REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Notes from a Guantanamo Survivor

POSTED BY: CANTTAKESKY
UPDATED: Monday, December 23, 2024 07:11
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Sunday, January 8, 2012 10:47 AM

CANTTAKESKY


https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantan
amo-survivor.html?_r=2&src=tp


Quote:

I LEFT Guantánamo Bay much as I had arrived almost five years earlier — shackled hand-to-waist, waist-to-ankles, and ankles to a bolt on the airplane floor. My ears and eyes were goggled, my head hooded, and even though I was the only detainee on the flight this time, I was drugged and guarded by at least 10 soldiers. This time though, my jumpsuit was American denim rather than Guantánamo orange. I later learned that my C-17 military flight from Guantánamo to Ramstein Air Base in my home country, Germany, cost more than $1 million.

When we landed, the American officers unshackled me before they handed me over to a delegation of German officials. The American officer offered to re-shackle my wrists with a fresh, plastic pair. But the commanding German officer strongly refused: “He has committed no crime; here, he is a free man.”

I was not a strong secondary school student in Bremen, but I remember learning that after World War II, the Americans insisted on a trial for war criminals at Nuremberg, and that event helped turn Germany into a democratic country. Strange, I thought, as I stood on the tarmac watching the Germans teach the Americans a basic lesson about the rule of law.

How did I arrive at this point? This Wednesday is the 10th anniversary of the opening of the detention camp at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. I am not a terrorist. I have never been a member of Al Qaeda or supported them. I don’t even understand their ideas. I am the son of Turkish immigrants who came to Germany in search of work. My father has worked for years in a Mercedes factory. In 2001, when I was 18, I married a devout Turkish woman and wanted to learn more about Islam and to lead a better life. I did not have much money. Some of the elders in my town suggested I travel to Pakistan to learn to study the Koran with a religious group there.

I made my plans just before 9/11. I was 19 then and was naïve and did not think war in Afghanistan would have anything to do with Pakistan or my trip there. So I went ahead with my trip.

I was in Pakistan, on a public bus on my way to the airport to return to Germany when the police stopped the bus I was riding in. I was the only non-Pakistani on the bus — some people joke that my reddish hair makes me look Irish — so the police asked me to step off to look at my papers and ask some questions. German journalists told me the same thing happened to them. I was not a journalist, but a tourist, I explained. The police detained me but promised they would soon let me go to the airport. After a few days, the Pakistanis turned me over to American officials. At this point, I was relieved to be in American hands; Americans, I thought, would treat me fairly.

I later learned the United States paid a $3,000 bounty for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently the United States distributed thousands of fliers all over Afghanistan, promising that people who turned over Taliban or Qaeda suspects would, in the words of one flier, get “enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.” A great number of men wound up in Guantánamo as a result.

I was taken to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, where American interrogators asked me the same questions for several weeks: Where is Osama bin Laden? Was I with Al Qaeda? No, I told them, I was not with Al Qaeda. No, I had no idea where bin Laden was. I begged the interrogators to please call Germany and find out who I was. During their interrogations, they dunked my head under water and punched me in the stomach; they don’t call this waterboarding but it amounts to the same thing. I was sure I would drown.

At one point, I was chained to the ceiling of a building and hung by my hands for days. A doctor sometimes checked if I was O.K.; then I would be strung up again. The pain was unbearable.

After about two months in Kandahar, I was transferred to Guantánamo. There were more beatings, endless solitary confinement, freezing temperatures and extreme heat, days of forced sleeplessness. The interrogations continued always with the same questions. I told my story over and over — my name, my family, why I was in Pakistan. Nothing I said satisfied them. I realized my interrogators were not interested in the truth.

Despite all this, I looked for ways to feel human. I have always loved animals. I started hiding a piece of bread from my meals and feeding the iguanas that came to the fence. When officials discovered this, I was punished with 30 days in isolation and darkness.

I remained confused on basic questions: why was I here? With all its money and intelligence, the United States could not honestly believe I was Al Qaeda, could they?

After two and a half years at Guantánamo, in 2004, I was brought before what officials called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, at which a military officer said I was an “enemy combatant” because a German friend had engaged in a suicide bombing in 2003 — after I was already at Guantánamo. I couldn’t believe my friend had done anything so crazy but, if he had, I didn’t know anything about it.

A couple of weeks later, I was told I had a visit from a lawyer. They took me to a special cell and in walked an American law professor, Baher Azmy. I didn’t believe he was a real lawyer at first; interrogators often lied to us and tried to trick us. But Mr. Azmy had a note written in Turkish which he had gotten from my mother, and that made me trust him. (My mother found a lawyer in my hometown in Germany who heard that lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights represented Guantánamo detainees; the center assigned Mr. Azmy my case.) He did not believe the evidence against me and quickly discovered that my “suicide bomber” friend was, in fact, alive and well in Germany.

Mr. Azmy, my mother and my German lawyer helped pressure the German government to secure my release. Recently, Mr. Azmy made public a number of American and German intelligence documents from 2002 to 2004 that showed both countries suspected I was innocent. One of the documents said American military guards thought I was dangerous because I had prayed during the American national anthem.

Now, five years after my release, I am trying to put my terrible memories behind me. I have remarried and have a beautiful baby daughter. Still, it is hard not to think about my time at Guantánamo and to wonder how it is possible that a democratic government can detain people in intolerable conditions and without a fair trial.

Murat Kurnaz, the author of “Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo,” was detained from 2001 to 2006.



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Sunday, January 8, 2012 1:11 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


G'Mo really is a nasty stain on American conduct in the world. One that will linger, no how many times you try to put it through the wash.

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Sunday, January 8, 2012 2:15 PM

CANTTAKESKY


Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
G'Mo really is a nasty stain on American conduct in the world. One that will linger, no how many times you try to put it through the wash.

Not just Gitmo. Also Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

Concentration torture camps are funny about leaving stains that way.

-----
I love, therefore I am.

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Sunday, January 8, 2012 2:33 PM

HKCAVALIER


So beyond disgusting. I just want this country to own up. I don't hate America, I am indignant at the corruption destroying our way of life. Own up.

By no stretch of the imagination can a reasonable person believe that this man was detained at Gitmo for 5 years of his life to expand our military's intelligence base. It does not take 5 years to find out someone doesn't know anything. The man was punished with 30 days of solitary confinement and darkness for feeding fucking iguanas through the fence! Did they capture and interrogate the iguanas as well?

This is a complete outrage. I can have no respect for those who minimize our crimes against humanity.

Own up, America. Own up and accept the consequences.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, January 8, 2012 3:03 PM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!


I wish a violent painful disgusting death upon everyone who voted for Bushobama, preferably by arrest, torture, courts martial then execution for treason in their favorite hellhole at Gitmo. No lawyers allowed.

Cuts on their genitals without anesthesia would be a welcome addition to their incarceration, as Bushobama loves doing.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who will end these 8 wars, and avoid WW3.

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Sunday, January 8, 2012 3:07 PM

CANTTAKESKY


Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
I don't hate America, ...

I am deeply ashamed of America.

If you get a chance, rent or buy "My Name is Khan," a bollywood movie about anti-Muslim hate in America. It portrays the outrage that is Gitmo. It is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.

-----
I love, therefore I am.

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Sunday, January 8, 2012 8:24 PM

FREMDFIRMA



What upsets me about it as much or more, HKCav, is how these bastards honed and refined their techniques right here, under our very noses...

On children.

And till not very long ago there wasn't anydamnbody willing to say word one against it save a few like me who caught endless shit for it.

After a fashion you could almost say that I saw this coming a decade and more in advance, but you know what ?
Doesn't make it one whit less ugly, if anything it makes it more so, cause of watching the banal selfishness and ignorance that allowed it to come to this.

And yes, I too an shamed at what our country has become, or at least finally more or less admitted, despite being there since around 1950, and those who once fought against it, back in the 60's and 70's are now willing servants thereof ?
Fuckin pansies - I don't mean to quit, not now, not EVER.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Sunday, January 8, 2012 8:36 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht


That's awful. I guess I didn't realize how bad it was.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Sunday, January 8, 2012 9:11 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:

Originally posted by piratenews:
I wish a violent painful disgusting death upon everyone who voted for Bushobama, preferably by arrest, torture, courts martial then execution for treason in their favorite hellhole at Gitmo. No lawyers allowed.

Cuts on their genitals without anesthesia would be a welcome addition to their incarceration, as Bushobama loves doing.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who will end these 8 wars, and avoid WW3.



Yeah, more revenge, torture and death. That is what the world badly needs.


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Monday, January 9, 2012 5:15 AM

BYTEMITE


Magon: I voted for Obama because I thought, naively, he might be a change from Bush. I deserve every punishment PN suggested and more. For now, I settle for refusing to vote, EVER AGAIN. I hope eventually I can redeem myself, and only through death will I find peace from my guilt.

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Monday, January 9, 2012 5:38 AM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by piratenews:
I wish a violent painful disgusting death upon everyone who voted for Bushobama, preferably by arrest, torture, courts martial then execution for treason in their favorite hellhole at Gitmo. No lawyers allowed.


No lawyers? All right! I'm off the hook!

I note for the record that you are wanting to do the same things to those you disagree with that you believe that they themselves are doing. So it must be ok...after all, you are just as willing to torture and kill...so it must not be the torture and killing you find fault with. You also want to keep Gitmo open...so you must be ok with putting people there too.

Hey everybody! PN supports torture and murder! PN wants to keep Gitmo open! PN also wants to deny people their right to lawyers! Not even Bush and Obama do that!

I myself oppose those things being the Constitution-loving good Christian man I am.

PN's a facist! PN's a facist!

I note for the record that if you wish death on everyone who voted for Bush and everyone who voted for Obama...that's pretty much everyone.

PN advocates mass murder of Americans!

If only we had a place we could send people like PN...someplace warm...

H

"Hero. I have come to respect you." "I am forced to agree with Hero here."- Chrisisall, 2009.
"I agree with Hero." Niki2, 2011.

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Monday, January 9, 2012 5:39 AM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by canttakesky:

Murat Kurnaz, the author of “Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo,” was detained from 2001 to 2006.


This man either made it all up or is a terrorist. I note for the record that both could be and likely are true.

H

"Hero. I have come to respect you." "I am forced to agree with Hero here."- Chrisisall, 2009.
"I agree with Hero." Niki2, 2011.

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Monday, January 9, 2012 7:25 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The silence from rappy is deafening, seeing as he believes that anyone imprisoned for ... whatever... deserves to be tortured.

But this article is too long. It will strain his brain to read it, and cause such cognitive dissonance as to drive him away from all thought whatsoever.

And I'm afraid the stain is still there, and getting worse. The President can now authorize assassination of anyone, anywhere, any time; and to order indefinite detention of anyone. Even American citizens who are supposed to be protected by habeas corpus and trial by jury of peers.

Yeeesh.

And I thought BUSH was bad.

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Monday, January 9, 2012 7:59 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Quote:

Own up, America. Own up and accept the consequences.
Dream on, Leon. Just don't confuse it with the possibility it'll ever HAPPEN! Actually, many, many AMERICANS own up and are disgusted, as most of us here, but the government...never in a million years.

I voted for Obama because I thought McCain would keep on the way Bush had, and Obama MIGHT not be as bad. And he hasn't. Only slightly. McCain might well have us in Iran by now...and Syria and and and... I give Obama points for that, if nothing else. Looks to me like any of the candidates on the right would be right in there, too (except Ron Paul, bless his crazy little heart), so I'll vote Obama again. As usual, the lesser of two evils, and if ANY rightie gets in, it'll be "cut taxes, eliminate regulation" out the ying-yang. I think that's death to America, considering where it's gotten us by ow. Other than that, a pox on ALL their houses.

I didn't read the article; like stories about animal and child abuse, I already know everything I need to, and don't need to be made any sicker. One of the protest signs I made for OccupyMarin: "We've lost our way as a nation" about says it all, in my opinion.



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Monday, January 9, 2012 8:02 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I'm going to vote my conscience. I stopped voting for the lesser of two weevils when Clinton came up for re-election. Occupy and the Tea Party tell me there is a new groundswell, and its time to move it as far as it will go.

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Monday, January 9, 2012 2:47 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht


A Byte a stor, I don't think there's any need to feel guilty about voting for Obama, you did the best you knew at the time, and its not like your vote clinched him the election. Older and wiser, don't feel so bad.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012 7:42 AM

CANTTAKESKY


https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/my-guantanamo-nightm
are.html


Quote:

ON Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as “undeliverable,” and the few that I received were so thoroughly and thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were lost.

Some American politicians say that people at Guantánamo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again.

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.

The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia’s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guantánamo, the American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.

I still had faith in American justice. I believed my captors would quickly realize their mistake and let me go. But when I would not give the interrogators the answers they wanted — how could I, when I had done nothing wrong? — they became more and more brutal. I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want only to forget.

I went on a hunger strike for two years because no one would tell me why I was being imprisoned. Twice each day my captors would shove a tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so they could pour food into me. It was excruciating, but I was innocent and so I kept up my protest.

In 2008, my demand for a fair legal process went all the way to America’s highest court. In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the court said that because “the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.”

Five months later, Judge Richard J. Leon, of the Federal District Court in Washington, reviewed all of the reasons offered to justify my imprisonment, including secret information I never saw or heard. The government abandoned its claim of an embassy bomb plot just before the judge could hear it. After the hearing, he ordered the government to free me and four other men who had been arrested in Bosnia.

I will never forget sitting with the four other men in a squalid room at Guantánamo, listening over a fuzzy speaker as Judge Leon read his decision in a Washington courtroom. He implored the government not to appeal his ruling, because “seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty.” I was freed, at last, on May 15, 2009.

Today, I live in Provence with my wife and children. France has given us a home, and a new start. I have experienced the pleasure of reacquainting myself with my daughters and, in August 2010, the joy of welcoming a new son, Yousef. I am learning to drive, attending vocational training and rebuilding my life. I hope to work again serving others, but so far the fact that I spent seven and a half years as a Guantánamo prisoner has meant that only a few human rights organizations have seriously considered hiring me. I do not like to think of Guantánamo. The memories are filled with pain. But I share my story because 171 men remain there. Among them is Belkacem Bensayah, who was seized in Bosnia and sent to Guantánamo with me.

About 90 prisoners have been cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo. Some of them are from countries like Syria or China — where they would face torture if sent home — or Yemen, which the United States considers unstable. And so they sit as captives, with no end in sight — not because they are dangerous, not because they attacked America, but because the stigma of Guantánamo means they have no place to go, and America will not give a home to even one of them.

I’m told that my Supreme Court case is now read in law schools. Perhaps one day that will give me satisfaction, but so long as Guantánamo stays open and innocent men remain there, my thoughts will be with those left behind in that place of suffering and injustice.

Lakhdar Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush. He was in military custody at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2009. This essay was translated by Felice Bezri from the Arabic.



Sobbing.



-----
I love, therefore I am.

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012 8:21 AM

BYTEMITE


People died, and I had a hand in it. Such things can't be forgiven.

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012 5:50 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


[sarcasm] Oh, but you see he is a terrorist. A very clever one, disguising himself as a sympathetic figure. We should torture him and make him admit his complicity [/sarcasm]

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012 6:44 PM

BYTEMITE


...Obama? You directed that comment at me...

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Tuesday, December 17, 2024 1:32 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


Strange spooks over many years, Morell signed an open letter stating that the Biden laptop story “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

A Note to the IC Workforce on the Whistleblower

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/a-note-to-the-ic-workfor
ce-on-the-whistleblower

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Thursday, December 19, 2024 7:36 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


held without speedy trail and torture making key evidence inadmissible.

US repatriates 3 Guantanamo Bay detainees, including one held 17 years without charge

https://apnews.com/article/guantanamo-bay-kenya-detainee-al-qaida-sept
ember-11-f338868542168098fb19bce9373b6720

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Monday, December 23, 2024 7:11 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


What was CIA and Avril Haines, the person responsible for hiding the Abu Ghraib torture tapes, doing at a pandemic response event with Bill Gates? Listen to RFK Jr. ask the hard questions.

https://x.com/CatchUpFeed/status/1871145364939518091

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