Guantanamo detainees tell their stories
LONDON – Some boast they were Taliban fighters. Others – an invalid, a chicken farmer, a nomad, a nervous name-dropper – say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were plucked from Afghanistan, Pakistan or other countries and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Their stories are tucked inside nearly 2,000 pages of documents the U.S. government has released to the Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Representing a fraction of some 558 tribunals held since July, the testimony captures frustration on both sides – judges wrestling with mistaken identities and scattered information from remote corners of the world, prisoners complaining there’s no evidence against them.
“I’ve been here for three years, and the past three years, whatever I say, nobody believes me. They listen, but they don’t believe me,” says a chicken farmer accused of torturing jailed Afghans as a high-ranking member of the Taliban.
The farmer’s name is blacked out in the documents released by the government, which also redacted most other identifying information such as the names of cities, villages and countries.
There are scant references to allegations of abuse at the Guantanamo prison camp in the proceedings, which are to determine solely if detainees are enemy combatants.
One prisoner even calls the camp “paradise” compared with a Taliban jail where he was given little food and had medical problems.
Another prisoner, however, claims U.S. forces in Afghanistan held him underground for two weeks. “They starved me. They handcuffed me. There was no food,” he says.
“I was surprised that the Americans would (do) such a thing,” adds the Briton, who worked in Yemen at a cooking-oil company shut down after authorities said it was a front for al Qaeda.
Many of the prisoners portray their circumstances as Kafkaesque, similar to Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” in which a man is arrested and forced to defend himself against a secret crime.
“This is not lawful,” says one detainee who identified himself as a journalist. “If she (the tribunal recorder) has any secret documents against me, she should give them to you now.”
Because the U.S. government considers some information against the men to be of interest to national security, detainees were not allowed to hear all of the evidence against them.
Case in point: a 29-year-old accused of having knowledge of a terrorist act.
The prisoner admits that when he went to Indonesia after his father died in 2001, he dropped a name and flashed a snapshot to a man he met at a breakfast arranged by his mother’s friend. He’s posing with scientists who allegedly worked for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, but he says it was at a conference where he recited the Quran.
The prisoner says the man – who thought the picture was proof of political prestige – later admitted attacking the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. The conversation became fodder for one of the allegations against the Guantanamo captive.
“When I found out … that these were very bad people, I tried to get away from them,” the prisoner claims, adding, “I must be stupid.”
Another prisoner accused of being a member of “al-Irata” asks what the group is – a question that stumps the tribunal president.
“As a court, how can you present it against a person and not know what it was?” asks the prisoner, who says he’s a Saudi fruit and vegetable merchant who went to Pakistan the month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to fulfill his obligation to help Muslims.
The men complain of not having attorneys because only military-appointed representatives are allowed in the hearings. “It is unfair that the government is going to be talking about me and I don’t have an attorney,” says one whose calm testimony is punctuated by protest.
The proceedings began after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Guantanamo prisoners could challenge their detention as enemy combatants, a classification that has afforded the men fewer legal protections than prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions.
Most of the prisoners’ testimony at the prison – which now holds about 540 from 40 countries – hasn’t been made public, though the tribunals were open to press coverage. Because of Guantanamo’s remoteness, it was difficult for reporters to stay for indefinite periods.
The AP-obtained documents account for the testimony of nearly 100 detainees.
The Associated Press filed the request in November under the Freedom of Information Act, asking for testimony, statements and other documents. The government handed over the documents on Friday after the tribunals ended in January and the AP filed suit.
Most of the detainees proclaim their innocence, including one older prisoner who says he is too crippled to have been an enemy combatant.
“How could I be an enemy combatant if I was not able to stand up?” he asks, describing how he hasn’t been able to walk in more than 15 years. A witness testifies the man had a stroke years ago and barely had left his house except to visit the doctor.
The United States accused him of being a member of the Hizb-I-Islamic group that authorities said was planning rocket attacks against U.S. forces. Troops also allegedly found weapons.
The prisoner admits there was an AK-47, BB gun and antique rifle that didn’t fire but says it’s common for villagers to have weapons.
One nomad says he was looking for his lost goats when he and his brother were captured. U.S. officials say they were captured near an explosive device. Much of Afghanistan is heavily mined.
“How do you move from place to place?” asked the tribunal member. “What do you use for transport? Do you have a vehicle?”
“A camel,” the prisoner says. “I am not against America.”
One detainee whose name was on a document recovered at a former residence of Osama bin Laden’s in Afghanistan argues that it’s “meaningless” because in his Saudi tribe, “there are literally millions that share” his name, including two other detainees.
Questions by tribunal members indicate they’re aware of possible cases of mistaken identity.
“In your village, are there other people with the name of (blacked out)?” one asks a 47-year-old, who answers “yes.” The man is accused of being bodyguard to a person suspected of mounting a March 2003 ambush on a convoy in which a Red Cross member was killed.
One 25-year-old prisoner testifies that not only wasn’t he an enemy combatant, but he also was a bodyguard for Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai. He says his military training came by “order of American officers.”
Many of the men testify they were opposed to the Taliban – though some boasted of fighting with the militia that protected al Qaeda leader bin Laden before the U.S. military attacked them. “It was my obligation, my duty,” says one prisoner.
Some challenge the definition of “enemy combatant,” admitting they were fighting foreign occupation in their regions but were not against the United States or its allies.
One prisoner accused of being a member of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a Pakistani group with alleged links to al Qaeda, points to the disputed territory of Kashmir and says the struggle was backed by Pakistan, an ally of the United States. India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir.
“If you consider this organization a terrorist organization, then you should consider the Pakistan government a terrorist country,” he says.
One of the longest filings came from Feroz Abbasi, a British prisoner freed from Guantanamo this year. U.S. authorities accused Abbasi of training at a camp run by al Qaeda in Afghanistan and meeting bin Laden, but he never was charged.
He denies the U.S. allegations and provides tribunal members with more than 100 pages of a scribbled biography that talks of a painful puberty and suicidal college years outside London.
Abbasi began his testimony by quoting Malcolm X, the slain American black Muslim leader: “I did not come here to condemn America. I want to make that very clear. I came here to tell the truth, and if the truth condemns America, then she stands condemned.”
Later, Abbasi was kicked out of the proceedings for engaging in a heated debate about international law with the tribunal president, who snaps, “I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the words ‘international law’ again.”
The transcripts also include poignant vignettes, such as a tribunal member commiserating with a detainee who says 12 family members, including his children and his brother’s children, were killed by an American bomb that hit their village in remote mountains of Afghanistan.
There also are amusing moments. A man who says he was forced by the Taliban to serve as deputy minister of intelligence says he stopped working when the Americans attacked Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Tribunal member: “So when there was fighting in Kabul, you were not there serving as deputy minister?”
Detainee: “No. When the bombardment started in Kabul, I left my job and went home.”
Tribunal member: “That’s a pretty good indicator that it’s time to punch the clock out.”