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.

Published last October, Amina’s article, whch I’m finally cross-posting below, explains her struggle — and that of her family — to find the inner strength and the financial support to continue campaigning to discover not only what happened to her husband, the businessman Masood Janjua, who disappeared in 2005 while on a bus with his friend Faisal Faraz, a 25-year-old engineer from Lahore, but also to hundreds more of Pakistan’s Disappeared, who she ended up representing through her organization, Defence of Human Rights Pakistan, which has registered the cases of over 900 missing people in Pakistan.

All of these people — and as many as ten times more, whose cases have not been registered — are presumed to have been “disappeared” by the Pakistani government, which, under Pervez Musharraf, was content to use its close relationship with America as a frontline partner in the “War on Terror” as a cover for a separate campaign to “disappear” Pakistanis as well — throughout the country, as with Masood Janjua, and specifically in Balochistan, where the number of disappeared dwarfs those elsewhere.

Describing his meeting with Amina prior to the publication of her article last October, Moazzam Begg wrote:

There are also hundreds of people “disappeared” and still unaccounted for in Pakistan. Their case is fought by an incredible woman, Amina Masood Janjua, who, with her Defence of Human Rights Campaign, has fought for the last five years to trace her own husband, Masood Janjua, and hundreds of others in the process. It was an honour to meet this woman who fights day and night, sometimes alone, to seek justice for the hundreds of disappeared and detained without trial around the country. I tried to give her some consolation during my meeting with her, that like me, her husband will surely be home soon. She’s appreciative of the sentiments but then tells me about the corrosive effects all this has had on her daughter, who accompanies her often.

They have registered over 900 cases of missing persons and believe that is only the tip of the iceberg. Estimates suggest the figures are ten times that number.

Amina has just been demonstrating outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad, carrying mock coffins as a symbol of the living-dead lives they are leading, with their loved ones still unaccounted for and with men dressed in Guantánamo signature orange suits wearing shackles. Her struggle is an uphill one, requiring full-time commitment with insufficient support or funds.

I hope you’re moved, as I was, by Amina’s story when I first heard it several years ago. I’ve made minor edits to Amina’s own account, published below, and if you’d like to find out more, please read this Cageprisoners interview from 2007, “The Conviction of Love,” an Amnesty International article from 2008, and this article by Robert Fisk in March last year. Also see this PBS Frontline video from 2009, and for an early report on the disappeared, see this article by Declan Walsh (published in the Guardian in 2007). Also see here for a more recent article by Canada’s CBC News, and for a more comprehensive overview, see the Amnesty International report, “Denying the Undeniable: Enforced Disappearances in Pakistan,” published in July 2008.

The fight becomes tough for my family
By Amina Masood Janjua, Cageprisoners, October 8, 2010

As the fight for the release of my illegally detained husband grew tougher and tougher, so was my pocket becoming emptier and emptier. Maybe it was created deliberately by the government to squeeze me financially. Because the last five years, two months and eight days to be exact, since when my life took a 180 degree turn on 30th July 2005, has been based on tireless struggles, non-stop running from pillar to post, sleepless nights and heart-piercing grief.

Masood, my loving husband, is a famous educator and businessman of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. He was honest, hardworking, enthusiastic, charismatic, competent and extremely loving and caring. We got married in 1989 and life was heavenly happy for us. We were blessed with two boys and an adorable daughter. For his children, Masood was extraordinary friendly, loving and caring. He would play wrestling with boys, and dolls with the little doll of ours. Life unfolded beautifully before us and we realized that we were more and more in love with each other.

There was hardly any spare time with Masood, as he was running three institutions and a social welfare hospital for the poor. The rest of the time was dedicated to his aging parents and the family he loved dearly. Masood made it a point to spend some time every now and then, relaxing in hilly scenic areas where we enjoyed barbeques, fishing and camping at our leisure.

I remember the time of Masood’s disappearance with a shudder, recalling how I was helplessly lying in bed for three months crying in a deep shock and depression. All the while my innocent children Muhammad (14), Ali (12) and Aishah (8) were sunk in a sea of shock, lost in a world of their own, their eyes desperately searching for Abbu (father) and Ammi (mother) both.

I pulled myself together with a determination never to give up and to bring my loved one home — to bring back the same old golden days of our union, when life was joy and fun and nothing else mattered. For the comfort of my children, I stretched over myself a confident smile. “I will bring your Abbu to you,” I promised to them.

After that, how could I rest or slow down? I only knew one thing and that is the “struggle to find Masood,” as our most vital head of the family and our most precious loved one was brutally snatched away from me and my children. It was confirmed that the intelligence agencies had taken him, when Dr. Imran Muneer, a key witness of seeing my husband in illegal detention, gave his statement in 2007.

By the end of 2007, there were a hundred families of “Missing Persons,” which I registered. I had to raise a voice for their grievance, protest for them, file their cases in the Supreme Court, and, most importantly, be like a mentor to them, guiding, counseling and motivating them never to lose heart or give up hope.

Protests, seminars, walks and rallies bombarded the newspapers and electronic media and our movement was making the headlines. Even during the judicial crises we were part and parcel of the lawyers’ long march, joining their struggle shoulder to shoulder. Just to get the rule of law and justice back on its heels, we gave every sacrifice.

The judicial crises

Facing a wall, frantically I started protesting in front of the Parliament House in September 2006. At first there was only the family of Masood Janjua, but within a short time we were joined by other families whose loved ones had also disappeared, and they were also equally aggrieved and denied of justice. We started calling this network of victim families, “Defence of Human Rights.”

We were lucky enough that Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had already taken notice of Masood’s abduction. The case was at its peak and about to be resolved with the appearance of Dr. Imran but unfortunately judicial crises engulfed the country after the unconstitutional Emergency of 3rd November 2007. My network of aggrieved and helpless victim families were the worst sufferers of this emergency-cum-martial law. High hopes were dashed away and so were the means of living, most of us having severe financial problems, so much so that even the basic necessities of life were hard to meet.

The 16th of March 2009 dawned with the renewal of  hopes for all the victim families of the enforced disappearances, as the pre-November 3rd judiciary was restored by the executive order of the Prime Minister, but unfortunately the joy was short-lived. I was confident that the issue of “Missing Persons” would be the first one picked up by the Chief Justice and the restored judiciary, but every attempt at persuasion, talks and efforts failed in getting the cases of the disappeared fixed in the Supreme Court. Finally the families of the disappeared had to camp 12 days and nights outside the Supreme Court in protest. The cases were finally fixed on 23rd November 2009. At last our sacrifices and steadfastness bore fruit.

I only call it Allah’s will that our trial was not yet over. The cases of the disappeared were disappeared from the Supreme Court without achieving any breakthrough, in May 2010, to sideline the issue.

A Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances was formed by the government to take away the focus of the media and the judiciary from this extremely sensitive issue and the worst violation of basic fundamental human rights. We came to know only after four months that it could not issue orders to produce the abductees nor to order any compensation to address the financial agonies of the families. It was criminal negligence and impunity exercised in its worst form on the part of the government.

There is yet hope and faith to rely on. Maybe some day the state’s lost conscience will be shaken and speedy justice will be delivered to the poor, forsaken and aggrieved of this nation. Whatever happened up till now may be an honest effort, but what’s the point when the government’s agencies themselves are into picking up honorable citizens from their homes and they themselves are searching for those abducted, instead of putting an end to this practice once and for all. It all seems like a cruel joke to befool the aggrieved, alas!

Rollercoaster of emotions

Throughout this rollercoaster of emotions and events, hopes high and hopes dashed, there was one element of solace and contentment: those getting released due to our hue and cry, protest and legal pressure. Mashallah, 332 detainees were traced and released during the last five years of our struggle [emphasis added]. The wife of one of the ex-detainees brought salaams and prayers from her husband. She was full of praise for our movement and told us that Aslam, her husband, narrated the following:

We were in dungeons being tortured day and night, till we lost our senses and  forgot our identity. As as a result of the public demonstrations, our cases opened and we were taken to jail; after three and a half years we saw sun light and breathed fresh air.

It was made possible only because of the pressure built by the tireless protest demonstration, sit-ins and rallies. Aslam also said that he was delighted to know, after being shifted in jail, that women, children, the old and the young are raising their voices for their release. It is amazing how Allah is making the weak and oppressed powerful and the voiceless heard. Allah (swt) has his own ways of making things work out for his dear ones.

Many detainees were also reported as saying that if the movement of Missing Persons is going on then we will also see the sun some day. If Allah (swt) has made us a ray of hope for those dumped in dark underground torture cells, what else can be a bigger honour than this?

My family’s ordeal

Out of all the three kids, Aishah was Masood’s favourite, being the youngest dolly we had. For months and years after Masood’s disappearance, I found her weeping behind a door or on the bed or even at times lying on the floor. There was always Masood’s picture under her pillow and her bedroom door was full of pictures of children with Masood. I did everything I could for her solace, peace and comfort but I know the void of a loving father’s absence. A very strong sense of deprivation, the longing for his pampering care and love was always hurting Aishah. Her frustration and anger at my struggle bearing no result as far as her Abbu was concerned — the unparalleled grief and pain of all that — I could not take away from her.

Especially this Ramadan all of us were extremely melancholic, each one of us desperately missed Masood and remembered his jolly and gleaming nature, his jokes, his enthusiasm, his extraordinary love and care. His loud vibrant voice was a louder noise in our home than any of the naughty kids. My boys would escape from going to masjid but now they miss those days when their Abbu would take them for prayers in Ramadan. No matter how well I looked after my kids, I knew in my heart that I can never be like Masood who was an “Ideal hero,” who played football, took them for adventures, wrestled, played dolls and would be a closest best friend and father at the same time.

Masood loved the environment in Ramadan, his favorite things were jalebee and fruit-chat at Iftar and meat or rice at dinner. I made sure that everything he wished for was piled up on the table. Eid was special fun too. Secretly we would buy presents, toys and gifts for all the children and family, and pack it and hide it in the cupboard on the Eid eve. The next morning would come with joyous screams of our kids excited to get the gifts. Something happened on Eid day, thank God not to any of my kids, it happened to me. I locked myself in the wash room to avoid my kids and wept and wept — shouting and yelling in my heart, “O.Allah, when will you return me my love? My Masood! When, O Allah, when??? I can’t take it any more — Oh please my Lord, have mercy. I am weak … I can’t stand up to your trial … my kids are also weak! “

The fight and financial crises getting tough

The scenario for Masood’s case became grim and the fight tough as the Joint Investigation team deputized for him gave its final report on 2nd October 2010, saying, “Masood is not with any of the agencies.” There is categorical denial, brutal lies in the face of too much evidence, injustice and torture to the whole family. Furthermore to make the going too tough for me there were financial crises hovering over the last many years. I had already trained myself to save every penny in order to run the course, no matter what. I helped the poor deserving families whose bread-winners were picked up and they were left devastated without any means of living at all. I knew their pain and suffering too well and that is why, out of my extreme passion, I would do anything for them.

I literally drained all my resources and the bank balance Masood had left, for the sake of this cause and to help those in need. That is also one of the reasons why the college [Masood's computer college] suffered heavy losses and I am almost penniless today. But there are no regrets for those whose most precious loved ones are taken away. Money and all the precious belongings of this world are nothing for them. As far as my family’s survival is concerned, we depended on this computer college of Masood. It suffered over the years of turmoil, struggle and hardships and was under debt due to mounting losses until finally it was locked on 29th September on account of one year’s rent not being paid. On 4th October after taking the stay order from the court, we opened the college and I was pondering over all the grim situation, sinking in my office chair. Fighting becoming tough. Pressure becoming more than I can stand. Three children in their teens to be educated, groomed and properly fed and clothed; old and aging parents-in-law to be taken care of; home, kitchen, bills, car, fuel, maintenance, college bills, salaries and rent!

Every thought kept hammering on my head … And the foremost, of course: the “Missing Persons” cause. It has to continue even if I have nothing left and I am sitting on the road with my kids. Thoughts, thoughts and thoughts kept  emerging from all directions. It was the third day of my migraine becoming severe, with my blood pressure rising alarmingly, and now it was impossible to breathe. As tension mounts, asthma in my chest and ulcers in my stomach always escalate. For months I haven’t seen a doctor.

A voice from inside said I was sinking … time and again I was fighting back tears which overbrimmed my eyes. I was hiding my tears and paranoia from the college staff. I can’t show them that the “Leader of the Aggrieved” is weak. A peon took a cheque for a salary, it was bounced. “There are no 5000 Rs. in your account, madam!” OK, I wrote another one for Rs 3000/-. To my amazement it bounced too. I didn’t dare to write a third one. Hiding my embarrassment I told him, smiling, “I’ll take it out from the other bank tomorrow.” By 3pm I was emotionally drained and starving. To restore my energies I wanted to give the peon 24 Rs for tea and biscuits. I kept digging in my bag for almost half an hour and was delighted to hand him over all the coins I found.

Please don’t feel any pity, as I am truly and rightly proud of whatever I did, in spite of whatever happened to me and my kids. How courageously we fought the battle for the release of Masood and all the missing loved ones without any resources was amazing and a legendary achievement!

And the answer to my acute distress, I found the same day in the evening. After Maghreb prayer I prayed to my Creator earnestly, I asked my Lord for Mercy, Forgiveness, Guidance and Help. I asked for unmatched courage and determination to go on fighting and never to give up. I thanked Him for the love and respect He had given me, for the honor of taking the impossible tasks from me. All of a sudden my heart was full of peace, contentment, gratitude and thanksgiving in the same way as my eyes were full of tears in the morning.

So there is the answer to the biggest problems and difficulties, grief and sufferings of life … Bow down before the Lord and ask Him! He will answer and never let us fall astray inshallah, He will never waste our struggles.

We are not yet united with Masood but we are determined  to continue the struggle, to work even harder, not to give up on any front. We are confident having a firm belief that the blissful day of our Reunion is not far.

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 July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), 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.

Last month, Moazzam Begg, former Guantánamo prisoner, and now the director of Cageprisoners, met up with Saber Lahmer at a conference in Paris to mark the ninth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, and also found time to interview him for Cageprisoners. That interview, which is fascinating for a number of reasons — not least Lahmer’s reflections on the innocence of the men in Guantánamo, and his abandonment since his release by the French authorities, who have not allowed him to travel or reunited him with his family — is cross-posted below.

Moazzam Begg: Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

Saber Lahmer: In the name of Allah Most Compassionate Most Merciful. I send my prayers and peace on the noble Prophet and to proceed … My name is Saber Mahfooz Al-Ahmer (Lahmer), I am an Algerian national, a graduate of the Islamic University of Madinah and am now a resident in the city of Bordeaux, France where I was transferred to from Guantánamo about a year ago. I was born in 1970.

Moazzam Begg: Before talking about how you ended up in Guantánamo please explain how you were arrested in Bosnia, where you had been a resident prior to your abduction.

Saber Lahmer: About a month after the 9/11 attacks I was raided by the Bosnian police and falsely accused of intending to blow up the US embassy in Bosnia. I was imprisoned in Sarajevo on remand for three months after which I was taken to court. The Bosnian judge in the case ruled that I be freed and there was no case to answer for and that the allegations were baseless. So I was freed and left the prison heading for home. On the way back home, in the middle of the street, I was abducted by US and Bosnian police and rendered straight from there to Guantánamo where I remained for eight years and eight months.

Moazzam Begg: And there were five other men with you who suffered the exact same fate?

Saber Lahmer: That’s right, there were five others and all of us have been released – except for one who is still in Guantánamo. I pray Allah frees all of them.

Moazzam Begg: Before we go on to what happened in Guantánamo, can you tell me how you, as an Algerian, ended up in Bosnia?

Saber Lahmer: After I graduated from university in 1996 I was offered work by the Saudi High Commission to go to Bosnia and help the humanitarian effort there as part of my contract which of course was a very important and crucial time for the Bosnians just after the war.

Moazzam Begg: So you saw something of the horrors that were experienced by the people of Bosnia?

Saber Lahmer: Yes, I saw the aftermath of the massacre, rape and pillage of an entire nation — I saw what the cowards had done.

Moazzam Begg: What was going through your mind when they sent you to Guantánamo?

Saber Lahmer: In reality, even when I was still in prison in Sarajevo and I asked those interrogators, “Why am I here, held by you?” they would reply, “We honestly don’t know,” and therefore it indicated that this was just a procedural exercise — nothing more. Afterwards, when I was sent to Guantánamo the interrogators over there had no idea what to question me about; they would say that the file that accompanied me from Bosnia contained no palpable allegations against me. Hence, they would say to me that if I had any information about other people then I should give it to them, but as for any accusations against me, there simply are none. Subsequently, when I was presented to the court [in the habeas corpus petition of the six men, in November 2008] the judge was not able to level any charges against me and that was because all the “evidence” presented about me in my file by the FBI and CIA was laughable. He [the judge] ordered my release.

Moazzam Begg: You are of course married with children, a family man. You were married in Bosnia and have children that you’ve not seen since your abduction. How did you manage to maintain contact with them during your time in custody?

Saber Lahmer: During all the years of my incarceration in Guantánamo I was unable to speak to my wife or children even once. I have two children — a boy and a girl. The boy was about a year and a half when I was taken and the girl I have not even met as she was born after I was taken.

Moazzam Begg: Guantánamo is probably the world’s most notorious prison — at present — but had you heard anything of this place before you became one of its occupants?

Saber Lahmer: I had no knowledge of this place — not even the word, what it meant or even where it was on the map. I was only aware that there was a country by the name of Cuba. I was only made aware of the Guantánamo prison by the police in Sarajevo a few moments before I was actually put on the plane.

Moazzam Begg: You were kidnapped illegally by US — and Bosnian — authorities. What was the reaction of the Bosnian people in relation to what happened to you all, who were legal residents of Bosnia?

Saber Lahmer: A few days before I was imprisoned at Guantánamo the Bosnian public became well aware that there was some kind of latent plan to hand over the six Bosnian Arabs to the Americans, a plan that was agreed between the governments of Bosnia and the USA. Subsequently, over 5,000 people held demonstrations lasting several days outside the prison where we were held, protesting on our behalf. Their purpose was to stop the oppression against all of us who were facing this impending situation. However, since the US can pretty much do whatever it likes with impunity — under the colour of a “legal” veneer — this arrest, rather kidnap, was carried out and the business transaction [of our lives] went ahead unabated.

Moazzam Begg: I have seen pictures of how you were all abducted in Sarajevo. Please tell me about the way in which this happened.

Saber Lahmer: They took us in a brutal, inhuman and barbaric way; they used extreme force, violence and terror. They beat us severely, crushed us and tried to dehumanise us. Let me explain a little: I was taken to a US military base just outside Sarajevo where I was shackled to the floor for three whole days. The temperature at that time was minus 10 [degrees centigrade]. After this we were taken on board a US aircraft and flown to another military airbase — I don’t know if this was in Turkey or Germany — and then on to Guantánamo.

Moazzam Begg: During this time, en route, what were the Americans saying to you?

Saber Lahmer: The statement that I kept hearing repeatedly — via the translators — was, “You are on your way to the American hell from which you will never escape.”

Moazzam Begg: Was it just you — the Bosnians — taken together or were there others who came to Guantánamo with you?

Saber Lahmer: When we stopped over in either Turkey or Germany and boarded another plane there were around forty or so prisoners on board who had been brought over from the Bagram prison. We knew this as we heard different voices speaking in Pashtu, Urdu and some speaking in Arabic. Therefore we realised this was a transit port where prisoners were brought from various places before being shipped off to Guantánamo.

Moazzam Begg: And how were you seated on the aeroplane?

Saber Lahmer: Of course we were seated in a very painful, savage way. Our hands and legs were tied very tightly with metal shackles; our eyes were covered with blacked-out goggles; our mouths were sealed with cloth; our ears were covered with large headphones; and, if we moved, even slightly, we’d get punched in the face or body.

Moazzam Begg: Were you able to communicate, to speak with any of the other prisoners?

Saber Lahmer: As I said, we’d receive a barrage of punches and strikes from the guards if we so much as moved. Even those who were clearly in a state of terrible discomfort or were just sick received no mercy. Instead, if any one dared complain or ask for medical assistance they would get beaten.

Moazzam Begg: This was in January 2002 — nine years ago. You were amongst the second group of prisoners sent to Guantánamo and were held at what, at that time, was Camp X-Ray. What did you see when you got there?

Saber Lahmer: When I go there I witnessed [prisoners] people of imaan [faith]. People who refused to bow down before anyone except Allah. When I saw them I recalled the words of Allah Mighty and Sublime: “Indeed this is the group that believed in their Lord and We [Allah] increased their guidance.” We saw nothing but good of them and we learned a great deal from them even before they learned from us.

Moazzam Begg: What did the Americans say to you when you arrived at Guantánamo?

Saber Lahmer: The first words I heard from them was, “Welcome to the American hell.” After that I was taken immediately to interrogation where they only really sought one thing: If I had any information about anything that I could tell them. I told them that this is not my problem. My problem is that you accuse me of trying to blow up the US embassy in Bosnia and yet no one is asking me any questions about that now. They would always avoid this question — and I would remind them. In the end, when I decided that I would not speak to them about any subject except regarding the embassy allegation they began to punish me. Consequently, most of my time in Guantánamo was spent in isolation and solitary confinement.

Moazzam Begg: What were the allegations against the other Bosnian Arabs who came with you?

Saber Lahmer: Exactly the same as me: that we, as a group of six men, were involved in a conspiracy to blow up the US embassy. What I find amazing about this “conspiracy” allegation is that the Americans accepted that we did not even know one another [before the arrests]. This was the contradiction: they would say we know that so-and-so does not know so-and so, and yet they would still claim that we somehow conspired together.

Moazzam Begg: How were you able to communicate with your family about what had happened to you all this time?

Saber Lahmer: There was no way to communicate with them at all. Hence, I heard nothing from my family for several years. The first letter I received from my family was via my lawyer who first saw me in 2004.

Moazzam Begg: Just so people understand, why would you have a lawyer when there are no charges against you, no court proceeding and legal process that you have access to?

Saber Lahmer: Firstly, according to their procedures a person has the right to legal representation if he is imprisoned — whether he is charged or not.

Moazzam Begg: But this happened only after you’d been imprisoned for almost three years that they allowed an opportunity for lawyers to come to Guantánamo.

Saber Lahmer: Yes, and they did not want this to happen — they did not want to allow us any way to legally challenge our incarceration. However, it was due to the outside pressure placed on the US administration after stories of abuse and torture had become synonymous with Guantánamo and the fact that they were acting in contravention of every law relating to the treatment of prisoners. Even with the presence of lawyers it was just to give Guantánamo a veneer of having some kind of legal system when in fact there still is none. You won’t find any place in the world that imprisons people without giving them at least some legal rights.

Moazzam Begg: You spent over eight years imprisoned in Guantánamo. This is an incredibly long time, almost impossible for most people to contemplate. What was the hardest part of your ordeal and how did you deal with it?

Saber Lahmer: I wouldn’t say that there were some days in Guantánamo that were hard, they were all hard. And what we witnessed there were events that no one would encounter in any ordinary prison. However, we passed these days with strength and patience from Allah even though we could never have imagined that we could have spent all this time facing the various types of torture and abuse which have been refined to a modern day art by scholars and psychiatrists. These types of torture are not “radical” or traditional as such but they have been perfected after many years of experiment and study to a fine art and focus on the psychological as much as or even more than the physical.

Moazzam Begg: What do you think is the biggest lesson the US administration learned from the Guantánamo experiment?

Saber Lahmer: That [our] imaan will never be extinguished.

Moazzam Begg: What were the Americans intending to gain out of all this?

Saber Lahmer: It is as the words of Allah [in the Quran] when he says: “They wish to extinguish the light of Allah through their words but Allah repels them and protects and completes His light …” The issue has nothing to do with terrorism. Those imprisoned in Guantánamo are not terrorists and the greatest evidence of this is that they are still avoiding legal proceedings at every level. And you can now see that Obama is trying to play the same dirty game as his predecessor by avoiding any legal process. Instead, they are approaching prisoners and asking them to sign a piece of paper admitting they are reformed terrorists and that they will be freed once they do so and will also not face charges. The reason for this is clear: there are no charges or evidence against these people [the prisoners]. If they were taken to court both Obama and his predecessor would be exposed because these men have been held for so long and after all that, no charges. This would be a cause of great shame to the US leader. Thus, they prefer people leave Guantánamo without trial.

Moazzam Begg: There are prisoners who have memorised the Quran, memorised texts of ahadeeth [Prophetic sayings] by word of mouth, learned languages from other prisoners and made fitness routines for themselves. How did you spend your time, how did you benefit, as it were, from your imprisonment?

Saber Lahmer: Books to educate oneself were prohibited in Guantánamo and that was because they wanted people to leave that place ignorant and unable to understand anything around them after all this time in prison. They know of course that in many prisons people can study many subjects and attain great benefit from their time in prison so that their time in prison isn’t completely wasted. However, out of malice they deliberately made sure we had nothing to study and, based on the concepts developed through psychological experimentation, they ensured we did not have the tools to benefit from improving ourselves through gaining knowledge. They only permitted the distribution of the Noble Quran — not for our benefit but for their own, so they could say that they are affording us religious freedoms. This is also evidenced from the fact, especially in the latter days, that almost every prisoner has memorised the entire Quran — al hamdu lillah [Allah be praised].

Moazzam Begg: In addition to this, some prisoners who had knowledge of different subjects were teaching the others?

Saber Lahmer: Yes, certainly. Your brother here took on the task of teaching others all that he was able to from what he had studied during his life as a free man and similarly anyone who had anything to teach would do so in order for others to benefit and gain reward in the Hereafter. So for example, someone who had learned grammar and comprehension would teach those who had little grasp of that subject, likewise those who had memorised classical texts would teach the others and so on. Thus, although the Americans did not wish us to benefit from anything we managed to benefit a great deal from one another.

Moazzam Begg: As you said, you spent many years in solitary confinement. How did you manage to learn anything during that time?

Saber Lahmer: I spent years in isolation: one and a half years in Camp Six, a similar time I spent in Camp Echo and some time in other places and in such places prisoners were prevented from anything. The only thing that one could do during that time was to live with the book of Allah, Mighty and Sublime and no other, which was our friend and companion — and what a beautiful friend and companion. During all this time I did not see the sun — or anything outside. In fact, by the time this period had ended I had forgotten the colour of the sky and what it looks like.

Moazzam Begg: There are a few prisoners who have lost their minds in Guantanamo. What do you know about this and how can this happen?

Saber Lahmer: Yes, I have myself seen some people who have in reality lost their minds. They include a Palestinian, some Afghans and some Turkistanis [Uyghurs] who had completely lost their minds. Hence, the US administration does not wish to release them, fearing the response the world will have to their already battered world image. There is of course no doubt that this has happened directly as a result of the torture and abuse suffered by these men and the psychological pressures placed upon them over a period of nine years — especially during interrogations. Day after day, month after month and year after year, this has caused the men to lose a grip on reality and led to the descent into insanity. Sadly, this has happened to several prisoners.

Moazzam Begg: Despite this most of the prisoners have left Guantánamo with a heightened sense of their faith and strength of character. How did you manage to keep and, indeed, develop your faith during this time?

Saber Lahmer: Guantánamo is a place of isolation far removed from all normal civilisation. Thus, a person of faith will see this as an opportunity to be in seclusion with Allah. I’ve heard so many of the prisoners say that they had always wanted to have some time to spend alone, to reflect on their lives and spend in contemplation and personal meditation, but that the world had always got the better of them. And so we can use this as an opportunity to review the pages of our lives, to correct that which is wrong within us and reflect on our hopes for the future. And essentially, to strengthen our relationship with our Creator since we are prevented from any other thing in this place. And, as it is said, it may be that something seemingly harmful is in fact more worthy than you think.

Moazzam Begg: Were any of the guards or interrogators humane or sympathetic towards you?

Saber Lahmer: As for the interrogators I did not see any good at all from them. Rather, I saw the opposite from them, wanting to destroy any hope we had of freedom or a future. Suffice to say that they said things like, “If we were allowed to, we would have killed you a long time ago. You don’t deserve any mercy. It’s only the law that’s preventing us.” As for the guards, they told us that they would get special training two months before they came to Guantánamo and get indoctrinated against us, being told that we are savages, that we are very dangerous, that they need to be very wary of us at all times, and that we do not deserve to be treated with mercy. Of course, many of them changed their minds by the time they left Guantánamo.

Moazzam Begg: Some of the soldiers embraced Islam and others were sympathetic. What did you experience of this?

Saber Lahmer: Yes, this is true with those who realised the truth, and I would ask all those who became Muslims about the reason for this, and they would say that it was due to many reasons. They were moved by the brotherhood they witnessed between the prisoners. They were amazed at our bowing and prostrating to Allah and how that in an integral part of our lives, which we will not give up for anyone. They saw that as the reason behind our incomprehensible (to them) patience. They also commented that when they looked at our faces they would see happiness and tranquility which they found remarkable under the circumstances. Also, they said, the authorities described us in one way but that their experience of us — almost living with us on the other side of the wire — was the total opposite. They also recognised our treatment as oppression and injustice, and saw the hypocrisy of telling the outside world that we were being treated fairly, with respect and dignity. The soldiers [the unbiased ones] saw through all of this. All of these things created in them a desire to ask us more about Islam and eventually enter into its fold — al hamdu lillah.

Moazzam Begg: I just wanted to tell you that there is a sister who embraced Islam recently who was formerly a guard at Guantánamo and she told me that the seed of Islam was planted in her heart during her time there and that she wanted all the prisoners to know this.

Saber Lahmer: Yes — that’s true. There were male and female soldiers who embraced Islam secretly. They did this because they understood the negative repercussions they would face, sadly, because of the open hostility towards Muslims.

Moazzam Begg: What was your relationship with the other prisoners like and how did living with them for so long affect you as a person?

Saber Lahmer: Before I arrived at Guantánamo I heard about them through the media that they were allegedly the worst of all of God’s creatures. But from the time that I met them and began my life of exile with them I recalled the words of Allah Mighty and Sublime: “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; and those with him are forceful against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves. You see them bowing and prostrating [in prayer], seeking bounty from Allah and [His] pleasure. Their mark is on their faces from the trace of prostration.” These were people of good, of obedience [to Allah] and patience. Their prior concern in life was earning the pleasure of Allah. All of this had a great effect on my life and I began to emulate them in all that is good and, as the poet said, “I love the righteous even if I am not of them.” I tried all I could to be like them, though I could not attain their level.

Moazzam Begg: At its height there were around 780 prisoners in Guantánamo, but over 600 have been released. You were there for 8 years and witnessed many prisoners leave while you remained behind. What went through your mind when this happened?

Saber Lahmer: I never saw anyone leave from Guantánamo who didn’t cry in the hope that they would be the last to leave that place — wishing only that their brothers would leave before them. It occurred many times that when a person was told he was due to be released, the prisoner would ask to speak to the authorities so that he could inform them that he does not want to be released and instead wants someone else to leave in his stead. Of course, this is from an internal and brotherly point of view, and it does not mean that anyone would like to stay in a place that is filled with oppression and abuse.

Moazzam Begg: It is clear that the US administration seemed bent on breaking the resolve and resistance of the prisoners, but it seems as if the opposite was achieved. The weak became strong and the strong an example for others. What brought this about?

Saber Lahmer: In truth the Americans didn’t understand some of the basic concepts of human nature. They wanted to destroy us — and destroy our faith in the religion of Islam. It was not the case of wanting to prevent terrorism. If it was we would have applauded them. But they wanted to extinguish the light of Allah — and the one who wishes to do this must be exposed because he is at war with the Lord of the Worlds. Relevant to this is the story of Abdul Muttalib when his camels were taken by the King of Abyssinia [Abraha] who had come to destroy the Ka’bah. The king said to him, “I thought you had come to ask me about my intention to destroy the Ka’bah but you ask me for your camels instead?” Abdul Muttalib replied, “I am asking for my property because the Ka’bah has a Lord who will maintain its own protection.” In the end, as we know, Allah destroyed this army of elephants as is recorded in the Quran. This is the final result for whoever wishes to obstruct the way of Allah.

Moazzam Begg: What did you see or experience in relation to religious abuse during your time in custody?

Saber Lahmer: As I said, they used every tool available to dent our faith and tried very hard to make us leave our religion and practice of it. In fact, some interrogators would say that it was their mission to ensure that the prisoners left this place having completely forgotten their religion, but Allah wished to foil their plot. In addition, I saw the soldiers kick the Quran with their booted feet; I saw with my own eyes in Camp X-Ray soldiers throwing the Quran into a toilet bucket; I encountered interrogators who would curse and swear at Allah and his messenger in the belief that this would enrage me and that somehow I would start talking to them and co-operating with them as a result. They would make fun of our faith in order to needle us, knowing that it was something very dear to our hearts.

Moazzam Begg: This sort of thing led to more resistance and non-cooperation which included the hunger strikes. What was the result of this? Did you take part in the strikes?

Saber Lahmer: Yes, we took part in the hunger strikes when abuses against our faith occurred — like the desecration of the Quran. The hunger strikes were very long and it was an extremely harsh time, but the result was that the US administration put out a general order that no soldier is permitted to touch the Quran. Of course, this wasn’t out of respect for our book or our faith but for their own purposes completely — so that they didn’t have to deal with our response.

Moazzam Begg: How did the authorities try to break the hunger strikes?

Saber Lahmer: They tried to force-feed us with liquid food by forcing tubes through our nostrils — and sometimes our mouths — and pushing them into our stomachs while we were tied down to a chair with our arms, legs and heads placed in restraints. And, if only they wanted to feed us using this process that’s one thing, but the way in which they forcibly inserted and removed these tubes was so painful that it is clear they just wanted to break our will to hunger strike rather than the strike itself.

Moazzam Begg: Did they succeed in breaking the strikes in this way?

Saber Lahmer: They did not succeed and they will never succeed because stamping authority by force never wins.

Moazzam Begg: When was the first time you heard that you might be released from Guantánamo and who told you?

Saber Lahmer: After I was declared innocent by the US I was moved to Camp Iguana where I spent several months with the Uyghurs until the time for my release finally came. So although I had been cleared for release for a very long time, I was not released even then until almost a year later.

Moazzam Begg: How did your transfer from Guantánamo and release to France finally come about?

Saber Lahmer: This was through the French ambassador in Washington — I met one of the French embassy officials who offered to accept and take me to France. I asked them what they were prepared to do for me in France and they told me, oddly, that there is no need to discuss too much of that and that the moment I step foot in France I would be afforded all the rights and avenues to advance my life and live as a normal human being. But, since my return I have, sadly, spent most of my time in a tiny room — one that resembles a Guantánamo cell in many ways.

Moazzam Begg: The first thing each person released thinks of is their family. Were you able to make contact with them?

Saber Lahmer: I went to and left from Guantánamo an innocent man — no charges, no accusations even. I was told before I came to France that I’d have all my rights — which would include the ability to go to visit my family in Bosnia, but until now I have been prevented from doing so as I have no travel documents. Hence, I have not seen my children in all this time and no one is even prepared to discuss this issue with me.

Moazzam Begg: How was your first conversation with your children after your release; did they see you as a stranger or even know who you are?

Saber Lahmer: When I called them for the first time they did not really want to speak to me because they could not recognise me as a father — I’m a complete stranger to them. How can a child speak to a stranger with such an obstacle placed in front of it? I sense this when I speak to them all the time.

Moazzam Begg: This has been the experience of many Guantánamo returnees: fathers who don’t know their own children, children who cannot recognise their fathers. Who bears the responsibility for all this?

Saber Lahmer: We cannot just blame America for this, especially for those who are now free. The countries that have taken in Guantánamo prisoners but have made absolutely no provision for the basic human right of a family being together, reunited after such an ordeal, demonstrates still how we are regarded as less than human.

Moazzam Begg: There was some mention of your case recently in WikiLeaks. Can you tell us about this?

Saber Lahmer: Two things emerged from the WikiLeaks for me. Firstly, that I was brought over to France for the promise of a financial incentive and package and, secondly, became a sort of a bargaining chip for the purposes of improving Franco-American relations, which, as everyone knows, are quite often sour. This is what has become apparent.

Moazzam Begg: How do you feel about this?

Saber Lahmer: Since my resettlement here no one from the government has spoken to me at all — not once, despite writing to them, or contacting them through lawyers — nothing. At present I just feel like I’ve been moved from the big Guantánamo to the lesser one, simply because I have been abandoned by the very people who promised to me give me my basic rights.

Moazzam Begg: Finally, what advice do you have for our readers and people who are interested the cases of the Guantánamo prisoners?

Saber Lahmer: I would ask all those who read this to do all they can to assist Cageprisoners and other organisations in their efforts to have the prisoners of Guantánamo released and receive justice. Also, they should not forget those who have been released from there, because those who have been freed in reality still live in Guantánamo. And when I ask people to help both groups of people I mean that there must be real, tangible efforts made to assist the downtrodden and forgotten prisoners of Guantánamo. Steps taken must be straight and consistent and as the saying goes, if you speak then listen and if you hit then you [must] feel pain [too].

Moazzam Begg: May Allah reward you with the best for sharing your thoughts.

Saber Lahmer: May Allah reward you and all the brothers and sisters at Cageprisoners for your efforts to assist the prisoners.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In addition — and perhaps most crucially — Moazzam and I were looking forward to having the opportunity to discuss the existence, in the early years of the “War on Terror,” of a secret CIA torture prison at Stare Kiejkuty, near Szymany, where a number of “high-value detainees,” including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, were held, as part of a network of secret prisons that also included facilities in Thailand, Romania, Lithuania and Morocco.

This aspect of the tour is of particular relevance right now because one of the men held in Stare Kiejkuty was Abu Zubaydah, a man who, it turned out, was not a significant terrorist at all, but was, instead, the mentally damaged gatekeeper for a training camp in Afghanistan that was closed down by the Taliban in 2000 because its leader, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, refused to allow it to be taken over by Osama bin Laden. Just two weeks ago, Abu Zubaydah was granted “victim” status by the Polish Prosecutor in an ongoing investigation into the complicity of the Polish government — under former Prime Minister Leszek Miller and former President Aleksander Kwasniewski — in the establishment of the secret prison. This followed the granting of “victim” status to another “high-value detainee,” Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — allegedly the mastermind of the atack on the USS Cole in 2000 — last October.

Moazzam and I were met at the airport in Kraków by Anna Minkiewicz, a friend and supporter who, heroically and almost single-handedly, organized the tour and translated and sub-titled the film, which, in Polish, is “Poza Prawem: Echa z Guantánamo,” although she could not have done so without some heroic assistance on the subtitles, from Polly, here in the UK, and without the dedicated support in Poland of Przemysław Wielgosz, the chief editor of the Polish edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, who supplied all the contacts for the tour’s local media partners — a great group of people who not only made us welcome everywhere we went, but also arranged most of the publicity. Despite communicating by email for many years (since Anna first contacted me out of the blue with the kind of detailed and engaging email that is all too rare), we had never met, and I was looking forward to spending a week together, and also to spending a few days with Moazzam, who was only able to stay for the first two screenings in Warszawa and Łódź.

After settling in for the evening, in wonderful high-ceilinged rooms in a well-preserved building overlooking the Main Market Square (one of the largest in Europe), Anna took us, past some excellent architecture (including St. Mary’s Basilica and the Sukiennice — or Cloth Hall), to a charming little restaurant, where we happily spent a few hours in a free-wheeling discussion that touched on Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Africa, amongst other topics.

Day One: Kraków and Warszawa (Warsaw)

In the morning, we made our way across the square to a bar overlooking the Cloth Hall, for a live interview with TVN, one of the major independent TV channels in Poland, for the morning news, which was an excellent opportunity for Moazzam and I to publicize the tour, to explain why we were in Poland, and how the Polish people can help to close Guantánamo by offering new homes to cleared prisoners. I had been interviewed in London in December by another TVN reporter, Michal Sznajder, for a programme about the British government’s financial settlement with former Guantánamo prisoners (which has not yet been broadcast), so I was aware that TVN employs some fine journalists interested in covering important topics. The presenter, Marcin Sawicki, was well prepared, having watched the film the night before, and the interview is available here (in Polish), although in retrospect it was disappointing that, in the six minutes alloted to us, we didn’t have the opportunity to raise the topic of the secret CIA prison.

After the interview, while I returned to my room to catch up on emails, Moazzam and Anna visited the Jewish Quarter, where the echoes of the Holocaust obviously left a deep impression on Moazzam (who attended a Jewish school as a child), as it was something he referred to repeatedly during the rest of his visit — and in fact, as Moazzam and I both attempted to understand modern, post-Communist Poland, on our first ever visit, and the circumstances in which a government desperate for approval from the US agreed to host a secret torture prison on Polish soil, we were constantly prompted to draw analogies with the torture and brutality of the Nazis and the Soviet Union, which provide — or ought to provide — powerful resonances for the Polish people, and unassailable reasons why new atrocities should not have been allowed to happen in their country.

After a late breakfast, we then made our way to the station to catch a train to Warsaw. In Poland’s railway stations, the ghosts of the Soviet era were more tangible than they were in the streets of Kraków in particular, which was an almost miraculous survivor of the devastation of Poland by the Nazis, and is now a major tourist attraction, but the trains, although old and slow for the most part, were a delight, with the kind of six- or eight-person compartments that have now vanished from Britain, but which have a particular charm and intimacy not replicated in modern, open-plan carriages.

Our first stop in Warsaw was Kino Muranów, where we were met by the tall and enthusiastic figure of Bartek Kurzyca of the Globale political collective, which has connections in Berlin and Montevideo, and which was the media partner for our events in Warsaw.

The first of these was a press conference with Bartlomiej Jankowski, the lawyer for Abu Zubaydah, a smart and serious man who greeted us warmly, and added depth and resonance to our introduction to the Polish media. It was a great pleasure to meet him, and the press conference was a success, with Moazzam and I interviewed afterwards by Wojciech Cegielski of Polskie Radio and Adam Krzykowski of the State broadcaster TVP. At 6 pm, TVP broadcast a report on the press conference in its news programme “Panorama,” which was useful and important.

Moazzam and Anna and I actually watched the “Panorama” report in the office of Mikołaj Pietrzak, the lawyer for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, where we had a meeting (after dropping our bags off at our hotel) that also included Irmina Pacho of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which played a crucial role last summer in obtaining the flight logs for the flights in and out of Stare Kiejkuty between December 2002 and September 2003, and I wrote about the flight logs last August, in an article entitled New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania and followed up with Will Poland’s Former Leaders Face War Crimes Charges for Hosting Secret CIA Prison? This was when I first made contact with Adam Bodnar of the Helsinki Foundation — a contact that led me, on this trip, to make contact with Bartlomiej Jankowski, Mikołaj Pietrzak and Irmina Pacho.

The meeting with the lawyers was particularly useful, reassuring them that their cause has not been forgotten, that it is being watched with intense interest by lawyers, activists and other decent-minded people in countries around the world (including the US and the UK) and that, despite large-scale indifference in Poland, it was also possible to stir up interest through the film and the tour, and to establish important contacts across the country, and the building blocks for a network of interested parties who can move forward with their shared interests. The meeting was also extremely useful for providing Moazzam and I with strategies for the future, and I was delighted to receive English language translations of various important documents — as well as new and relevant information — that I’ll be writing about in another article in the very near future.

From Mikołaj Pietrzak’s office, we returned to Kino Muranów, where it was enormously satisfying to discover that the cinema was packed, and that at least 200 people had turned up to watch the film’s first public outing in Poland. After we had sneaked off, during the screening, for some food — which turned out to be a surreal meal in a Vietnamese vegan restaurant where we had to order our food based solely on rather lurid photos — we returned for the Q&A session, and were joined by  Draginja Nadażdin, the director of Amnesty International Poland (which provided some support for the tour), and had our first taste of the dedication with which Polish audiences pursue opportunities to ask questions.

Day Two: Warszawa (Warsaw) and Łódź

On Wednesday morning, after breakfast and a quick tour of the centre of Warsaw, painstakingly reconstructed after its complete destruction by the Nazis, we took a taxi to the outskirts of town, to a studio where Moazzam and I were interviewed for a documentary about the secret prison that is being made by Roman Kurkiewicz, a veteran of the Solidarity movement (Solidarnosc), and also a journalist, author and professor, and the kind of principled revolutionary pro-democracy figure that I admired while watching the rise of Solidarity from afar 30 years ago. The documentary promises to be excellent, and I made sure that Roman knew that I would be delighted to tour it and make it available in the UK and the US if he makes an English version.

From the studio, we rushed to the station to catch the train to Łódź, where we were met by Marek Jedliński of of Krytyka Polityczna, and, at the cinema, his wife and the two translators for the evening. With some time to spare, we had an opportunity to chat, to enjoy some home-cooked food on sale in the basement of the cinema (which is also a cinema museum, with some wonderful old projectors filling the corners of various rooms), and also to be photographed (see the photos here and here) prior to an interview, during the screening (when we again retired downstairs), with Moazzam and I, which was conducted by a reporter from the Polish news agency Polska Agencja Prasawa, and which formed the basis of an article (available here in Polish) in the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

For the second night, the cinema was packed out, with around 100 people, and the screening was followed by another lively Q&A session (audio here, in Polish and English), in which Moazzam, Anna and I were also joined by Wojciech Makowski of Amnesty International Poland. With translators (not available in Warsaw), it was, I think, a more satisfying Q&A session, with all the major topics covered, and a true abhorence of torture vividly expressed in various quarters of the crowd.

Afterwards, when I had let Wojciech Makowski know that I was happy for Amnesty to use my list of the remaining prisoners to encourage Amnesty members to write to the prisoners in Guantánamo (and also see here), the organizers took us to Ganesh, an excellent Indian restaurant, where we chatted away merrily and devoured butter chicken, garlic naan, and, in my case, some rather fine mutton with spinach, before retiring to our hotel. With two days completed, it was obvious that the tour was proving to be a great success.

Day Three: Poznań

After a late night in our hotel, in a block with an evident Soviet history, where Moazzam and I, who were sharing a room, stayed up talking about the tour, about Shaker Aamer, about anti-terror legislation in the UK, and about the plight of the Yemenis in Guantánamo (and I then retired to the bathroom to write Guantánamo: A Tale of Two Tunisians, letting Moazzam sleep), I awoke to find that Moazzam had already left for the station, to catch a train to Warsaw and a flight home. After breakfast, Anna and I returned to the station for the next stage of our journey, to Poznań, where we met up again with Draginja Nadażdin, the director of Amnesty International Poland, for a screening in another arthouse cinema, Kino Rialto.

The publicity in Poznań had been very last-minute, so there was not a huge audience, but the 30 or so people who did attend were refreshingly committed, and, after Anna, Draginja and I had grabbed some food in the only nearby place that wasn’t McDonald’s (a little pasta place), we had an excellent Q&A session, honing our messages about dispelling the lies about Guantánamo, and pushing for the resettlement of cleared prisoners and greater visibility for the topic of the torture prison.

Day Four: Wrocław

On Friday morning, after filling up on coffee and breakfast at our well-appointed hotel — where, the day before, I had thought the recent smoking ban in Poland didn’t apply, because the owner was so brazenly smoking in his own dining room — Anna and I took the train to Wrocław (formerly known as Breslau, and handed over from German to Polish control after the Second World War), where we were met by Aneta Jerska of Falanster, a collective of young activists with a lovely bookshop, and fine food and coffee, where we got to relax for an hour or so after dropping our bags off at the no-frills, Soviet-era Hotel Polonia, complete with sullen staff.

From Falanster, we made our way to Kino Warszawa, a delightfully unreconstructed old cinema (in a country with its fair share of unreconstructed old cinemas) inside a splendid old building, where I was introduced to my translator for the evening, and also to Józef Pinior, our very special guest. A former member of the Solidarity movement, he was an MEP from 2004 to 2009, and, crucially, was first a member, and then the Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee of Human Rights, where he worked with other MEPs, including the UK’s Sarah Ludford, on a crucial investigation into renditions in Europe in the “War on Terror,” which was published in January 2007, and entitled, “Report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners” (PDF, and see the resolution here).

As a result of his investigations, Józef Pinior came across information in Poland establishing that the Polish government not only sanctioned the establishment of a secret CIA prison in Poland, but was actively involved in it (as will be discussed in more detail in a forthcoming article). Despite this, he found himself ridiculed in Poland by those he sought to expose, although his presence on Friday — and the rare opportunity to discuss the secret prison in a public forum — drew the most spirited audience of the tour, anxious to debate ways to take the story forward, and, from feedback I received afterwards, grateful that Anna and I had brought the film to Wrocław, that I was bringing news of interest in the story of the prison from outside Poland, and that Józef Pinior had an opportunity to explain what he knew to a sympathetic audience, and was able to assert that the Prosecutor’s granting of “victim” status to Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri establishes, beyond any doubt, that both men were held in the secret prison at Stare Kiejkuty.

After the screening and the Q&A session, a group of us — including Józef Pinior, Anna, Aneta and I — found a wonderful Armenian restaurant around the corner from the cinema, with great food (my beef and spinach was excellent), where we discussed the secret prison, Pinior’s investigations, and the state of politics in Poland, enabling to understand more about how he could have been so thoroughly sidelined by politicians and the media.

We also proceeded more generally to discuss the dangers of unchecked global capitalism , especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and the failure of governments to legislate against the banking sector, or to hold anyone accountable, and the need for new political responses. As throughout my visit, I was happy to point out that savage ideological cuts in the UK have provoked significant resistance by students and scholchildren, but also to concede that it does not yet constitute a new political movement, and broad coalitions (as with Solidarity) and further spurs to erode complacency and apathy will be needed before there is any real hope of a paradigm shift in the problems of the West.

Day Five: Kraków

For the last screening of the tour, Anna and I took a four and a half hour train ride back to Kraków, arriving with time to drop our cases off at Anna’s apartment, and to make our way to Kino Agrafka, another lovely arthouse cinema in a rambling old building, where another lively audience, of about 50 people, had forsworn the more recreational attractions of a Saturday night for an evening of arbitrary detention and torture. I was, by now, clinging to consciousness somewhat, but a Polish speciality for dinner — tasty meat and vegetable stew served inside a hollowed-out loaf of bread — and a few coffees brought me back to life a little for the final Q&A session of the tour, and afterwards Anna and I retired to a bar with one of the audience members.

Unwinding after an intense but rewarding week was a precursor to my final day in Kraków, which involved sleeping, eating, shopping and chatting before my flight back on Monday morning. It was not the easiest week I have ever had, as I received the sad news on Thursday evening that my father had passed away suddenly, which was difficult to deal with so far from home, but it was a very worthwhile trip, and I am deeply grateful to Anna for organizing it and funding it, and also for being there for me when I received the news about my father’s death.

In combatting the injustices of the “War on Terror,” and calling for accountability for America’s torturers (and their allies), those of us working in the US and the UK over the last nine years have realized that it is a long road, and not one for those seeking instant results. I hope that my presence, and that of Moazzam, helped to raise awareness of this amongst Poland’s anti-torture activists, as well as reassuring them that they are not alone, and I hope also that, with Anna, we helped to keep the story of the secret prison — and of cleared prisoners in Guantánamo who need new homes — alive in the media.

From my point of view, the trip was worth it alone for the audiences who saw the film and engaged in the Q&A sessions, for the media interest, and for the contacts I established with activists, lawyers and journalists, but I’m also pleased that it was more than just the sum of its parts — that Anna was such an engaging host, and that there are so many lovely people in Poland.

Note: In Poznań and Kraków, university lecturers who attended the screenings asked for (and received) copies of the film, to arrange screenings in their universities and to use in lecture topics for their students. I would like to encourage more people to do this, and also hope that there will be interest in making the sub-titled version of the film available on DVD. Please contact me (or Anna Minkiewicz if  writing in Polish) if this is of interest.

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

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

Last week, it was announced that, from February 1 to 5, 2011, Moazzam Begg, former Guantánamo prisoner and director of the NGO Cageprisoners, and Andy Worthington, investigative journalist and author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, will be visiting Poland for a tour of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” which Worthington co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash. The Polish version of the film, with subtitles, is entitled, “Poza Prawem: Echa z Guantánamo.”

The details of the tour (and of the film) are available here, and this update is to provide information about the press conference in Warsaw on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the key themes of the tour, which, as well as providing important information about Guantánamo (regarding the innocent men held there, and how few prisoners are alleged to have had any connection to terrorist actvities), is also intended to raise awareness of the 31 men who have been cleared for release, but cannot be repatriated because they face a credible risk of torture or other ill-treatment in their home countries.

Crucially, the tour is also intended to create a space for discussions about the secret CIA prison that existed at Stare Kiejkuty, near Szymany, and the ongoing investigation into the complicity of senior Polish officials in establishing this prison, where numerous “high-value detainees” were held and tortured in the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Moazzam Begg and Andy Worthington will be joined for the press conference on Tuesday by Bartlomiej Jankowski, the lawyer for Abu Zubaydah, one of the “high-value detainees” held in the secret CIA prison at Stare Kiejkuty, who was granted “victim” status by the Polish Prosecutor just 10 days ago as part of an ongoing investigation into the prison.

The organizers also hope that Mikołaj Pietrzak, the lawyer for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another “high-value detainee” who was granted “victim” status in October last year, and Irmina Pacho of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which played a major role last summer in exposing flight records demonstrating the movement of prisoners to and from the prison, will also be available to discuss this crucial matter of international significance. The “victim” status granted to al-Nashiri is of particular interest as it was announced last week that the Obama administration is planning to proceed with his trial by Military Commission at Guantánamo.

For further information, or to arrange interviews, please contact Andy Worthington. The contact in Poland is Anna Minkiewicz, the organizer of the tour.

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

Described as “a powerful film that has helped ensure that Guantánamo and the men unlawfully held there have not been forgotten” by Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, and as “a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy” by Time Out, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” tells the story of Guantánamo  (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 Omar Deghayes), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, and Tom Wilner, who was Counsel of Record to the Guantánamo prisoners in their cases before the US Supreme Court), 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) and released prisoners Binyam Mohamed 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.

The tour, organized by Anna Minkiewicz, a supporter of Andy Worthington’s work and that of Cageprisoners, is backed by Le Monde Diplomatique in Poland, with additional support from Amnesty International Poland, and is intended to raise awareness of the truth about Guantánamo — that very few of the men held are alleged to have had any connection to terrorist actvities, and that the prison’s very existence is an affront to established laws and treaties, and to common notions of fairness and decency.

The organizers also intend the tour to provide the impetus for parliamentarians to recognize that there are, currently, up to 31 men in Guantánamo who have been cleared for release, but who cannot be repatriated because they face a credible risk of torture or other ill-treatment in their home countries, and to press for Poland to join 15 other countries — including Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland — in offering new homes to some of these men.

We also anticipate that the tour will provide an opportunity for timely discussions about the Polish government’s complicity in the establishment of a secret CIA prison in Poland, following the announcement on January 20 that the “high-value detainee” Abu Zubaydah has been granted “victim” status by the Polish Prosecutor in connection with an ongoing investigation into the prison, at Stare Kiejkuty, near Szymany. This follows the granting of “victim” status to another “high-value detainee,” Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, in October last year.

Also showing will be two short animated films by Afghan filmmaker Said Mohsen Hossaini.

Information about the tour is available below.

For further information, or to arrange interviews, please contact Andy Worthington. The contacts in Poland are Anna Minkiewicz, Przemyslaw Wielgosz, the chief editor of the Polish edition of Le Monde Diplomatique and, at Amnesty International, press officer Aleksandra Minkiewicz.

Please note that other speakers are still to be confirmed, and please also note that Moazzam Begg will only be in Poland on February 1 and 2.

Tuesday February 1, 15:00 hrs: Press conference to discuss Guantánamo and the secret CIA prison in Poland with Moazzam Begg, Andy Worthington and Bartlomiej Jankowski.
Kino Muranów, ul. Gen. Andersa 1 (Plac Bankowy, metro “Ratusz”), 00-147, Warszawa.
Subject to final confirmation, Moazzam Begg and Andy Worthington will be joined for the press conference on Tuesday by Bartlomiej Jankowski, the lawyer for Abu Zubaydah. The organizers also hope that Mikołaj Pietrzak, the lawyer for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Irmina Pacho of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which played a major role last summer in exposing flight records demonstrating the movement of prisoners to and from the prison, will also be available to discuss this crucial matter of international significance.

Tuesday February 1, 20:00 hrs: Film screening – “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” in association with the Polish edition of Le Monde Diplomatique and Amnesty International Poland.
Followed by Q&A with Moazzam Begg, Andy Worthington, Bartlomiej Jankowski, the lawyer for Abu Zubaydah, and Draginja Nadażdin, director, Amnesty International Poland.
Kino Muranów, ul. Gen. Andersa 1 (Plac Bankowy, metro “Ratusz”), 00-147, Warszawa.
See the website here or email.
Media partner: międzynarodowy kolektyw Globale (Berlin-Montevideo-Warszawa). Please contact Bartek Kurzyca on (48) 515 603 907 or by email.

Wednesday February 2, 18:00 hrs: Film screening – “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.” Followed by Q&A with Moazzam Begg, Andy Worthington and Wojciech Makowski, Amnesty International Poland.
Kino studyjne „Kinematograf”, Pl. Zwycięstwa 1, Łódź.
Phone: (48) 42 674 0957 (contacts are Anna Michalska or Jakub Sas) or see the website here, and see here for a map.
Media partner: The local branch of Krytyka Polityczna. Please contact: Marek Jedliński.

Thursday February 3, 20:00 hrs: Film screening – “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.”
Followed by Q&A with Andy Worthington and Draginja Nadażdin, director, Amnesty International Poland.
Kino Rialto, ul. Dąbrowskiego 38, Poznań.
Phone: (48) 61 847 5399 or email Piotr Zakens (also on 600 254 502). Also see the website here.

Friday February 4, 18:00 hrs: Film screening – “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.” Followed by Q&A with Andy Worthington and ex-MEP Józef Pinior.
Kino Warszawa, ul. Piłsudskiego 64, Wrocław.
Please note that Józef Pinior was a member of the EU commission which investigated EU involvement in rendition and secret prisons.
Phone: (48) 071 342 1246.
Media partner: Kolektyw Falanster. Contact: Aneta Jerska. Also with support from the Odra Film Institution and Amnesty International Wrocław.

Saturday February 5, evening, 20:00 hrs: Film screening – “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.”
Followed by Q&A with Andy Worthington and Anna Minkiewicz.
Kino Agrafka, ul. Krowoderska 8, Kraków.
See the website here. or phone (48) 12 430 0179 or mobile: 57 123 233.
Media partner: Fundacja Cyrk Edison. Contact: Robert Skrzydlewski.

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

Zubaydah, one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006, was held for four and a half years in prisons whose existence has been routinely denied by the United States, and by the countries who hosted secret prisons on behalf of the CIA — Thailand, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Morocco — which were used to hold Zubaydah, 27 other “high-value detainees,” and at least some of the other 66 “ghost prisoners” whose existence has been acknowledged by the US authorities.

The news from Poland provides hope following recent disappointments in the quest for accountability — revelations by WikiLeaks that the Bush administration put pressure on the German goverment to drop an investigation into the kidnap and torture of Khaled El-Masri (a case of mistaken identity) and that the Obama administration put pressure on the Spanish government to drop an investigation into the crimes committed by six Bush administration lawyers, as well as the recent decision by the Lithuanian government to drop its own investigation into a secret prison — or two secret prisons — near Vilnius.

Reassuringly, the Spanish probe is still ongoing, and I recently appeared on Democracy Now! and at an event in New York with Katie Gallagher of the Center for Constitutional Rights, just after CCR and  the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) had filed two submissions in Spain in connection with the investigation into the “Bush Six,” and another investigation into Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantánamo during the worst years of torture at the prison (2002 to 2004), who was later sent to “Gitmo-ize” faclities in Iraq, including, notoriously, Abu Ghraib.

However, the main focus for those seeking accountability remains Poland, where Abu Zubaydah is the second “victim” recognized by the Polish Prosecutor, following the recognition of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (another of the 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006) as a victim in October last year. This, as Prosecutor Jerzy Mierzewski told the Associated Press, “entails a number of rights for the injured party,” and as Reprieve and INTERIGHTS announced in a press release today (on behalf of their partners in the Zubaydah complaint, Polish lawyer Bartlomiej Jankowski and US lawyer Joe Margulies), victim status “allows Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers to participate fully in the criminal investigation, which includes introducing further evidence, calling witnesses and taking part in the questioning of witnesses and suspects.”

Although the secret prisons in Poland and Romania have been known about since November 2005, when the Washington Post first identified their existence, and Human Rights Watch then identified the countries involved, and their existence was then confirmed in a report for the Council of Europe in June 2007 (PDF) by CoE Rapporteur and Swiss Senator Dick Marty, based on two years’ research and interviews with over 30 current and former members of the intelligence services in the United States and Europe, it was not until March 23, 2009 that the first details of specific flights into Szymany were officially confirmed in Poland, by the Polish Air Navigation Service Agency. Moreover, it was not until August last year that further incriminating details were added by the the Polish Border Guard Office, who released a number of crucial documents to the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, as I explained in an article at the time, New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania.

As a result of these revelations, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported that former Prime Minister Leszek Miller and former President Aleksander Kwasniewski “may face war crime charges for agreeing to host the facility,” and I reported details of the ongoing investigation in my article, Will Poland’s Former Leaders Face War Crimes Charges for Hosting Secret CIA Prison?

Since then, the story has refused to go away, despite being largely ignored in the US mainstream media, with further damning reports about the torture program — and the moving of “high-value detainees” between Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Morocco — published by the Associated Press in August and September (Terrorist interrogation tapes found, Former FBI Man Implicated in CIA Abuse, and Poles Urged to Probe CIA Prison Acts), and the announcement  about the “victim” status of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri on October 27.

The timing of the Polish Prosecutor’s announcement about Abu Zubaydah’s “victim” status is also useful in terms of a week-long Polish tour of the film “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and myself), which former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg and I are undertaking in the first week of February (details here). Moazzam and I are primarily undertaking this tour, with the support of organizations including Amnesty International and Le Monde Diplomatique, to raise awareness of the real stories of the men held at Guantánamo (most of whom had nothing to do with terrorism), and also to raise awareness of the need for new homes to be found for men who cannot be repatriated safely, but we are also keenly aware that the Polish government’s complicity in the establishment of a secret US torture prison on Polish soil needs to be discussed, and we are anticipating that experts involved in the cases of al-Nashiri and Zubaydah will be joining us for the tour.

Below is the press release issued today by Reprieve and INTERIGHTS:

Polish Prosecutor officially recognises Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah as a victim in Poland’s CIA secret prison investigation; decision will allow former ‘high-value detainee’ to testify against his US torturers and their allies

WARSAW—Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah has been granted all-important ‘victim’ status in the pending criminal investigation into a CIA black site in Poland, following a complaint brought by Polish lawyer Bartlomiej Jankowski working with INTERIGHTS, Reprieve and Joe Margulies.

The Polish Prosecutor is the first state official to accept Abu Zubaydah’s claims that he was a victim of extraordinary rendition and secret detention in Poland. Until now both the Polish and US governments have repeatedly denied that he was illegally imprisoned and tortured in a secret prison near Szymany; the Prosecutor’s office has now accepted that Abu Zubaydah’s claims are not only credible but also extremely serious.

Poland’s decision is a crucial step towards uncovering the truth about the CIA’s rendition and torture programme in Europe. Victim status allows Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers to participate fully in the criminal investigation, which includes introducing further evidence, calling witnesses and taking part in the questioning of witnesses and suspects.

The Polish Prosecutor’s leadership stands in contrast with the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s bizarre decision, announced this week, to close his investigation into the CIA black site in Lithuania in which Abu Zubaydah was also held and tortured. Like many other European states, Lithuania was instrumental in the operation of the CIA’s illegal rendition and torture programme, and has urgent legal obligations to provide robust and transparent investigations in order to uncover the facts.

Today’s decision follows weeks of urgent litigation by Abu Zubaydah’s international legal team. On 16 December 2010, Bartlomiej Jankowski filed applications with the Polish Prosecutor’s office showing his client was transferred from Thailand to Poland by the CIA on 5 December 2002, and held there for nine or ten months. The applications included extensive evidence of the roles played by CIA agents and Polish officials in the CIA programme in Poland, the rendition flights that transported Abu Zubaydah into and out of Poland, the private companies involved in those flights, and the operation of the CIA’s secret prison site at Stare Kiejkuty, near Szymany.

Joseph Margulies, a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago and US counsel for Abu Zubaydah said: “To recognize Abu Zubaydah as a victim is to accept his humanity, which is the first essential step to recovering from the hysteria of 9/11. It is not surprising, that this step should be taken by the Poles before the Americans.”

Bartlomiej Jankowski, Polish cousel for Abu Zubaydah said: “Following the arrangements made with Mr Jerzy Mierzewski, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, who personally informed me that Abu Zubaydah is recognized as a victim, I will now be able to review at least some of the unclassified documents in the investigation file. We also expect to be given access to the classified documents. Secrecy should not be used to shield gross human rights abuses from disclosure to the Polish public. The Polish criminal investigation should also receive full cooperation from the US government, which should promptly comply with Poland’s legal aid request. It is impossible to speak about justice in this case without hearing the victims as witnesses, whether directly in Poland or at least by video conference.”

INTERIGHTS Litigation Director Helen Duffy said: “The Prosecutor’s decision is a welcome first step, but the Polish government must do much more to vindicate Abu Zubaydah’s rights. As a recognised victim, he should now be entitled to take part in the investigation and to uncover information concerning his abuse. It remains to be seen whether the cloak of ‘state secrecy’ currently surrounding the investigation will be lifted and the Polish authorities will show their commitment to justice. Justice cannot be secret.”

Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith said: “We cannot expect to learn from history, and avoid repeating our mistakes, if we do not know what that history was.  So it is vital that European complicity in the CIA renditions programme is brought into the light, and the prosecutor’s decision is an important step towards that goal. This investigation is not about the persecution of individual officials, but rather about establishing a clear picture of exactly what happened in order to ensure that it does not happen again. It is crucial that those who created the programme and gave the orders are not permitted to pretend it never happened.”

For more information please contact Sarah Harrington at INTERIGHTS on +44 (0)20 7843 0472, or Katherine O’Shea at Reprieve’s Press Office on +44(0)20 7427 1099.

Background on Abu Zubaydah

Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, more commonly known as Abu Zubaydah, is a stateless Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia. He was held in secret detention by the CIA of the United States of America from the time of his abduction from a house in Faisalbad, Pakistan on 28 March 2002 until approximately 6 September 2006, when it was announced that he was transferred to the custody of the US Department of Defence (“DOD”) at Guantánamo Bay. He remains in indefinite detention in DOD custody at Guantánamo Bay. However, he has never been charged with any crime, neither in proceedings before a military commission nor in a civilian court.

Abu Zubaydah was the first so-called “high value detainee” to be captured, detained and interrogated by the CIA. For the purpose of his interrogation, the CIA devised a set of “enhanced interrogation techniques” intended to create a state of learned helplessness through the application of severe physical and psychological stress. According to former CIA Director George Tenet, once Abu Zubaydah was in custody, the CIA “got into holding and interrogating high-value detainees … in a serious way.” He is one of three detainees subjected to the waterboard, and US government documents show that he was waterboarded at least 83 times in one month.

Throughout the period of Abu Zubaydah’s secret detention, interrogation and torture by the CIA he was falsely alleged to be a member of al-Qaeda and a close associate and senior lieutenant of Osama bin Laden. He was also falsely alleged to have had a role in various al-Qaeda terrorist acts — including the attacks on 11 September 2001. After more than six years of incommunicado detention, Abu Zubaydah obtained access to US lawyers, who challenged his detention in US courts and forced the US Department of Justice to withdraw all such allegations. The United States no longer alleges Abu Zubaydah was ever a member of al-Qaeda or that he supported al Qaeda’s radical ideology. The United States no longer alleges that Abu Zubaydah was an associate of Osama bin Laden or that he was his senior lieutenant. The United States no longer alleges that Abu Zubaydah had any role in any terrorist attack planned or perpetrated by al-Qaeda, including the attacks of 11 September 2001 [although it now has a new ploy, as described in my articles, Abu Zubaydah: Tortured for Nothing, In Abu Zubaydah’s Case, Court Relies on Propaganda and Lies and Algerian in Guantánamo Loses Habeas Petition for Being in a Guest House with Abu Zubaydah].

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

Ending Bush’s big lie on Guantánamo
Andy Worthington, The Guardian, January 6, 2011

In the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” it was important to dehumanise the men held at Guantánamo, to give life to the myth that the prison held “the worst of the worst” terrorists, picked up on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

This was not true, as reports over the years have demonstrated. A former military interrogator in Afghanistan, writing under the pseudonym Chris Mackey, explained in his book The Interrogators that there was no screening process in place, and that every Arab who came into US custody, by whatever method, had to be transferred to Guantánamo.

Moreover, in 2006, an analysis of the Pentagon’s own allegations against 517 prisoners (compiled after 200 men and boys had already been released), and conducted by researchers at the Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey, found that 86 percent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani forces, 55 percent were not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the US or its allies, and only 8 percent were alleged to have had any kind of affiliation with al-Qaeda.

In addition, around half the prisoners were not captured in Afghanistan, but were either seized in Pakistan, or crossing the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and although many of the men were foot soldiers for the Taliban, who had been involved in the long-standing civil war against the Northern Alliance, which had begun many years before the 9/11 attacks, others were missionaries, humanitarian aid workers, or economic migrants, and only 33 of the remaining 174 prisoners have been recommended for trial by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, which reviewed all the cases in 2009.

As the prison at Guantánamo prepares to start its tenth year of operations (on January 11), and as I begin a week of events in New York and Washington D.C. to raise awareness of the remaining prisoners, these men are still, for the most part, as dehumanised as they were under President Bush.

Part of the attempt to raise awareness involves showing the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” which I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash, and which features compelling and emotional testimony from former Guantánamo prisoners Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg, both seized in 2002 from the homes where they were living in Pakistan, many hundreds of miles from the battlefields of Afghanistan, and sent to Guantánamo.

Last year, I travelled around the UK with Omar Deghayes, showing the film to audiences of students and activists who were grateful for the opportunity to meet Omar, after listening to his harrowing descriptions of how he was mistreated, and how the British security services colluded in his abuse, but when I travel to the US, I am not allowed to visit with Omar, or with Moazzam, or with any other cleared prisoner.

Audiences in the States are also moved by Omar’s testimony, when they have the opportunity to see it, but it would have a much greater impact if they were able to meet a former prisoner in person.

Sadly, the Obama administration is largely to blame for this state of affairs. In early 2009, White House Counsel Greg Craig was close to finalising a plan to rehouse a handful of cleared prisoners who could not be repatriated safely. These men were the Uighurs, Muslims for China’s Xinjiang province, seized by mistake, who had won their habeas corpus petition in a US court in October 2008, and their presence in the US would have done more to destroy the Bush administration’s enduring lies than any other gesture.

However, when Republicans got wind of it, and reacted with unjustifiable outrage, Obama quashed the plan, making it difficult for the US to find third countries prepared to take cleared prisoners who could not be repatriated, and contributing to the paralysis that Obama finds himself in today: presiding over a prison in which, although over half the remaining prisoners have been cleared for release by Obama’s Task Force, cynical lawmakers, and the President’s own cowardice, have made it increasingly difficult for him to release anyone.

Anonymity — the dehumanisation of these men — helps to maintain the illusion that their ongoing detention is somehow justifiable, but if their stories, and the circumstances of their capture, were more widely known, the Bush administration’s enduring mythology might be thoroughly punctured, and more substantial steps taken — or demanded — to secure their release. Bringing the stories of Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg to the American public can, hopefully, play a part in this still necessary process.

Details of this evening’s screening:

Friday January 7, 7 pm: Film screening – “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” followed by Q&A with Andy Worthington and Scott Horton.
Revolution Books, 146 West 26th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave.), New York, NY 10001.
A donation of $10 is requested for the film, drinks and popcorn, to benefit Revolution Books. For further information, see the Revolution Books website, or contact the store by email or by phone: 212-691-3345. A Facebook page is here.

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

I’m glad to report, however, that the students in the Human Rights Society at UCL, and the human rights students at Roehampton were thoroughly engaged audiences, who peppered the speakers (myself and former prisoner Omar Deghayes at UCL, and myself and Polly at Roehampton) with questions, and listened intently as Omar spoke about his experiences — and those of his fellow prisoners — in US custody throughout the darkest years of a “War on Terror” that has not, sadly, been brought to an end by President Obama.

In addition, I told the sorry story of how Obama’s plans to close the prison have ground to a halt, but reminded the audiences that they can act to secure the return of Shaker Aamer — by writing to William Hague, writing to their MPs, encouraging their MPs to sign up to a Early Day Motion on Guantánamo proposed by the Green MP Caroline Lucas, and sending a postcard to Shaker in Guantánamo — and that they should take heart that the time has come for the exhaustion of any and all excuses to prevent his return.

This is because of the British government’s recent financial settlement with 15 former Guantánamo prisoners, and with Shaker, whose settlement cannot ultimately be agreed without his presence, because of an ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation into his allegations of torture in US custody in Afghanistan, while British agents were present, which cannot conclude without his presence, and because the judicial inquiry into British complicity in torture, which David Cameron announced in July, and which he wants to use to “draw a line” under the whole sordid affair, cannot even begin while one of the men whose evidence will need to be considered by the inquiry — Shaker Aamer — is still held in Guantánamo.

Those of us who have been studying his case closely for many years know that, ultimately, Shaker — who was cleared for release by a military review board under President Bush in 2007 — is not held because of any threat he poses to the national security of either the US or the UK, but because of his deep knowledge of American involvement in torture — and, perhaps, murder — at Guantánamo and his equally deep knowledge of American torture (and British complicity) elsewhere, which he learned and/or experienced as the foremost defender of the prisoners’ rights, and as an eloquent and passionate man who will not stand for injustice.

For Saturday’s event the BBC, the Press Association, AFP and Scotland on Sunday all reported on the rally at the site of the new US embassy, but failed to follow the march to Battersea Arts Centre for the main focus of the day, attended by many hundreds of people — a public meeting, chaired by the journalist and playwright Victoria Brittain, at which the speakers included Moazzam Begg, former Guantánamo prisoner and director of Cageprisoners, human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, the journalist Yvonne Ridley,  and Anas Altikriti, the President and founder of the Cordoba Foundation. Press TV did turn up, however, and a report on the day’s events can be found here.

By the time I arrived later in the afternoon, the crowd had thinned out, but around 150 people stayed to watch “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” and afterwards there was a very lively Q&A session with myself, Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes and Polly Nash, in which Moazzam, in particular, was called upon to explain in detail how the recent financial settlements arose, which he did with some dignity, explaining how senior government ministers had, for the first time, listened to the prisoners and taken their stories on board, stressing that the release of Shaker had been central to the negotiations, but that the former prisoners had not been allowed to make the settlement reliant upon a firm promise that he would be freed, and refuting a claim that they had somehow sold out, or been bought off, by pointing out that, had they refused the settlement, those who were working would have been unable to pursue the case, because of the huge expenee involved, and those who were not would have had their legal aid cut off.

Personally, I believe that so much has already been exposed — including, in summer, direct evidence of the complicity in torture of Tony Blair and Jack Straw — that the settlement to bring to an end the civil claim filed by seven former prisoners is not the end of the story, especially as all the men have not been “gagged” as a result of the settlement, and have not been obliged to drop any of their allegations  about British complicity in their treatment in US custody — and, in some cases, in their abduction.

When I spoke, I was at pains to stress, as I had at UCL and in Roehampton, that, at present, everyone who is concerned about these matters should focus all their energies on securing Shaker’s return, which clearly cannot be put off for much longer, despite a rather feeble statement from the Foreign Office, as reported by Scotland on Sunday. A spokeswoman told the paper, “The Foreign Secretary raised the case of Shaker Aamer with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his visit to Washington in November and was told that the US government continues to consider the case. As the Prime Minister has made clear to Parliament, the government continues to make best efforts to secure Shaker Aamer’s release and return to the UK. Ultimately this is a matter for the US.”

This last sentence is particularly worrying, as Shaker’s return is not just “a matter for the US,” but involves two countries — both the US and the UK — and the British government must not be allowed to forget that it can — and must — make Shaker’s return a priority.

Unfortunately, one of the star guests for Saturday’s event, Mayoral candidate and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, was unable to attend, but he sent along a message, which was read out at the end of the event, and which, I believe, provides a suitable conclusion to this report. He wrote:

It’s an absolute disgrace that prisoners including Shaker Aamer have been held without charge or trial at Guantánamo, and it’s now imperative that the British government starts to make real efforts to end this fundamental breach of human rights.

No one should be imprisoned without the basic human right to a trial. Guantánamo Bay is a stain on global politics and a symbol of everything that went wrong under Bush.

The impact on the families of those whose human rights are breached through indefinite imprisonment without trial is massive. It is impossible to imagine the effect on those people. Despite claiming they were doing “as much as they could,” it has now become clear that the issue was only raised sporadically and with little drive by previous foreign ministers.

It is a continuing scandal that the US will not simply release Shaker Aamer back to Britain.

Guantánamo Bay must be permanently closed, Shaker returned to Britain and never again must we allow our government to destroy human rights internationally at the behest of the US or any other power.

My thanks again to the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign for their hard work in organizing and promoting the event, to the sponsors, to everyone who turned up, and also to the organizatons who supported it: Stop the War Coalition, Unite Against Fascism, Love Music Hate Racism, Guantánamo Justice Centre, South London SWP, Kingston Peace Council, Brighton Against Guantánamo, Brighton and Hove Mosque, South London Communist Party of Britain, London Guantánamo Campaign, Justice for Aafia Coalition, Sutton for Peace & Justice, Norwich Amnesty Group, Battersea Islamic Culture & Education Centre, and Kingston Amnesty Group.

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

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

Dr. Siddiqui’s supporters, and many commentators — myself included — who have examined her story have, for many years, had reason to doubt the official narrative about her capture in 2008, and her whereabouts for the previous five years.

While both the Pakistani and US authorities repeatedly denied that Dr. Siddiqui was in their custody between 2003 and 2008, and this is reiterated in one of the cables released by Wikileaks, in which US diplomats in Pakistan stated that “Bagram officials have assured us that they have not been holding Siddiqui for the last four years, as has been alleged,” several former prisoners — and one still held — have stated that they saw her in Bagram. The following exchange is an excerpt from an interview conducted by former prisoner Moazzam Begg with Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who was subjected to torture in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, after his release from Guantánamo in February 2009:

Moazzam Begg: When you were in the Bagram Detention Facility after being held in the “Dark Prison,” you came across a female prisoner. Can you describe a little bit about who you think she is and what you saw of her?

Binyam Mohamed: In Bagram, I did come across a female who wore a shirt with the number of “650,” and I saw her several times, and I heard a lot of stories about her from the guards and the other prisoners over there.

Moazzam Begg: And these stories said what about her, in terms of her description and her background?

Binyam Mohamed: What we were told first … we were frightened by the guards not to communicate with her, because they feared that we would talk to her and we would know who she was. So they told us that she was a spy from Pakistan, working with the government, and the Americans brought her to Bagram.

Moazzam Begg: So you think they spread the rumour that she was a spy … that would have kept you away from her and apprehensive towards her?

Binyam Mohamed: Basically, nobody talked to her in the facility, and she was held in isolation, where … she was only brought out to the main facility just to use the toilet. But all I knew about her was that she was from Pakistan, and that she had studied, or she had lived in America. And the guards would talk a lot about her, and I did actually see her picture when I was here a few weeks ago, and I would say she’s the very person I saw in Bagram.

Moazzam Begg: And that’s the very picture I showed you of Aafia Siddiqui?

Binyam Mohamed: That’s the very picture I saw.

Moazzam Begg: There have been all sorts of rumours about what happened to her — and may Allah free her soon — but part of those rumours include her being terribly abused. Do you have any knowledge of what abuse she might have faced?

Binyam Mohamed: Apart from her being in isolation — and the fact that I saw, when she was walking up and down, I could tell that she was severely disturbed — I don’t think she was in her right mind — literally, I don’t think she was sane — and I didn’t feel anything at that time, because, as far as I was concerned, she was a hypocrite working with the other governments. But had we known that she was a sister, I don’t think we would have been silent. I think there would have been a lot of maybe even riots in Bagram.

In March 2010, at a rally organized by the Justice for Aafia Coalition, former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes stated that, as well as Binyam Mohamed, Hassan bin Attash (a former child prisoner who is still held in Guantánamo) and Dr. Ghairat Baheer (a former “ghost prisoner” held in various secret prisons in Afghanistan) also described seeing Aafia Siddiqui in Bagram. Omar said, “They told me how she cried and sobbed, how she screamed and cried and banged her head, in despair and sorrow.”

The Justice for Aafia Coalition has also been gathering other testimony about Dr. Siddiqui’s presence in Bagram from other sources, locating the following statement by Abu Yahya al-Libi, who escaped from Bagram in July 2005, which resonates with the recollections of Binyam Mohamed, Hassan bin Attash and Dr. Baheer:

There is a woman from Pakistan. She stayed two complete years in solitary confinement in Bagram prison among more than 500 men. She would go out to the bathroom, led by the Americans, placing his hand on one of her shoulders, and the other hand on her back, and her hands and feet chained together, and she is treated in exactly the same way as a man … even in her clothing, the orange suit that the brothers wear in Guantánamo and the mujahideen in Bagram. This woman stayed there until she lost her mind, until she became insane, hitting the door and screaming, all day and night, and those ones all they do is make it worse by calling her by her number 650, that’s the number she had in the Bagram prison… “What’s the problem?” And she didn’t find a person to talk to. She is in solitary confinement, in front of her is a solitary room belonging to a man, on her side is a solitary room belonging to a man, and next to her is a solitary room belonging to a man, She didn’t find a woman to talk to, she only sees men … so the woman lost her reasoning and her mind and she stayed in this condition for two complete years… probably no one knew anything about her.

In addition, two of Aafia Siddiqui’s three children have stated that they were also held in custody during the period that their mother’s whereabouts are unexplained, adding another chilling dimension to the story. Although it is feared that Suleman, who was just a baby in March 2003, was killed at the time of her capture, her eldest son Ahmed (who was seven at the time) and her daughter Mariam (who was five) eventually reappeared. Ahmed, who was seized with his mother in Ghazni in July 2008, and was released to his mother’s family in October 2009, issued the following statement about his capture and his lost years:

I do not remember the date but it seems a long time ago. I remember we were going to Islamabad in a car when we were stopped by different cars and high roof ones. My mother was screaming and I was screaming as they took me away. I looked around and saw my baby brother on the ground and there was blood. My mother was crying and screaming. Then they put something on my face. And I don’t remember anything.

When I woke up I was in a room. There were American soldiers in uniform and plain clothes people. They kept me in different places. If I cried or didn’t listen, they beat me and tied me and chained me. There were English speaking, Pashto and Urdu speaking. I had no courage to ask who they were. At times, for a long time, I was alone in a small room. Then I was taken to some children’s prison where there were lots of other children.

The American Consular, who came to me in Kabul jail, said, “Your name is Ahmed. You are American. Your mother’s name is Aafia Siddiqui and your younger brother is dead. After that they took me away from the kids’ prison and I met the Pakistani Consular, and I talked to my aunt (Fowzia Siddiqui).”

Mariam did not reappear until April this year, when unidentified men delivered her to her aunt’s house. Now 12 years old, she was identified as Aafia Siddiqui’s daughter (and Ahmed’s sister) through DNA tests. At a press conference, Senator Talha Mehmood, the Chairman of the Senate Committee for the Interior, reported that Mariam “was recovered from Bagram airbase in the custody of an American — in the Urdu language press, an American soldier — called ‘John.’ He also said that she had been kept for seven years in a ‘cold, dark room’ in Bagram airbase.” Although this story has not been independently verified, and it may be that Mariam was held in some other facility, no other explanation has been provided to explain her whereabouts for the previous seven years.

These are just some of the reasons to doubt the assertion made by US diplomats in Pakistan, in one of the cables released by Wikileaks, and also to doubt the conviction with which Declan Walsh followed up on the cable, writing in the Guardian, “Contrary to claims by supporters of Aafia Siddiqui, the controversial Pakistani neuroscientist was never imprisoned at the Bagram military prison in Afghanistan, the embassy cables suggest.”

Other reasons to doubt the assertion include previously reported shadiness on the part of diplomats, who initially told the journalist Yvonne Ridley (who has spent many years doggedly pursuing the truth about Dr. Siddiqui) that no women had been held in Bagram, although it was later revealed that they had lied. Shortly after the incident in Ghazni, Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Greene, a spokesperson for Combined Joint Task Force 101, which manages the Bagram base, “said that a woman had been held at Bagram in 2003, but that woman, identified only as ‘Shafila,’ was released.” This was a fascinating insight, because the timeframe involved — during 2003 — appears to confirm that the witnesses cited above, who saw a woman at Bagram in 2004, were not mistaking Aafia Siddiqui for this other poor woman, whose whereabouts are, of course, unknown.

Even more significant is the well-chronicled failure of senior Bush administration officials to keep State Department officials in the loop about almost anything of substance to do with the “War on Terror.”

In 2009, when I interviewed Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, Wilkerson told me, in no uncertain terms, that the State Department had been excluded from correspondence relating to the conduct of the “War on Terror,” although the team gathered around Dick Cheney — a “War Council” consisting of just six men — had been monitoring the State Department’s responses to the results of Cheney’s activities. Wilkerson said:

I understood that there was a team, I understood it was highly placed and probably under the Vice President, I understood that it was membered in almost every aspect of the interagency group that dealt with national security, I understood they had a strategy, I understood they were ruthless in carrying out that strategy, and I understood that I was a day late and a dollar short, because they’d beaten me to the marketplace. But it took me a while to figure that out. I even figured out that they were reading my emails, but I wasn’t reading theirs.

Another reason for doubting the diplomats’ denials concerns the timing of Dr. Siddiqui’s capture, and its place within the bigger picture of the capture of supposed “high-value detainees” who were subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture in a variety of secret prisons, including, in many cases, a secret facility within Bagram. Whether accurately or not, it has been claimed that Dr, Siddiqui had remarried, before her capture, and that her second husband was Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (aka Ammar al-Baluchi), a nephew of the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Dr. Siddiqui was seized just four weeks after KSM, and four weeks before Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and it is easy, therefore, to see that a confession extracted under torture from KSM — when he was being subjected to waterboarding on 183 separate occasions in a secret prison in Poland — could have led to Dr. Siddiqui’s capture, which, in turn, could have led to the capture — perhaps through information also extracted through the use of torture — of Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.

If this sequence is correct — and it certainly makes a lot of sense — then it is appropriate to conclude that Dr. Siddiqui was held as a “ghost prisoner” in a secret prison, and it does not take too much reflection to realize that, as a result, her mysterious reappearance in Afghanistan in July 2008, the implausible story of her attempts to murder US soldiers (even though no fingerprints were found on the gun), her rendition to the United States rather than facing justice in Afghanistan, the sham of a trial that focused only on the murder attempt, and not on the terrorist materials allegedly found on her at the time of her capture, and the disproportionately large sentence are all part of a cover-up, designed to dispose of a used-up “ghost prisoner,” who knew too much — and was, conceivably, too horribly abused — to be released.

Unlike KSM, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and 12 other “high-value detainees,” for example, Dr. Siddiqui could not be sealed up in Guantánamo (where these men were sent from secret prisons in September 2006), because the presence of a female prisoner would have caused an uproar. In addition, she could not, like prisoners from other countries, be repatriated without that also causing an uproar, unlike a number of Libyan men who were stealthily repatriated from secret prisons in 2006.

These men included Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who ran a training camp in Afghanistan that was closed down by the Taliban because he refused to work with Osama bin Laden, but after his capture in late 2001 he was sent by the CIA to Egypt, where he was tortured until he falsely confessed that Saddam Hussein had met with members of al-Qaeda to discuss the use of chemical and biological weapons. That false confession was used a part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, but once al-Libi was used up — after several years in other secret prisons — he was returned to Libya, where, implausibly but conveniently for the US and LIbya, he died, reportedly by committing suicide, in May 2009.

For Aafia Siddiqui, the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas, where she is now held, may not be quite as notorious as Abu Salim prison in Tripoli — where around 1,200 prisoners were killed in a massacre in 1996 — or Bagram, because of its dark fame in the “War on Terror,” but to those in the know, it is, as Yvonne Ridley explained, known as the “Hospital of Horrors,” where more than 100 young women “have died in the last 10 years under ‘questionable circumstances’ with families unable to obtain autopsy reports,” and where there have been numerous cases of sex abuse.

Please write to Aafia at Carswell, not only to let her know that she has not been forgotten, but also because the most effective way to ensure that abusers think twice about their abuse is when they know that the outside world is watching — and is watching in large numbers. The address for the prison is here, and if you’re interested, I urge you to take advantage of the Justice for Aafia Coalition’s pre-printed cards, available here, which can easily be distributed to friends and family.

As published exclusively on the website of the Justice for Aafia Coalition. Cross-posted on The Public Record, Uruknet, Dandelion Salad and Prison Watch for Imprisoned Women.

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