Guantanamo: A Right to a Fair Trial

Camp 4, which opened this March, differs substantially from the other detention units. The detainees wear white clothes and have “privileges” because of “good behavior” and “cooperation.” They live in dormitory-style rooms with 6 to 12 beds and detached toilets and showers. They also get lockers for storing personal “comfort” items, such as writing material and books. They are allowed to eat together in the yard. They have recreational facilities like football and volleyball and get more time under the shower. 

All detainees are served three meals each day, can write letters home, and can talk to a Muslim Chaplin. 

One has to go through four heavily fortified iron gates to enter Camp Delta. Once inside the feeling is of being in a vacuum. At first you don’t see the detainees, you hear them. It is the sound of 30 to 40 people chattering away incessantly in Urdu, Arabic, Pashtu, and Dari. Talking to them is not permitted, not even a simple “good afternoon” is allowed. Visitors are warned: one word to the detainees and you are out of Camp Delta. However, there is not much the authorities can do about eye contact. The eyes convey a multitude of emotions—suppressed anger, hate, indignation, shame, helplessness, and futility. This particular group of 15 or so were from Pakistan. I also saw similar groups of Chechens and Saudis. 

There are “about” 660 detainees from 42 countries in Camp Delta. From what I was allowed to see and from what other sources have told me, I can account for 158 Saudi Arabians, 55 Chechens, 82 Pakistanis, 80 Afghans, 1 Turk, and 12 Western captives. 

Apart from a handful of big names, the majority of prisoners were either forcibly conscripted by the Taliban or are young men from the madrasas of Pakistan, sent to Afghanistan in the name of Jihad. As for the Western detainees they were mostly arrested in Pakistan and sent to Cuba via Kandahar.  

Outwardly, the detainees appear to be in good health. However, there have been 32 known suicide attempts between July 2, 2002 and August 22, 2003. Significantly, there were 14 cases of attempted suicide during the first three months of 2003. Given that the inmates seldom come in contact with implements that facilitate suicides, the number is quite high. Captain (Dr.) John Edmondson at the Detention Hospital admitted to me that some of the detainees had been given psychiatric treatment and that tranquilizers and anti- depression drugs were also being administered. 

You could see this sign everywhere: “Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay. Honor bound to defend freedom.” I asked two captains if it was not cynical to talk about freedom when “about” 660 detainees were behind barbed wire. One of them was at a loss to answer, the other said that to defend freedom it was necessary to keep “such elements” behind bars. Call it Army propaganda, blame it on certain U.S. television channels, but they believe that each and every detainee is a terrorist out to harm the U.S. 

It came as a surprise that quite a few young women worked as guards inside Camp Delta. Although all of the guards I spoke to said they had no problems with the detainees, the doctors gave a different story. They talked of “water,” a euphemism for urine, thrown at the guards and of bite wounds.  

What I found astonishing was that the authorities were only concerned with the cooperation of the detainees. If a prisoner had killed a few U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, but was well behaved, he was entitled to better living conditions. A detainee who had not killed anybody, but would not cooperate when taking a daily shower or exercising, would be worse off. 

Brigadier General James E. Payne, the acting commanding officer of “Gitmo,” was full of praise for his young soldiers who sacrificed so much for their country. The reservist general, a real estate broker from Florida, wondered why journalists were only interested in the detainees and not in his young soldiers. Asked what intelligence the prisoners have to offer after almost two years of interrogation, General Payne said that question should be put to his intelligence people. The “intelligence people,” not surprisingly, were not interested in seeing the press. 

The fact is the majority of the detainees were in the wrong place at the wrong time and in the hands of one of the many corrupt warlords or, in the case of Pakistan, bounty-hunting police. Towards the end of 2001, thousands of Taliban soldiers surrendered to the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in north Afghanistan. Many suffocated in the cargo containers used to transport them to the notorious Shebarghan prison. Those lucky to survive had to live in conditions that one EU envoy compared to Auschwitz. It was from there that the first Guantanamo Bay prisoners were picked. One such was Jan Mohammad, a 35-year-old farmer from Helmand in south Afghanistan. He was forcibly conscripted into the Army by the Taliban and sent to Kundus in north Afghanistan to fight the coalition forces. Realizing that they stood no chance against the U.S., the Taliban commanders surrendered. Jan Mohammad was brought to Shebarghan prison. “One day some Americans came with some of Dostum’s people and began sorting us out. They picked me because I am big and strong. They thought I was a Taliban officer. I pleaded with them, I told them I was no Talib, but to no avail,” Jan recalled. They transported him to Kandahar and from there to Cuba. The journey took over 20 hours and their bodies were shackled so that no movement was possible. A hood covered their heads, with a slit open to breathe. 

Life in the wired cages of Camp X-Ray was unbearable. In one of the letters, Jan told his family,” I have now become half an animal. By the time I come home I’ll be a complete animal.” After ten months of solitary confinement he was set free. In his absence, his family had to sell off their land. The only compensation he received was $100 each from President Karzai and then Interior Minister Wardak. About 22 other prisoners taken to Cuba along with Jan are still being held. More than 300 Pakistanis, Afghans, and Arabs are also still languishing in Sheberghan. 

A second person, released along with Jan, was 80-year-old Mohammed Saddiq from Saran, a village in southeast Afghanistan. His crime: his nephew had worked for the Taliban. One January evening the U.S. forces bombarded his house, shot down the gate with rockets, and took Saddiq away. All his belongings were confiscated. It took the authorities ten months to decide that this frail old man posed no danger to the U.S. Today, with his house in rubbles, his belongings gone, Saddiq lives with his relatives and is unable to come to terms with what has happened to him. 

Equally intriguing is the case of two young taxi drivers from Khost in east Afghanistan. On April 10, 2002, Syed Abassin set out in his taxi with three passengers from Khost in the direction of Kabul. Around noon, Abassin was driving through Gardez when a loud detonation was heard around the U.S. garrison. He was stopped by armed Afghans at a checkpoint and taken to the local police station and accused of being a member of Al Qaida. Half an hour later Abassin’s friend Wazir Mohammad, also carrying passengers to Kabul from Khost, reached Gardez. He spotted his friend’s empty taxi at the checkpoint and wanted to know what had transpired. He was asked if he knew Abassin. The moment he said Abassin was his friend, he was also arrested and accused of being with Al Qaida. Taj Mohammad War- dak, then governor, was informed of the arrests. Without bothering to check the facts, Wardak called the U.S. Special Forces who took the two taxi drivers away. Within days they were on a transport plane to Guantanamo Bay. When the father of Abassin and the brother of Wazir tried to plead with the governor, they were beaten. Later, some town elders managed to convince Wardak that the young men were innocent. Wardak promised to do all in his power to have the taxi drivers released. Nothing happened. Abassin’s father wrote to the U.S. Ambassador in Kabul, but received no reply. A reminder was sent, but to no avail. 

After spending almost a year in Guantanamo Bay, Abassin was sent home on March 21, 2003. Abassin’s taxi is gone, untraceable. He has no means of earning his livelihood. In an interview, Abassin accused Wardak of selling him to the U.S. for $5,000. This may or may not be true. But it is widely accepted in Kabul that Wardak, as the governor of Paktia Province and later during a short tenure as the Interior Minister, had misappropriated funds allocated to build schools and roads. 

There is ample evidence that rogue warlords like Bacha Khan Zadran—the face of new Afghanistan at the Petersberg Conference and whose hand Chancellor Schröder so warmly shook—have palmed people off to U.S. forces as terrorists in return for dollars. Other warlords, like Haji Zaman Ghamsharik and Hazrat Ali, are known to have divided up the booty after selling hundreds of Taliban foot soldiers to the U.S. Army after the fall of Tora Bora in early 2002. Hazrat Ali is today the military commander of Jalalabad; Haji Zaman had to leave the country after he was implicated in a plot to kill Defense Minister Fahim. 

Sadly, there seems to be no end in sight. In June a family in Gardez received the dreaded midnight knock on the door. U.S. forces arrested a family of six for alleged links to Gulbuddin Hekmetyar, who has now thrown in his lot with the Taliban. The arrested were 3 sons, their very old parents, and the 14-year-old boy of the eldest son. They were taken to the U.S. Army base Bagram. After 45 days, the old people, one of the sons, and the boy were released. The two other sons are still in U.S. custody. Nobody knows where. The family, so far, absolves the U.S. of any misconduct. They blame their own countrypeople, who for a variety of reasons (money, tribal animosity, business interests etc.), betray fellow Afghans to the U.S.  

Some in the ranks of the U.S. military have identified the problem. Major General Michael Dunlavey, the operational commander Guantanamo Bay until last October, traveled to Afghanistan to complain that too many “Mickey Mouse” detainees were being sent to the already crowded facility in Cuba. He told Bagram dozens of detainees described in classified intelligence reports as farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers, and laborers were just that and were of no intelligence value. To no avail, it appears. The shippings continue because, in words of one of the officers, “No one wants to be the guy who releases the 21st hijacker.”  

Ashwin Raman is a long-time journalist and is currently with German television. He has produced more than 200 documentaries, including Die Gefangenen von Guantanamo Bay ( The Prisoners of Guanatanamo Bay ).