Mansoor Adayfi’s “Don’t Forget Us Here”: A Devastating Account of Guantánamo’s Cruelty, But One Suffused with Hope, Humor and Humanity
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
Imagine being seized in Afghanistan or Pakistan, being brutalized in US prisons in Afghanistan, and then being sent halfway around the world to Guantánamo, a US naval base in Cuba, where you are then imprisoned indefinitely, without charge or trial, in a prison facility that was specifically chosen to be beyond the reach of the US courts, and where all of the normal rules regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners no longer applied.
Imagine being held, for years, on and off, in solitary confinement, able only to communicate with the person in the cell next to you by lying down on the floor of your cell and shouting through small holes in the cell wall.
Imagine being punished with sometimes bone-breaking physical violence for refusing to cooperate, or for being perceived to have infringed an ever-changing set of rules designed to dehumanize you on a permanent basis, and to “soften you up” for relentless and often violent interrogations.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
