government just want to sell you to the Americans.’ Some of us panicked, but I was kind of happy. I loved to watch old cowboy movies and believed that Americans were good people, like in the movies, it would be better with them than with the Pakistanis, we’d have lawyers. Maybe they’d allow me to study in the US, then send me back to my parents.

They started taking detainees away every night, by groups of twenty. We didn’t know where they were going to, but we thought the US. One day, it was my group’s turn. The Pakistanis took away our chains and gave us handcuffs ‘made in the USA’. I told the other detainees: ‘Look, we’re going to the US!’ I thought the Americans would understand that the Pakistanis had cheated them, and send me back to Saudi.

So my hands were tied in the back and a guard held me by a chain. We were twenty, with maybe fifteen guards. They covered our eyes and ears, so I couldn’t see much. When they took off our masks, we were at an airport, with big helicopters. Then the movie started. Americans shouted: ‘You’re under arrest, UNDER CUSTODY OF THE US ARMY! DON’T TALK, DON’T MOVE OR WE’LL SHOOT YOU!’ An interpreter was translating into Arabic. Then they started beating us — I couldn’t see with what but something hard. People were bleeding and crying. We had almost passed out when they put us in a helicopter.

We landed at another airstrip. It was night. Americans shouted: ‘Terrorists, criminals, we’re going to kill you!’ Two soldiers took me by my arms and started running. My legs were dragging on the ground. They were laughing, telling me: ‘Fucking nigger!’ I didn’t know what that meant, I learned it later. They took off my mask and I saw many tents on the airstrip. They put me inside one. There was an Egyptian (I recognised his Arabic) wearing a US uniform. He started by asking me: ‘When was the last time you saw Osama bin Laden?’ ‘Who?’ He took me by my shirt collar and they beat me again. During all my time at Bagram, I was beaten. Once it was like a movie — they came inside the tent with guns, shouting: WE CAUGHT THE TERRORISTS! And they put us in handcuffs. ‘Here are their guns!’ And they threw some Kalashnikovs onto the ground. ‘We’ve been fighting them, they killed a lot of people!’ All that was for cameras, which were held by men in uniforms. I was lying on the ground with the other prisoners. They brought dogs to scare us.

One day they started moving prisoners again. They picked you from your tent, put you naked, shaved your head and beard (I was too young to have a beard), then beat you. They dressed you with orange clothes, handcuffed you, and put gloves with no fingers on you, so you couldn’t open the handcuffs. ‘You guys are going to a place where there is no sun, no moon, no freedom, and you’re going to live there for ever,’ the guards told us, and laughed. They put you in completely black glasses and headphones, so that you couldn’t see or hear. With those on, you don’t feel the time. But I could hear when they were changing the guards, probably every hour. I must have spent five hours sitting on a bench, with another detainee in my back.

Then they put us in a plane — I don’t know what kind because I couldn’t see. As soon as you moved or talked, they beat you. They were shouting: IF YOU DON’T FOLLOW OUR ORDERS, WE’LL KILL YOU! I passed out. We had no water and no food. I woke up hearing voices shouting at me in different languages. They took me to my cell. I saw soldiers everywhere, and guns, like if it was war. There were big metal fences everywhere. We were in Guantánamo, in Camp X-Ray. It’s a prison without walls, without roofs — only fences. Nothing to protect you from the sun or the rain.

The sky was blue. Except for sky you couldn’t see anything. Later, when I was moved to Camp Delta, I could look by the windows. The camp was ringed with a green plastic sheet, but there were holes and I could see trees. And even the sea. I saw it even better, years later, when I was moved to Camp Iguana, where they put you before release. Through the plastic sheet, I saw the ocean, big ships and the guards swimming. Only in Iguana can you touch the sand.

In Camp Five as well, there was a window in my cell, but it was covered with brown tape. One day I was sitting, mad, sad, angry, and a woodpecker came and knocked, knocked until it broke the tape — a hole big as a coin. It did this to a lot of windows. It started doing it every day and the guards had to put new tape every day. Sometimes, they left the holes. I could see the cars, the soldiers, the sky, the sun, the life outside. We called the bird Woody Woodpecker.

For months, I didn’t know where I was. Some brothers said Europe. No, others told: ‘It’s the weather of Oman.’ Others told Brazil, also because of the weather. We arrived in February, but it was so hot in comparison to Kandahar. There we shivered night and day, especially when we were naked. After a few months, an interrogator told me: ‘We’re in Cuba.’ It was the first time I heard this name. ‘An island in the middle of the ocean. Nobody can run away from here and you’ll be here for ever.’ The older detainees knew of Cuba, but didn’t know there was an American base. I’d seen a lot of American movies, and arrested people always said: ‘I have the right to a lawyer!’ The interrogators laughed at me: ‘Not here in Guantánamo! You got no rights here!’

The night I arrived, I was still tired from the flight, I had a first interrogation. The old man started by saying: ‘We have two faces, one nice and one ugly. We don’t want to show you the ugly one.’ He carried on with questions: ‘What were you doing in Afghanistan? Are you from al-Qaida? Are you a Taliban? Have you been in training camps?’ My answers were just: no, no, no! He started to shout and he sent me back to my cell. I was tired and scared. Prisoners were tortured somewhere. When you heard them crying, you were really scared — you thought you’d be next.

In the beginning there were interrogations every night. They tortured me with electricity, mostly on the toes. The nails of my big toes fell off. Sometimes they hung you up like a chicken and hit your back. Sometimes they chained you, with your head on the ground. You couldn’t move for 16 or 17 hours. You peed on yourself.’

Suddenly he stopped. ‘I don’t see the benefit of telling you all that,’ he said. We had been talking for several days and he was tired. I called a taxi to take him home. ‘We are in the middle of our work,’ I said as he left, ‘it would be a pity to stop now.’ The next day, he agreed to carry on.

Sometimes they showed you the ugly face: torturing, torturing without asking questions. Sometimes I said, ‘Yes, whatever you ask, I’ll say yes,’ because I just wanted torture to stop. But the next day, I said: ‘No, I said yes yesterday because of torture.’ My first or second interrogator said to me: ‘Mohammed, I know you’re innocent but I’m doing my job. I have children to feed. I don’t want to lose my job.’

‘This is no job,’ I said, ‘this is criminal. Sooner or later you’re going to pay for this. Even in afterlife.’

‘I’m a machine — I ask you the questions they told me to ask, I bring them your answers. Whatever they are, I don’t care.’

Another guy told me: ‘We know you were doing bad stuff in Sudan.’

‘I’ve never been there.’

‘I know. But if you co-operate, I’ll bring you pizzas and McDonald’s. I know the food is bad here.’

Another one: ‘We know you were in London, working with al-Qaida, in 1993.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

He showed me a paper. ‘Look: ’93.’

‘You should be smart and say ’98 or ’99. In ’93, I was six.’ He laughed.

In the cells there were other kinds of torture. Above all they prevent you to sleep. They brought big vacuum cleaners to make a lot of noise. They put on music — I understood the words were bad words. At night, they switched on lights everywhere. If they saw you sleeping, they came shouting: WAKE UP! GET UP! Sometimes they put a sign on your door: NO SLEEP. Others had NO FOOD, NO EXERCISE, NO TALKING. In Camp Delta, they prevented you to sleep by moving you from your cell every hour. Every time, they came with handcuffs: DETAINEE, MOVE! It was bad, but thanks to the moving I was learning more English. I was picking up words from the guards and asked their meaning to the detainees who spoke English. But when the guards saw somebody was teaching me words, they would move one of us. I started stealing soap to write English words on the walls. I was hiding it under the door or in my shoes.

Mohammed often used words like ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ and immediately apologised. ‘I learned soldiers’ English,’ he said.

I had even a song, a song I made in English. It’s called ‘Number Two’. At the beginning, they gave us a bucket to piss and shit. They told us to call ‘Number One’ or ‘Number Two’, and they would take out the bucket. We started to throw buckets of shit on the guards through the fence. It was quite easy. So we called any bad thing made to a guard a Number Two.

And when I sang it, every detainee in the corridor used to sing with me. And even some good guards.

Number Two, Number Two!
I will never regret what I do!
You will never forget it, Number Two!
If you treat us as human, human beings,
We will treat you as human, human beings!
If you treat us as animals, so will we,
We will treat you as animals!
Number Two, Number Two, Number Two!

When the guards disrespected us, I told them: ‘Don’t make me sing “Number Two”.’

Did I tell you I was a bad boy in Guantánamo? They called me a troublemaker. There was a big sign on my door: NO CONVERSATION WITH 269. 269 was my number, but I didn’t like to be called 269. ‘Call me by my name!’ They started calling me Chris Tucker. Have you seen the movie Rush Hour, with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, a black actor? I bought it in the N’Djamena market after I was released. Everyone had a nickname in Guantánamo, even the guards, because most covered up their name on their uniform. When I asked their name, they said: ‘Don’t worry about it!’ I used to ask the good guards the names of the bad guards. When I knew the name of a bad guard, I started to call him it. I remember one, with blond hair, blue eyes, in his twenties — it was the first time I was seeing so many people with blond hair and blue eyes. ‘I know your name and I know where you’re from,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to get out someday and I’m gonna kick your ass!’ He looked at his name on his uniform — had he forgotten the tape to cover it? No.

‘How could you know my name?’

‘I know your name is …’ I don’t remember it today, but let’s say he was called Smith.

‘Don’t say that aloud!’

‘I know your city, I know your family, I know details!’ Actually, all I knew was his name and his city.

‘Who told you this?’

‘I won’t say. But one day I’m gonna go home and then you’ll see.’

He started walking in the block. I don’t think he slept that night. The next day he came back: ‘Brother!’

‘Oh, I’m a brother now …’ Normally, it’s the prisoners who called each other ‘brother’.

‘I know, I’ve been bad. I’ve got a lot of problems at home. But I don’t hate you.’

I learned in Guantánamo that there are really racist people. The guards were often calling me or other black people with the N-word. ‘Fucking nigger!’ One of the guards who called me so, I gave him a headbutt and I broke him a tooth. He was very young, between 20 and 25, as most of the guards. I did nothing the day he actually insulted me. But days after, I started joking with the guards. I wanted the one who had insulted me to trust me. There were two windows in the door, one up, to shackle your hands, the other down to shackle your feet. They didn’t open the door — we were so dangerous! I wanted the guard who had insulted me to come to the door and open the upper window. I called him: ‘Hey man, long time no see you!’

‘What do you want? You’re not angry anymore?’

‘No, come, let’s chat, open the window.’ He was an idiot. He opened. ‘See this!’ I said, and I knocked his nose. He was bleeding, I was laughing. The other guards sprayed me with pepper spray, something they used very often. It burns and makes it hard to breathe. It’s not the only guard I knocked on his face. I pissed on their faces too. I was a bad boy in Guantánamo.

Once, in 2005, one of our brothers was badly beaten in front of us. I sat in my room not speaking to anyone all day. During night shift, one of the good guards, a black guy from Louisiana, came to me. We called him Mike Tyson because he was a boxer. He used to bump my fist through the bars: ‘Wassup, Chris?’

‘If at least we’d done something bad, I could understand …’

‘Brother, look at my face!’ he said. ‘How long you’ve been here with Americans?’

‘Four years.’

‘I’ve been suffering 27 years, man! I know what it is. They put my brother in jail for no reason, instead of a white guy.’ Most of the people in jail in US are blacks, he told me. ‘My grandfather and my great-grandfather were in the situation you’re in now.’ He meant they were slaves, shackled like us.

He asked me a lot of questions about Islam. ‘Before I came to Guantánamo, the media told me Muslims hate us because of our way of life, our democracy.’ But when he came here, he saw that we Muslims respect each other and have no hate for people of other religions. He saw me reading the Quran and calling everyone to prayer. ‘You’re the youngest and the only black guy, and they listen to you! There’s no racism between you!’

We talked during one year. One night, I was asleep when I felt someone was hitting me with something. It was Tyson, with an ice cream. Sometimes he brought ice cream, chocolate or chips — he could be fired for that. He was laughing. I was happy to see him. ‘Man, I’m leaving tonight.’

‘Where?’

‘America! But as soon as I get to the US, I’m going to convert to Islam and leave the army.’ He shook my hand. ‘Good luck, my brother!’ He was the best of all the guards.

When the bad guards saw us sad and sick, they were happy. And I didn’t want that. Since I was little, I was always laughing, smiling, joking and I kept going in Guantánamo. They were telling me: ‘Why are you laughing?’

‘I’m happy!’

‘How can you be happy? You’re in jail.’

In fact he tried to kill himself several times. Once he cut his wrists on the metal door. Another time he tried to hang himself with clothes tied together.

Many detainees tried to commit suicide, but I don’t think they succeeded. Six died. I knew them — it’s so hard to believe that those six, especially, committed suicide. One day, an interrogator told me one brother died because he took more than a hundred pills. I was angry: ‘You’re the terrorists now,’ I said. ‘Why are you killing people?’

‘He took pills,’ the interrogator said.

‘You’re doing searches every day. How could he get those pills? Where could he hide them?’ He shut up. I was more and more angry. He asked the guard to handcuff me.

At the end of 2006, beginning of 2007, they opened a new camp — Camp Six. The guards told us: ‘You’ll have a big rec yard, football, TV. You’re going to be chillin’ like a villain!’ But there were a lot of lies. I was one of the first transferred there. The A/C was very very cold. I called the guard, politely: ‘Can I have a few words with you?’

After 30 minutes, he came: ‘’Bout what?’

‘The A/C is too cold.’

‘It’s cold out here too. It’s snowing.’

I said: ‘Brothers! This piece of shit wants to cause problems today.’

‘What? What do you call me now?’

One of my brothers said: ‘Let’s cover the A/C with paper.’ One hour a day, we were allowed to see our legal documents and to have paper to write letters. We had toothpaste — small and stinky, so we didn’t use it. I told my brothers: ‘Let’s paste paper on the A/C with toothpaste and water.’

We were 17 to do it. The A/C was blocked. The guard ordered: ‘269, TAKE IT DOWN!’ He was getting red from kicking the door. ‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘It’s bad for your heart! It’s snowing outside, and we don’t want the snow to get in.’

He radioed: ‘Control, it’s Foxtrot One!’

‘Go ahead, Foxtrot One!’

‘Cell 103 covering A/C!’

‘Not only me,’ I said. ‘102, 104, 105, 106.’ He repeated all the cell numbers.

A lieutenant came: ‘269!’

‘My name is Mohammed!’

‘Why are you covering the A/C?’

We knew that their rules said the temperature should be 78°. ‘Listen, your own book says it’s supposed to be 78°.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been here six years. I know the rules, it’s the same shit ever since we’ve been here.’

‘Same what? Don’t say shit!’

‘I’m speaking like you.’

BRING THE TEAM!

The team. Six guards wearing helmets, elbow pads, knee pads and gloves, like the riot police you see on TV. The first one carried a plastic shield. DETAINEE! LIE DOWN! CROSS YOUR FEET! DON’T RESIST THE TEAM! They want you on the belly, hands and feet crossed behind.

They hit me with the shield. I took one guy’s helmet and punched his face. They put me on the floor, beat me badly and shackled me. HANDS AND LEGS SECURE! I repeated: HANDS AND LEGS SECURE! I heard people laughing, even guards. DETAINEE! STOP TALKING! STOP RESISTING! It’s always like that: the team leader holds your head, and there’s one guard for each arm, and another for each leg. TEAM LIFT! They lift your body. TEAM PREPARE TO MOVE … TEAM MOVE! I was repeating everything. Someone said: ‘Come on, don’t make me laugh!’ Everything is filmed and they can be punished.

Once you’re out of your cell, they put you face down on the ground. PREPARING TO SEARCH! SEARCH RIGHT! They search the right side of your body. SEARCH LEFT! Then they searched my cell and pulled the paper off the A/C. The colonel arrived. I called him: ‘Come to see why we made trouble? See the temperature, it’s very cold. Believe me!’ It was night-time. In the morning they switched off the A/C. And we went to sleep. Two weeks later, my lawyer told me: ‘All your brothers in the camp learned what you did and thank you.’

At the end of 2004, civilian lawyers were finally allowed to visit the detainees. Among them was Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of Reprieve. Because Mohammed was a minor, he chose him as one of his first clients, but his trial didn’t take place until four years later. Sitting in a room with a big white phone, Mohammed heard Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington DC order his release.

He hoped to go home, to Medina, but the Saudi government didn’t want him back. Chad agreed to have him. In June 2009, a military plane dropped him at N’Djamena airport. He was jailed for eight days. When he was released, he was celebrated. ‘El Gorani Exults with His Relatives’ was the headline in the government daily ‘Le Progrès’. The picture shows him with uncles and cousins who had come from the desert to meet him. Then they went back to their camels.

He had no family in N’Djamena and shared a flat with seven other Gorans, all born in Saudi Arabia. He spent his days in front of a laptop, listening to ‘English for You’ or playing ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ Sometimes he played football, but his back and stomach hurt, and he had problems with his vision. He needed medical treatment that wasn’t available in Chad. After months in N’Djamena, he wanted to leave. But the Chadians refused to give him a passport. In early 2010, after seven years, Chad and Sudan reopened their common border and he was able to leave.

As soon as the border opened, Sudanese brothers who had been released from Guantánamo called me: ‘Come, come!’ In April or May, I took a small bag, the court papers saying I was innocent and a few clothes. I gave all the rest to friends. I thought I’d never go back to Chad.

In Darfur, I found a space in a lorries convoy to Khartoum. Each lorry had maybe fifteen persons on the roof. Because of my back, I paid to sit in the cabin. We were over six hundred trucks. There were soldiers’ cars in front and next to the convoy, and helicopters above. There were checkpoints with armed men. I saw burned houses, broken trees, displaced people camps. The driver liked to talk: ‘I’ve been driving for 18 years, I know all the roads.’ He said it was a paradise before the war. We passed villages where nobody was living now. ‘That would have been a good place for a break, but it’s not safe. Without an escort, we would be killed.’ We met another convoy, as big as ours, coming the other way. In the evening, we learned it had been attacked by rebels.

When we got to Khartoum, I called my brothers Walid and Adel. They told me: ‘Your room is ready.’ A good room, with A/C, a bed, magazines, books. Soon after my arrival, Adel took me to hospital and paid for everything. They checked my eyes and told me I would need an operation, because of the coloured lights they put in my eyes during the interrogations in Guantánamo. They made me nice small square glasses. They did X-ray for my back, and I had an appointment to see the doctor later. But then …

He crossed his hands as if handcuffed. One evening, as he was going home, two Sudanese security agents picked him up in a car and held a gun to his head.

‘Why are you here?’

I showed them my stomach pills. ‘Medical care. Look.’

‘We know, but we were told to take you to jail.’ It was better than Guantánamo, but it was still a prison. I was with another prisoner, a man from Darfur — they accused him of being a rebel but he told me he wasn’t.

In the morning, I took all my pills and I passed out. They took me to hospital. In the evening, I asked to go to the toilets and I escaped by the window. I ran all night. I was bare feet, my feet were bleeding. They had taken everything — my shoes, my new glasses. I came to a big market. I found people from my tribe and told them everything had been stolen from me. They helped me get back to Chad. My trip to Sudan had been useless.

His parents came to visit him from Saudi Arabia and brought him new glasses. He married the daughter of a friend of his uncle. And finally, a few months ago, he got out of Chad.

When he was still in N’Djamena, talking to me, I asked the US Embassy if they kept tabs on him. Official reply: ‘We asked the Chadian government to treat him according to international human rights standards.’ But a US diplomat told me in confidence that he was the object of a ‘classified agreement between the governments of the US and Chad’. The US asked Chad not to let him leave the country, and to inform them if he ever did. ‘Twenty-five per cent of the detainees released from Guantánamo have contacted or re-contacted Islamist networks,’ the diplomat said.

We were almost a thousand in Guantánamo. Now less than two hundred remain. Where did they all go, if they’re all terrorists, if they’re all killers? They’re free, most of them back in their country. If I ever leave Chad, I’d like to go to court against the US.

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.

This was not because of anything he had done, but because, as a critic of the regime, he had left the country in 2001, and had been in Pakistan, undertaking humanitarian work in a refugee camp when he was caught in a US bombing raid (which, with subsequent medical neglect on the part of the US authorities, led to him losing a leg). As a result, following his departure from Egypt, he had been given a three-year sentence in absentia by the Egyptian State Security Court for his alleged part in a supposed plot that was known as al-Wa’ad.

This, as the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm explained, was “the first major terrorism case in Egypt” after the 9/11 attacks, in which the defendants — 94 in total — were charged with “attempting to overthrow former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime and infiltrate Palestinian territory.” However, the case “was widely condemned as an attempt by Mubarak to suppress his Islamist opponents,” and this was an interpretation that carried considerable weight, as “[m]ore than half of the suspects were subsequently released.”

In the Miami Herald on Sunday, Hannah Allam, reporting from Cairo, explained that, after six months of pressure from his lawyers, at the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, Adel’s case will be heard on December 27, in an appeal for a new trial that will be held in a military court. Katie Taylor of Reprieve’s Life After Guantánamo project, said, “Egypt has an opportunity to, in a sense, wipe the slate clean when it comes to the human rights violations of the Mubarak years.”

Adel’s case is set to establish a precedent for how Egypt deals with former opponents of Mubarak’s regime who have been returning to the country since February, and it remains to be seen how the response of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) will reflect developments in Tunisia and Libya, if at all. In Tunisia, as Hannah Allam explained, “one of the first decrees of the interim Tunisian government was amnesty for political prisoners, including former or current detainees from Guantánamo,” and in Libya, former opponents of Gaddafi, and members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who opposed him from exile in Afghanistan and elsewhere, took up positions in the rebellion that finally toppled Moammar Gaddafi.

As I explained in articles here, here and here, in Tunisia, the circumstances were so favorable that a companion of el-Gazzar’s from Slovakia returned home safely, another was freed after imprisonment and a trial in Italy, and another, as Hannah Allam described it, “was freed from a Tunisian jail where the old regime had kept him since his release from US custody in 2007.” The interim government then “pledged to send a delegation to the US to negotiate for the release of the remaining Tunisians held in Guantanamo,” as Katie Taylor explained, and as I reported here, which was a development that “received considerable support among political parties and civil society in Tunisia.”

As Allam also explained:

Few analysts expect similar tolerance from Egypt’s ruling military council, which for years hyped the threat of Islamist extremism to Western allies as justification for Mubarak’s repressive police state. Since taking power in February, the council has outraged human rights advocates by subjecting about 12,000 Egyptians to military trials — more than in Mubarak’s entire time in office.

On the ground in Egypt, Adel el-Gazzar’s family “warned him that the old regime’s vast security and intelligence apparatus remained intact,” as the Herald‘s article put it, and worried that, “If that’s how revolutionary Egypt treats its civilians … then a bearded Islamist fresh out of Guantánamo stood little chance for smooth repatriation.”

His wife, Umm Abdul Rahman, who had brought up “three teenage sons, and an 11-year-old daughter who was an infant when Gazzar was detained,” said, “They paid no consideration to his age or his health. If he was cleared and released by America, then why try him again and imprison him for three more years? They were supposed to have cleared him as soon as he got back.”

Instead, as I explained in June, he was arrested on arrival at Cairo airport, and, as Allam put it, “was allowed a few moments with his wife and four children, their first meeting in a decade, and then disappeared into Egypt’s prisons” — and, specifically, the notorious Tora Prison, where Mubarak’s two sons and some of the former dictator’s senior associates “are awaiting trial on corruption and other charges.” Mohammed Zarae, an Egyptian lawyer who is representing Adel in his appeal, explained that he is not being “abused or violated,” and has been allowed family visits, although “they’ve been curtailed because Egypt is on high alert for parliamentary elections.” In a report for Al-Jazeera, however, Katie Taylor noted that, despite this, “a prisoner was allegedly tortured to death three weeks ago” in the Tora prison.

Reporting on the case that led to his in absentia conviction, the Herald noted that the Egyptian authorities opened the al-Wa’ad case immediately after the 9/11 attacks, and that many of those rounded up and sentenced after cursory trials, and that some of the defendants, including Adel and his brother Ashraf, were not even in the country at the time. Ashraf el-Gazzar said that interrogators told the prisoners, “Sorry, it’s just bad timing for you guys. You’re Mubarak’s gift to the Americans.”

Egyptian political analysts told the Herald that “Mubarak’s government fabricated or greatly exaggerated the threat posed by the defendants to prove to Washington that it was a reliable ally in the fight against terrorism,” and it was noted that, under Mubarak, most of the convictions were overturned, while other defendants “served three-year sentences and are now free.”

Adel, however, is “believed to be the last of the Waad Cell suspects still in custody,” and a military court will have to decide “whether he should be freed, kept in prison or granted a new trial based on what his attorneys say is a conviction based on evidence obtained through torture.” A memorandum of appeal submitted by his lawyers states:

The evidence against the defendant is based on the statements of other defendants, which they subsequently recanted. The court ruled that statements had been the result of physical and moral coercion by state security agents. The coercive methods of the security services became clear in the scandal following the revolution when it was revealed that physical torture had led to false confessions.

The only government official who spoke to the Miami Herald was Maj. Mukhtar el-Mullah, a member of the ruling military council, who said that “he hadn’t heard of el-Gazzar by name and had no information about the case.”

Ashraf el-Gazzar said that his brother had left the prison just once, when “he was granted a day pass to visit his ailing mother at the family home in Cairo.” He added that the authorities “flooded their block with security forces and put snipers on the roof of the house,” which, his family said, “was absurd for a man with only one leg,” and “was designed to shame them among neighbors.”

Ashraf also said that the authorities “sent along a video crew,” but “the family refused to allow recording for fear the government would use it as propaganda.” Adel’s family added that the ruling will be “the only barometer they need to decide whether human rights are a priority in the post-Mubarak Egypt,” and, in conclusion, speaking of the authorities’ plan to video Adel’s visit, Ashraf said, “They wanted to pretend that they cared about prisoners’ rights. I told one officer to his face, ‘You’re an extension of Guantánamo. What the Americans do there, you do here.’”

In her concluding thoughts, Katie Taylor of Reprieve stated, “If the military prosecutor does not acquit Adel, it will be yet one further indication that, unlike Tunisia, Egypt has not broken with its illegal detention policies. Just last week, SCAF officials went on state television to urge Egyptians to stop comparing SCAF’s rule to the Mubarak regime. Clearly, the solution is for them to stop acting like the Mubarak regime.”

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.

This situation has been complicated by the fact that, under President Obama, the Justice Department has continued to deal with habeas corpus claims as though the Bush administration was still in office, and has not cross-referenced its cases with the findings of the President’s own Guantánamo Review Task Force, a sober collection of career officials, lawyers and representatives of the intelligence services, who concluded, after a year-long review of the prisoners’ cases, that only 36 of those still held should be tried, and that 89 should be released.

Add to that the President’s systematic aversion to confrontation on “national security” issues, and it becomes more comprehensible why we have reached a situation whereby the only prisoners to have left Guantánamo in the last nine months left in coffins, and why only three living prisoners have been released in the last 15 months.

To cite just the major examples of capitulation on the part of the administration, it is clear that the President has refused to contemplate any attempt to secure accountability for those who approved and introduced the Bush administration’s torture program, that he backed down on a plan to release cleared prisoners (the Uighurs) to live in the US in 2009, that he backed down on repatriating any cleared Yemenis (even though 58 cleared Yemenis are being held) in January 2010, after the failed underwear bomber was captured on Christmas Day 2009 and there was a outburst of general hysteria, and also that he backed down on plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men in federal court in New York for their alleged connection to the 9/11 attacks, despite having announced it to the world in November 2009.

In this seemingly hopeless situation, it is important that journalists continue to shine a light on Guantánamo past, resent and future, and to that end I’m delighted to cross-post below a feature by Jenifer Fenton of CNN dealing with the Kuwaitis held in Guantánamo. Jenifer wrote another excellent article about the Kuwaitis in August, which I suggested at the time ought to serve as a spur to to break the deadlock by securing the release of the two remaining Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantánamo, Fayiz al-Kandari and Fawzi al-Odah.

Fenton has followed up with a devastating analysis (cross-posted below) of the manner in which false confessions were extracted at Guantánamo using threats or coercion, based on interviews conducted in Kuwait, and the extraction of false confessions is particularly apparent through her discussions with Fouad al-Rabiah, the Kuwait Airways employee and philanthropist who was portrayed in Guantánamo as an al-Qaeda supporter and a significant player in the conflict in Afghanistan until his habeas corpus petition was reviewed by a US judge in September 2009, and it was revealed that this entire narrative was constructed by the US authorities through the use of threats and abuse, and was dutifully repeated by al-Rabiah, who was afraid that he would otherwise be sent to another country for torture, and would never see his family again.

I discussed al-Rabiah’s successful habeas corpus petition in an article entitled, A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions, and I regard it still as one of the most devastating insights into how the supposed intelligence obtained in Guantánamo, which purports to support official claims that those held there are dangerous, is, for the most part, a mirage, composed of lies, dubious confessions and unverifiable hearsay extracted through the use of torture, coercion, bribery, threats and abuse.

Moreover, the failures of the intelligence are systematic, as I have constantly been trying to demonstrate through my work, and as I have been explaining in detail in my ongoing 70-part, million-word series, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” in which I am analyzing all the prisoners’ stories in depth, and including the information contained in the classified military assessments released by WikiLeaks in April. These demonstrate a shocking lack of intelligence when it came to rounding up Afghan prisoners, and also reveal the extent of this web of false confessions made by prisoners about their fellow prisoners.

For her article, Jenifer Fenton also spoke with Abd al-Aziz al-Shammeri, whose story I discussed here, and who also has some important recollections about his experiences, but it is Fouad al-Rabiah’s story that remains supremely important, and that should be known about as widely as possible. If there will ever be a time when we can look back on Guantánamo as a vile aberration, never to be repeated, the story of Fouad al-Rabiah, and his successful habeas corpus petition, will figure prominently. However, we have not yet reached that time, and for now the stories told to Jenifer Fenton by the former prisoners still need to be used as part of the argument for why Guantánamo must be closed, and why the remaining Kuwaitis must be released. I hope you have time to read it, and also to share it as widely as possible.

Former Guantánamo inmates tell of confessions under ‘torture’
By Jenifer Fenton, CNN, October 28, 2011

“You know what this is?” Fouad Al-Rabiah asked as he held up a photograph of a cell in Guantánamo. “This is my house for eight years.” The cell is small, sterile and resembles a cage. It has a hole in the floor where the toilet is.

Al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti father of four, then held up another piece of paper. “This is the first evidence that the United States government had given to the court to tell them that I am the worst of the worst in Guantánamo.”

The evidence is a two-page letter in Arabic, which Al-Rabiah was accused of writing. It was found in Tora Bora and was presented as evidence Al-Rabiah and his son Abdullah were the leaders of an attack in Afghanistan in 1991. His oldest son was only one year old in 1991. “This was not me.”

He showed more of the evidence used against him. The US government had accused Al-Rabiah of providing material support to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Al-Rabiah was interrogated, by his own count, more than 200 times. He says he was tortured: “Lots and lots of torture.” He confessed to any and everything his interrogators said about him.

But in 2009 US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered that Al-Rabiah, an aviation engineer who had studied in Scotland and America, be released, citing a lack of credible evidence that he was associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The evidence presented by the government to the court was “surprisingly bare,” and interrogators used “abusive techniques,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 65-page opinion [PDF]. The court said that Al-Rabiah’s confessions were so inconsistent or implausible even his interrogators did not believe them.

“It is also undisputed that Al-Rabiah confessed to information that his interrogators obtained from either alleged eyewitnesses who are not credible and as to whom the Government has now largely withdrawn any reliance, or from sources that never even existed,” the opinion stated.

The court concluded, “If there exists a basis for Al-Rabiah’s indefinite detention, it most certainly has not been presented to this court.” Al-Rabiah’s petition for habeas corpus was granted.

Al-Rabiah returned to Kuwait in December 2009. He had lost eight years of his life. “I lost so many things, but I know that I was right,” he said. “I know that they were wrong.” Al-Rabiah is one of 12 Kuwaiti detainees taken to Guantánamo.

Nine other Kuwaitis have been released, including Abd Al-Aziz Sayer Uwain Al-Shammeri. Al-Shammeri had been detained without charge and transferred to Kuwait in 2005 for reasons that remain unclear. Al-Shammeri and many of the freed detainees were charged in Kuwaiti courts following their release from Guantánamo but were acquitted of any wrongdoing.

One of those acquitted — Abdallah Saleh Ali Al-Ajmi — blew himself up in Iraq, according to Pentagon officials.

Al-Ajmi was one of two Kuwaitis who took part in a suicide attack in Mosul in April 2008, the officials said. Records show an attack that day targeted an Iraqi police patrol and left six people dead, including two police officers.

Two people who knew Al-Ajmi described him as unstable when he returned from Guantánamo.

Two Kuwaiti detainees, Fawzi Al-Odah and Fayiz Al-Kandari, remain in custody and their families and others fear they may be indefinitely detained.

I met with Al-Rabiah, Al-Shammeri and Khalid Al-Odah, Fawzi Al-Odah’s father, in Kuwait 10 years after America’s war on terror began.

Life before Guantánamo

Al-Rabiah, now 52, had a documented history of doing charitable work with reputable organizations in Kosovo, Bosnia and Bangladesh. Before leaving for humanitarian trips, Al-Rabiah routinely requested leave from his employer Kuwait Airlines, where he had worked since 1981.

For the first 30 minutes of our meeting Al-Rabiah, a serious and intense man, enthusiastically told me about his previous missions and expressed his view that as a wealthy Muslim country, Kuwait should help those less fortunate. “We are well off in comparison to other countries … We cannot see famine and natural disasters and do nothing about it.”

Al-Rabiah traveled to Afghanistan twice in 2001, July and October, for charitable reasons. He was on a fact-finding mission related to Afghanistan’s refugee problems and lack of medical infrastructure, he said. The government said that Al- Rabiah was a “devotee of Osama bin Laden who ran to bin Laden’s side after September 11.” The US court ruled that the evidence strongly supported Al-Rabiah’s story.

Al-Shammeri, 37, also said he traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001 for charitable reasons — to teach Islamic law in Afghanistan. His life was “normal” before Guantánamo. He was married and had two children, who in 2001 were six and two years old.

He was an Islamic scholar and worked at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Kuwait. He was planning to get a master’s degree in Egypt, where he had paid registration dues. He was accepted, he later learned, the same day he was captured in Afghanistan. He was 28 years old at the time.

I met Al-Shammeri at Khaled Al-Odah’s house, where the former detainees meet on a regular basis for support. He is a tall, relaxed and very funny man who smiles without interruption. He understands basic English. He is far from fluent, but he said with time he understood all the jargon related to Guantánamo.

“Terrorists,” he said and laughs. “Guilty,” that word too he added. “They never used the word innocent.”

The US said Al-Shammeri was a member of al-Qaeda and one of his known aliases was on a list of hard drives associated with al-Qaeda.

Road to Guantánamo

In October Al-Rabiah entered Afghanistan through Iran, where he had been looking at the situation of Afghan refugees. “The day that I went into Afghanistan is the day the [American] bombing started. Of course this is all documented because I had the stamp,” he said. The US authorities later took possession of his passport and they saw the stamp, he added.

But when the bombing started, the Iranians closed the border. He decided he would try to leave Afghanistan through Pakistan and wrote a letter to his family about the situation.

Al-Rabiah said at the time he weighed 108 kilograms (240 pounds) and could not see at night, which made him ill-suited physically for the Afghan terrain. On December 25, he was captured in a village outside of Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

The villagers took him to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, who he alleged tortured him. Al-Rabiah was in their custody he believes for about a month, and then, he alleges, the Northern Alliance sold him to the Americans for $5,000, the same price as his watch.

He was then sent to Bagram Air Base, a US military-controlled facility north of Kabul, where he said he was treated well. According to legal documents, at this point he told his family he was “detained by the American troops and thanks to God they are good example of humanitarian behavior.”

Al-Rabiah said he was told at Bagram that they were preparing for his transfer back to Kuwait, but that he would first need to move to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Al-Rabiah spent two and half months in Kandahar, where he alleges he was tortured.

“There are more ways of torturing a person than you can imagine,” he said.

A report by Human Rights Watch in 2004 [PDF] called attention to what it said was systemic abuse of detainees by US military and intelligence personnel.

Abuse of detainees in Afghanistan included being stripped, kicked and punched, being forced to endure freezing temperatures, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and forcing detainees to sit or stand in painful positions for extended periods of time, according to HRW.

“Abuse of detainees was an established part of the interrogation process,” the report said.

If the US Department of Defense “receives specific, credible information of mistreatment by its personnel, those allegations are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated,” according to Lt. Col. Joseph Todd Breasseale, a defense spokesperson.

He added, the “DoD does not tolerate the mistreatment of detainees and will continue to ensure proper training and accountability measures.”

Al-Shammeri was also sent to Kandahar. Before he was captured he said he realized the situation in Afghanistan was becoming increasingly more dangerous. He heard that every Arab was wanted dead or alive and Arabs were being bought and sold. So he said decided to leave via Pakistan, where he was arrested trying to cross the border.

He said he turned himself in to the Pakistanis thinking they would contact Kuwait and send him back home. “What first comes to anyone’s mind is that once a citizen of any particular nation travels abroad … when a problem takes place, the logic dictates that he should be handed to his native country of origin and not to be extradited to a third party nation. That’s what anyone in their sane mind would think,” he said.

“If I only knew that this would have been the way, I’d have just gone in hiding.”

The Pakistani government told him that they were going to send him back home, Al- Shammeri said. But according to Al-Shammeri, US forces took him by plane to a military camp in Kandahar. Al-Shammeri said he had no recollection of time or place. He too alleges he was tortured in Kandahar.

He was interrogated and beaten. He says he did not know what was happening because he did not understand all of the English, his eyes were covered, his hands and feet were tied and all he heard was the voice of an Arab interrogator.

When he was leaving Kandahar, Al-Shammeri said he had no idea where he was going.

“They just recited my number … and they took me, shaved my head and then they tied me up and blindfolded me,” he said.

“While I was walking toward the plane, there was a female military personnel who took the mufflers off my ears and told me that I am going home, in English, she said, ‘you are going back to your home,’ then she put them back on and, for a second, I thought they are taking me back to Kuwait.”

However Al-Rabiah, who speaks fluent English, knew that none of the detainees would be going home. Everybody would be going to Guantánamo.

Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo

Al-Rabiah arrived in Cuba on May 1, 2002. His first impression of the place was “heaven,” he said compared to his detention in Afghanistan. The camp was clean. It was not blistering hot during the day and freezing at night like Afghanistan. There were no sandstorms and no planes taking off around the clock. They were allowed to shower.

He was told that they would not be held at Guantánamo for more than six months, which he thinks now was a tactic to keep them from rioting. “The first year in Cuba, I left my cell … for recreation only 24 hours for the whole year,” Al-Rabiah said. He passed his time by reading the Koran. He spent a lot of time in isolation.

He said early on he was told by a woman working at the camp, “We have nothing against you. We know nothing about you, but the president said there is no innocent [person] in Cuba.”

Al-Rabiah said she continued advising him: “You cannot leave here so confess to something so we can charge you, sentence you and you go home. But if we don’t charge you, sentence you, you are not leaving.”

Al-Rabiah said he thought it was crazy and that he was not going to play that game. “I said this is absurd … that was way in the beginning and then they changed the tactics and started the torture.”

The US court opinion — parts of which are redacted — which freed Al-Rabiah reads: “The following day marked a turning point in Al-Rabiah’s interrogations … After using a [redacted] … featuring … for approximately [redacted]. From that point forward, Al-Rabiah confessed to the allegations that interrogators described to him.”

I asked Al-Rabiah what changed and why he started to “confess.”

“I was threatened by two major things. First, they asked: ‘Would you like to go home a drug addict,’” Al-Rabiah said. Then they threatened to send him to a place where he would “disappear.”

He said that he believed that these were not empty threats and he believed that people were sent to other countries and were tortured and “those people when they came back from there they were different people.” They were broken “beyond repair.”

In response to a query from CNN about alleged renditions and drug abuse, CNN was referred to a report by the Department of Defense on detainee conditions which said: “It is our judgment that the conditions of confinement, in Guantánamo, are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,” which among other things prohibits violence to life and person and humiliating and degrading treatment.

In 2003, a US Justice Department memo by a Justice Department lawyer at the time, John Yoo, based on a previous memo to then attorney general Alberto Gonzales argued the drugs could be used on prisoners if the drugs did not “disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality,” and US law “does not preclude any and all use of drugs.”

Several released detainees have said they were drugged, according to media reports. The Department of Justice and the CIA denied the accusations, according to the Washington Post, which reported on allegations of detainees being drugged.

A US court said that threats against Al-Rabiah included “rendition to places where Al-Rabiah would either be tortured and/or would never be found,” and threats against him “were also reinforced by placing Al-Rabiah into the frequent flier program,” a sleep deprivation program where detainees were frequently moved from one cell to another.

Al-Rabiah concluded that if he resisted he was not going to be of any use to his family. But If he gave his captors what they wanted, he thought, “maybe I will be able to go back home and I will clear my name when I go back home. I reached a stage of desperation. I could not live any longer. I lost all hope. I had to play the game with them.” This is how his confessions were made, according to Al-Rabiah.

Al-Rabiah recounted the sort of questioning he faced. The interrogator would say:

“Fouad, you were with so and so, doing so and so.”

Al-Rabiah would say: “Yes I have been there.”

The interrogator said: “Did you see so and so person?”

Al-Rabiah would say: “I don’t know, did I?”

They said: “Yes you did.”

Al-Rabiah: “OK, I did.”

Interrogator: “What did you talk about?”

Al-Rabiah said the interrogators would also take him to a detainee recreation area to collect “intelligence” from other detainees, who knew that he was reporting it back to the interrogator.

“Can you believe that?” Al-Rabiah said. “This is the kind of intelligence gathering” they did. The US court noted Al-Rabiah once “made a full confession that is entirely different than his initial confession,” and “Al-Rabiah did not know what to admit” to.

Al-Shammeri, however, said he never “confessed,” even though he alleged he was tortured. “If I did confess, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, referring to Kuwait. But he too reached a point of desperation, not unlike Al-Rabiah’s.

Al-Shammeri said he was so desperate in 2005 that he went on a 100-day hunger strike which ended only when he was released. He also protested his detention in 2002 by refusing to eat.

Al-Shammeri denied all of the government’s claims against him.

According to a Department of Defense memorandum published by WikiLeaks, Al-Shammeri was alleged to have “received training on advanced counter-interrogation techniques, as well as above average terrorist training typically taught by al-Qaeda.”

According to court documents, Al-Shammeri said if he has wanted to kill Americans he did not need to travel to Afghanistan to do so as there were many Americans in Kuwait.

“If I wanted to fight with them, I would have fought them in Kuwait. You saw how people are bombing Americans in Saudi Arabia. If I had any hatred on my part, I would have done that to the Americans in Kuwait. There was no need for me to travel.”

Al-Shammeri said every time he was interrogated they would accuse him of something else (something Al-Rabiah said as well). For example, because he studied Islamic law, he said he was accused of being a Taliban judge, which he said would not be possible because he was in Afghanistan for such a brief time and because he did not speak the language.

He said he was tortured. “Yes, by God. I was tortured,” Al-Shammeri said. There are many ways of being tortured, he added, but he did not elaborate on specifics. “I believe that … if the devil would have been there and witnessed these torture sessions, he would … have said, ‘how would you come up with such twisted thoughts?’ Satan would say, ‘please come on.’ These thoughts would be even surprising to the Devil himself.”

In response to a query about detainee abuse, CNN was told via email by Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde of US Defense Operations: “The Department of Defense requires all its detention operations to meet a high standard of humane care and custody … We have updated our laws, policies, procedures and training to ensure respect for the dignity of every detainee in our custody.”

Life after Guantánamo

When Al-Rabiah returned to Kuwait he said he was warmly received. Those who knew him never thought he was guilty, he said. When repatriated, Al-Rabiah was supposed to — according to a US request — live in a rehabilitation center, according to David Cynamon, the lead lawyer for the Kuwaiti detainees.

Cynamon said the request was improper. “It would be like the US demanding conditions of parole on a prisoner that the court ordered released because the prisoner didn’t commit a crime.”

But Kuwaiti authorities decided there was no case against Al-Rabiah and they allowed him to go free.

Al-Rabiah returned to his job at Kuwait Airways. But he says he has lost so much.

While he was in Guantánamo his father died, his brother died, two uncles passed away and his mother had a stroke while he was away and could not speak to him when he returned.

“I lost the childhood of my children,” he said. His youngest child was six years old when he left, and 15 when he finally returned home.

Al-Rabiah said he was blessed that God kept him sane during his Guantánamo ordeal. But he is not a free man. Per a US request, he is monitored, has to regularly report to a security post and he cannot travel, according to Al-Rabiah. He fears that, if he doesn’t comply, the US will hold his actions against the remaining two Kuwaiti detainees.

Al-Shammeri also has the same restrictions, which he follows mainly for the same reasons. For him, the Guantánamo issue is not finished. Since he was released, he says he has continued to suffer because of the association. Unlike Al-Rabiah, he was not ordered released by the court but rather he was released because of a US government decision. The details of his release are unknown.

When Al-Shammeri, who now works for a private oil company in Kuwait, was told he was going to be released, officials at Guantánamo took his DNA and his photograph, he said. The guards presented him with a paper with a clause that they said Al-Shammeri had written, which he denied, and they wanted him to sign it.

The clause said if Al-Shammeri was found at any time to be with terror suspects, the US would be allowed to imprison him for life, according to Al-Shammeri. This was frightening to Al-Shammeri, who said the list of the American suspects is huge and he worried about what would happen if he was with a suspect but did not know it. He refused to sign the document.

“The situation in Guantánamo is wrong 100%,” Al-Shammeri said. “In my case, I don’t even know why I was transferred there and how and then I have no idea how I was released.” He continued, ” I am so confused … I never understood the guidelines they used to release the detainees,” Al-Shammeri said.

“No one should just rule on the go, as they please. They can’t just imprison whomever as they wish and when you ask about the charge, they say, ‘it is classified evidence that incriminates you.’ This is what opens new gateways to terrorize people under the pretext of the law and this is not the law in any way.”

At its peak, Guantánamo held at least 779 men. But over the years some 600 men have been sent to their country of origin or to a country willing to take them. There are now fewer than 200 held at the facility.

When asked what the US should do about alleged terrorists, people who are a security threat at Guantánamo, Al-Rabiah answered, “take them to trial, let justice take its route. If a person is a terrorist, kills innocent people, he should not be set free.” But, he added, “I was kept there for eight years … saying about me that I am the worst of the worst. Only when I went to court I was cleared.”

Al-Rabiah fears that the evidence against the two remaining Kuwaiti detainees in Guantánamo may be as weak as the evidence was against him. “If you [America] are sure they are bad people, don’t you trust your legal system … or is it justice only for US citizens … since when do people not have a right for justice … isn’t that what the US is known for?”

In Al-Rabiah’s case, the courts also ruled that “none of the alleged eyewitnesses have provided credible allegations against Al-Rabiah.”

Fawzi Al-Odah is one of those two Kuwait detainees being held. According to a Department of Defense memorandum published by WikiLeaks, at least one person who provided evidence against Al-Rabiah gave evidence against Al-Odah.

“YM-252 [Yasim Basardah, a Yemeni known as the most notorious liar in Guantánamo] stated detainee (Al-Odah) and Fuad Mahmud Hasan Al-Rabia assisted KU-552 [Fayiz al-Kandari] in the production and distribution of jihad videos in Kuwait. The videos were created to encourage people to provide contributions or to fight in Bosnia and Chechnya … YM-252 also reported detainee was well-connected to religious leaders in Kuwait, and stated detainee recruited young males in Kuwait to fight in Afghanistan. He also collected money that was then funneled to Afghanistan in support of KU-217 [Al-Shammeri].”

Khalid Al-Odah, Fawzi Al-Odah’s father, says he spoke to him on August 28, and he said his son was not well. Fawzi Al-Odah was on a long hunger strike, close to two months, and he was in isolation.

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Fawzi Al-Odah challenging his indefinite detention. Fawzi Al-Odah said he went to Afghanistan to do charity work, but the government claims he was associated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Fayiz Al-Kandari, the other Kuwait detainee at Guantánamo, has an appeal in November in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but his lawyer is not hopeful about the case.

The main difficulty in defending the detainee cases is the government is allowed to rely entirely on hearsay, which is not normally admitted in the US courts, according to Cynamon, who also represents Al-Kandari.

“They don’t have to bring any witnesses who are subject to cross-examination.” The government can simply submit “raw intelligence reports which basically are the summary write-up of what an interrogator says, the detainee or what other people have said,” Cynamon said.

Khalid Al-Odah fears his son is being punished in part because Kuwait has an independent judiciary. The US cannot force Kuwait to hold former detainees in jail.

Here in Kuwait “you cannot bring someone and put in them in jail unless you try them,” Khalid Al-Odah said. But the US has decided to release detainees to other countries that can put anyone they want to in jail without reason, he added. He feels these countries, which lack proper judicial systems, are being rewarded.

He also does not know what more he can do to assist his son’s case.

Khalid Al-Odah was told that the US wanted to make sure that the two Kuwaiti detainees previously released, which included Al-Rabiah, were monitored and reported back often to the Kuwaiti authorities.

After four months, if the system was working, his son would be released. But time passed and the US said it would not release the remaining two Kuwaitis, including his son, for security reasons. Khalid Al-Odah was told that the US said they were very dangerous.

“But they will never tell you why,” Khalid Al-Odah said.

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.