Moazzam Begg: Five Years of Tears

Moazzam Begg is a former Guantanamo detainee and spokesman for Cageprisoners

I was still a free man on January 11, 2002, when, like the rest of the world, I saw images of the first set of captives in orange jump suits. The men looked a bit like extraterrestrials in a low budget ‘50’s sci-fi movie, with face masks, blacked-out goggles, ear muffs and all. Only this movie was very painfully real. Even people in less developed countries – where torture and degradation are practiced – were evidently disturbed by the pictures. There was certainly something subhuman, alien, in how they were made to appear. The US President secured a coalition of the willing in his ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, but many of his allies too were disquieted by the images of the men in Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

I suppose like most people, I was very surprised to learn that the US was then holding ‘enemy combatants’ on the soil of another arch enemy. I remember too Donald Rumsfeld saying that the men – alleged members of Al-Qaidah and the Taliban – were ‘killers and terrorists’ who never afforded their victims the same rights the US military was bestowing upon them. Amongst other things, he said that the detainees were well cared for, sheltered and ‘warm’. Not surprising, I remember thinking, since Cuba does lie between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator. They were obviously stifling from the heat and gear they wear made to wear – as I was to discover myself within weeks – and Rumsfeld knew it.

At the time of my own abduction by American and Pakistani intelligence thugs it seemed as if the US government not only seized people from around the world with complete impunity, but could hold them indefinitely, without charge or trial, in inhumane, degrading and torturous conditions. But I always hoped against hope that reason would prevail in the end. It was the United States of America, not a despotic third world regime. Five years later, the despots can cite their precedent.

There are fathers held in Guantánamo who’ve never seen their children. Two of whose children are British and who I’ve met several times. It is with a corrosive sense of guilt I tell them that their fathers will be home soon, because I really don’t know when. At least I was fortunate enough to finally see my three-year old son when I was released from Guantánamo two years ago.

Three of the Guantánamo men were finally released to their loved ones last year - in coffins. They were said to have either committed suicide out of despair, or as a planned act. Their families and former detainees believe otherwise. Last year controversy raged after embarrassing statements issued by US officials and the Camp Commander calling the deaths ‘PR stunts’ and acts of ‘asymmetric warfare’. Realising the public relations disaster created by his own subordinates, President Bush distanced himself by momentarily appeasing the world’s press with the claim, ‘I’d like to see the camp closed’. In reality, two permanent multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art structures – Camp Five and Camp Six –were beginning completion and use as he spoke. As if on cue, it was announced that 14 ‘high ranking Al-Qaidah operatives’ hitherto held in secret ‘ghost’ sites around the world – the existence of which was previously denied by the US government – had arrived in Guantánamo where they would be facing justice for their crimes. The raison d'être for Guantánamo was renewed directly in the face of growing and powerful internal and international calls for its closure.

Meanwhile, captives were released sporadically around the world after years of incarceration without charge, explanation or apology. Some of them came home to find relatives had passed away. My own paternal uncle and aunt died when I was in Guantanamo. Of the hundreds of men remaining, several have learned about the deaths of mothers and fathers who clung, in vain, to the hope of seeing their sons once more. Despite constant attempts the prisoners are not allowed visits, telephone calls or any other meaningful communication with the outside world. Letters arrive both to and from Guantánamo – if at all – heavily and ludicrously censored, often months and sometimes years after they were written.

Most people by now are asking the question: who exactly has been found guilty of involvement in the plot that justified the existence of the place to begin with? The reply: no one - so far. When 14 ‘high-level’ al-Qaidah operatives were brought to Guantánamo, all talk of wanting to ‘see it closed’ had ceased. Even though Bush’s Military Commissions process to try detainees for war crimes (something I was designated for myself in 2003) – suggesting prisoners like Usama bin Ladin’s former driver or cook are on a par with Hermann Goering and Rudolph Hess (perhaps the warped reasoning behind the terms, ‘Islamonazis’, or ‘Islamofascists’) – the US Supreme Court ruled that Bush had acted illegally in ordering such trials. And then, by bizarre concurrence, the Military Commissions Act was passed, which removed the illusory right of habeas corpus granted to detainees in 2004. It’s ironic that an act designed to prosecute the handful of people that it has taken years to charge – including the one man who is said to have planned the September 11 attacks - removes the right of the overwhelming majority to challenge their incarceration.

For the record: the overwhelming majority were not captured on the battlefield – or anywhere near one. The overwhelming majority were not engaged in acts of terrorism. The overwhelming majority are not and never will face charges in Guantánamo. The ones that do will, in the words of the former senior Law Lord, Steyn, face ‘a mockery of justice that derives from the jumps of the kangaroo’.

Source: Cageprisoners