aseerun

Fayiz Mohamad Al Kandari: March 21, 2013 (For Those in the World Who Pray for Us)

aseerun — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 09:29:59 +0000

Dear Mr. Warner,

I made this lantern with my brothers – it’s made with bits of paper and cardboard. We used a water bottle sanded on the floor as glass. We painted it with bits of paint and fruit juice. It’s held together by pressure only.

We made this lantern for those in the world who remember and pray for us during this time of suffering. Let it’s light fill you. Use it to bring peace to your heart.

Thank You.

Fayiz Mohamad Al Kandry
ISN: 552

Guantanamo Bay Detainees: May 30, 2013 (An Open Letter to My Military Doctor: Allow Independent Medical Access)

aseerun — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:53:43 +0000

Dear Doctor,

I do not wish to die, but I am prepared to run the risk that I may end up doing so, because I am protesting the fact that I have been locked up for more than a decade, without a trial, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment and denied access to justice. I have no other way to get my message across. You know that the authorities have taken everything from me.

For this reason, I am respectfully requesting that independent medical professionals be allowed into Guantanamo to treat me, and that they be given full access to my medical records, in order to determine the best treatment for me.

You claim to be acting according to your duties as a physician to save my life. This is against my expressed wish. As you should know, I am competent to make my own decisions about medical treatment. When I try to refuse the treatments you offer; you force them upon me, sometimes violently. For those reasons, you are in violation of the ethics of your profession, as the American Medical Association (1) and World Medical Association (2) have made clear.

My decision to go on hunger strike and to endure semi-starvation for over 100 days was not entered into lightly. I am doing it because it is literally the only method I have to make the outside world pay attention. Your response to my carefully considered decision cannot logically lead to the conclusion that your only goal is to save my life–your actions over recent months do not support such an inference.

For those of us being force-fed against our will, the process of having a tube repeatedly forced up our noses and down our throats in order to keep us in a state of semi-starvation is extremely painful and the conditions under which it is done are abusive. If you truly had my best medical interests at heart, you could have talked to me like a human being about my choices, instead of treating me in a way that feels like I am being punished for something.

You must know that your professional overreaction to my participation in the hunger strike has been condemned by no lesser an authority than the United Nations; the Special Rapporteur on Health has stated unequivocally that “health care personnel may not apply undue pressure of any sort on individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike, nor is it acceptable to use threats of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have voluntarily decided to go on a hunger strike.(3) “

In any regard, I cannot trust your advice, because you are responsible to your superior military officers who require you to treat me by means unacceptable to me, and you put your duty to them above your duty to me as a doctor. Your dual loyalties make trusting you impossible.

For these reasons, our present doctor-patient relationship cannot contribute to resolving the threats to my health that this hunger strike is engendering. You may be able to keep me alive for a long time in a permanently debilitated state. But with so many of us on hunger strike, you are attempting a treatment experiment on an unprecedented scale. And you cannot be certain that human error will not creep in and result in one or more of us dying.

Your superiors, up to and including President Obama, their Commander-in-Chief, recognise that my death or that of another hunger striker here would have serious undesirable consequences. You have been ordered to guarantee – with absolute certainty – my survival, but it is beyond your (or perhaps any doctor’s) ability to do that.

I have some sympathy for your impossible position. Whether you continue in the military or return to civilian practice, you will have to live with what you have done and not done here at Guantanamo for the rest of your life. Going forward, you can make a difference. You can choose to stop actively contributing to the abusive conditions I am currently enduring.

I am asking you only to raise with your superiors my urgent request that I be allowed access to examination by and independent medical advice from a doctor or doctors chosen by my lawyers, in confidence, and that those doctors to be supplied with my full medical notes in advance of their visit. This is the least you can do to uphold the minimum of your oath to “do no harm.”

Yours sincerely,

The Detainees on Hunger Strike at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

(Signed by detainee) _______/s/_______

Younous Chekkouri, ISN 197
Nabil Hadjarab, ISN 238
Shaker Aamer, ISN 239
Ahmed Belbacha, ISN 290
Abu Wa’el Dhiab, ISN 722
Samir Mukbel, ISN 043
Adel al-Hakeemy, ISN 168
Sanad al-Kazimi, ISN 1453
Mohammed Hidar, ISN 498

(Signed by lawyers on behalf of their clients) _________/s/__________

Joseph K. Hetrick Counsel for:
Abdul Haq Wasiq, ISN 004
Mohammad Nabi Omari, ISN 832

Michael Rapkin Scott Rapkin Steve Truitt Law Offices of Michael Rapkin Counsel for:
Mohammed Ghanem, ISN 044

Thomas Anthony Durkin Janis D. Roberts Durkin & Roberts Counsel for:
Abdullatif Nasser, ISN 244

(Signed by concerned Guantanamo Defense Counsel) _________/s/__________

Charles H. Carpenter
Carpenter Law Firm plc

David H. Remes
Appeal for Justice

Carlos Warner
Assistant Federal Defender Northern District of Ohio

Buz Eisenberg,
Weinberg & Garber Jerry Cohen, Burns and Levinson LLP

Martha Rayner
Fordham University School of Law Counsel for:
Sanad al-Kazimi, ISN 1453

Peter B. Ellis & Kiran Ghia Foley Hoag LLP, Boston Counsel for:
Mohammed Hidar, ISN 498

1 http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/16086.htm; https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/694196-hungerstrikers-letter-04-25-13.html
2 http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/h31/index.html
3 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13279&LangID=E

Mohamedou Ould Slahi: 2006 (Guantanamo Unclassified: ‘Confessions are Like the Beads of a Necklace’)

aseerun — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:42:44 +0000

Slahi continued to be interrogated in complete isolation through September and October. On Oct. 17, 2003, a GTMO interrogator emailed a military psychologist to report, “Slahi told me he is “hearing voices” now. … He is worried as he knows this is not normal. … Is this something that happens to people who have little external stimulus such as daylight, human interaction, etc???? Seems a little creepy.” The psychologist wrote back that “sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know. … In the dark you create things out of what little you have.”

To be honest, I can report very little about the couple of weeks that were to come because I was not in the right state of mind. I had been lying on my bed all the time, I was not able to realize my surroundings. I tried to find out the Kibla, the direction of Mecca, but there was no clue. Back in ████████ the Kibla was indicated with an arrow in every cell. Yes, the U.S. is demonstratively showing the rest of the world how religious freedom ought to be maintained. Even the call to prayer was to be heard five times a day in ████████, which I found positive. The U.S. always repeated that the war is not against the Islamic religion, which is very prudent because technically it is impossible to fight against a religion as big as Islam; strategically it would be a lost war.

In the secret camps, the war against the Islamic religion was more than obvious. There was not only no sign to Mecca, but ritual prayers were also forbidden. Reciting the Quran was forbidden. Quran possession was forbidden. Fasting was forbidden. Practically any Islamic related ritual is strictly forbidden. I am here not talking about hearsay, I am talking about something I experienced myself. I don’t believe that the average American is paying taxes to wage war against Islam; however, I do believe that there are people in the government who have a big problem with the Islamic religion.

They tried so hard to make me insane. For the first weeks I had no shower, no laundry, no brushing. I almost developed bugs. I hated my smell. No sleep was allowed; in order to enforce this, I was given 740-milliliter water bottles in intervals of one to two hours, depending on the mood of the guards, for 24 hours. The consequences were devastating. I couldn’t close my eyes for 10 minutes because I was sitting most of the time in the bathroom. When I later asked one of the guards, after the tension [eased], “Why this water diet? Why don’t you just make me stay awake by standing up like in ████████?”

“Psychologically it is devastating to make somebody stay awake on his own, without ordering him,” said ████████. “Believe me, you haven’t seen anything. We have put detainees naked under the shower for days, eating, pissing, and shitting in the shower!”

I started to hallucinate and hear voices as clear as crystal. I heard my family in a casual familial conversation, in which I couldn’t take part. I heard Quran readings with a heavenly voice. I heard music from my country. Later on the guards used these hallucinations and were talking with funny voices through the plumbing, encouraging me to hurt the guard and plot an escape. But I wasn’t misled by them, even though I played along.

“We heard somebody, maybe a genie,” they used to say.

“Yeah, but I ain’t listening to him,” I responded. I realized I was at the edge of losing my mind. I started to talk to myself. Although I tried as hard as I could to convince myself that I am not in Mauritania, nor am I near my family, so I could not possibly hear them speaking, I kept hearing voices constantly, day and night. Medical psychological assistance was out of the question, or really any medical assistance besides the asshole I didn’t want to see anyway. I couldn’t find a way on my own; at that moment, I didn’t know if it was day or night, but I assumed it to be night because the toilet drain was rather dark.

I gathered my strength, guessed the Kibla, the direction of Mecca, kneeled, and started to pray to God, “Please guide me. I know not what to do. I am surrounded with merciless wolves, who fear not thee.” When I was praying I burst into tears, though I suppressed my voice lest the guards hear me. You know there are always serious prayers and lazy prayers. My experience taught that [the Lord] always responds to your serious prayers.

“Sir,” I said, when I finished my prayer. One of the guards showed up after putting on his Halloween mask.

“What?” asked the guard with a dry, cold emotion.

“I want to see ████████.

Confessions are like the beads of a necklace, if the first bead falls, the rest follow.

They dedicated the whole time until around 10 November 2003 for questioning me about Canada and Sept. 11; they didn’t ask me a single question about Germany, where I really had the center of gravity of my life.

Whenever they asked me about somebody in Canada I had some incriminating information about him, even if I didn’t know him. Whenever I thought about the words, “I don’t know …” I got nauseous because I remembered the words of ████████: “All you have to say, ‘I don’t know, I don’t remember, we’ll fuck you,’ ” or ████████: “We don’t want to hear your denials anymore!” So I erased the words out of my dictionary.

“We’d like you to write your answers on paper, it is too much work to keep up with your talk, and you might forget things when you talk to us,” said ████████.

“Of course!” I responded. I was really happy with the idea because I’d rather talk to a paper than talk to him. At least the paper wouldn’t shout in my face or threaten me. After that, ████████ drowned me in a pile of papers, which I duly filled with writings. It was good to let out my frustration and my depression. “████████ reads your writing with a lot of interest,” said ████████.

“We’re gonna give you an assignment about ████████. He is detained in Florida and they cannot make him talk. He keeps denying everything. You better provide us a smoking gun against him,” said ████████.

I was so sad. How rude was the guy to ask me to provide a smoking gun about somebody I hardly know?

“Oh, yes, I will,” I said. He handed me a bunch of papers and I went back in my cell. Oh, my God, I’ve been so unjust to myself and my brothers. “Nothing’s gonna happen to us … they’ll go to hell … nothing’s gonna happen to us …” I kept praying in my heart, and repeating my prayers. I took the pen and paper and wrote all kind of incriminating lies about a poor person who was seeking refuge in Canada and trying to make some money so he can start a family. Moreover, he’s handicapped. I felt so bad, and kept praying silently, “Nothing’s gonna happen to you, dear brother …” and blowing on the papers I finished. Of course it was out of the question to tell them what I know about him truthfully because ████████ already gave me the guidelines. “████████ is awaiting your testimony against ████████ with extreme interest!”

I gave the assignment to ████████, and after the evaluation I saw ████████ smile for the first time. “Your writing about Ahmed was very interesting, but we want you to provide more detailed information,” said he. What information did the idiot want from me? I don’t even remember what I’ve just written.

“Yes, no problem,” I said. I was very happy that God answered my prayers for ████████ when I learned in 2005 that he was unconditionally released from custody and sent back to his country.

“He’s facing the death penalty,” ████████ used to tell me. And I was really in no better situation. “Since I am cooperating, what are you going to do with me?” I asked ████████. “It depends, if you provide us a great deal of information we didn’t know, it’s going to be weighed against your sentence. For instance, the death penalty would be reduced to life, and life to 30 years,” he responded. Lord have mercy on me. What a harsh justice!

“Oh, that’s great,” I replied.

I felt bad for everybody I hurt with my false testimonies. My only solaces were, one, I didn’t hurt anyone as much as I did myself; two, I had no choice; three, I was confident that injustice will be defeated, it’s only a matter of time; four, I would not blame anybody for lying about me when he gets tortured. Ahmed was just an example. I have been writing more than thousands of pages about my friends with false information. I had to wear the suit U.S. Intel tailored for me, and that is exactly what I did.

To be continued in Part 7

—

The above is an excerpt from Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s handwritten 466-page memoir, composed during his detention at Guantánamo and declassified by the U.S. government. These excerpts were chosen by Larry Siems and edited by Slate, originally published April 2013. Since Slahi remains in custody and cannot freely communicate, we have limited our editorial changes to correcting grammar and clarifying idiomatic phrasing in order to preserve his unique voice. In the few instances where his meaning required additional context, we have inserted text marked off in brackets.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi: 2006 (Guantanamo Unclassified: ‘That is not a doctor, that is a human butcher!’)

aseerun — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:41:11 +0000

When I heard Egypt, and a new rendition, my heart was pounding. I hated the endless world tour I was forcibly taking. I thought that rendition to Egypt on the spot was possible, because I knew how irritated and desperate the Americans were when it came to my case.

After all kinds of threats and degrading statements, I missed a lot of the trash talk between the Arabs and their American accomplices. At one point, I drowned in my thoughts. I felt ashamed that my people were being used for this horrible job by a government that claims to be the leader of the democratic free world, a government that preaches against dictatorship and “fights” for human rights and sends its children to die for that purpose. What a joke this government makes of its own people! What would the dead-average American think if he or she saw what his or her government is doing with someone who has done no crimes against anybody?

If people in the Arab world knew what is happening in this place, the hatred against the U.S. would be heavily watered, and the accusation that the U.S. helps and works together with dictators in our countries would be cemented. I had a feeling, or rather a hope, that these people would not go unpunished for their crimes. The situation didn’t make me hate either the Arabs or the Americans; I just felt bad for the Arabs.

After about 40 minutes, I couldn’t really tell, ████████ instructed the Arabic team to take over. The two guys grabbed me roughly and since I couldn’t walk on my own, they dragged me on the tips of my toes to the boat. I must have been very near to the water because the trip to the boat was short. I don’t know, but either they put me in another boat or in a different seat. The seat was both hard and straight.

“Move!”

“I can’t move!”

“Move, fucker!” They gave this order and knew that I was too hurt to be able to move. After all I was bleeding from my mouth, my ankles, my wrists, and maybe my nose, I could not tell for sure. But the team wanted to maintain the factor of fear and terror.

“Sit!” said the Egyptian guy, who did most of the talking, while both were pulling me down until I hit the metal. The Egyptian sat on my right side, and the Jordanian on my left. “What’s your fucking name?” asked the Egyptian. “M-O-OH-H-M-M-EE-D-D-O-O-O-O-U!” I answered. Technically, I couldn’t speak because of my swollen lips and hurting mouth. You could tell I was completely scared. Usually I wouldn’t talk when somebody started to hurt me. This is a milestone in my interrogation history. In Jordan, when the interrogator smashed my face, I refused to talk, ignoring all his threats. You can tell I was hurt like never before, that it is not me anymore, and I will never be the same as before. A thick line was drawn between my past and my future with the first hit ████████ did to me.

“He is like a kid,” said the Egyptian, accurately addressing his Jordanian colleague. I felt warm between them, though not for long, because with the cooperation of the American, a long trip of torture was being prepared.

They put on a kind of thick jacket, which fastened me to the chair. It was a good feeling—however there was a destroying drawback to it. My chest was so tightened that I couldn’t breathe properly. Plus, the air circulation was worse than the first trip. I didn’t know what exactly but something was definitely going wrong. “I c…a…n…t br…e…a…the!”

“Suck the air,” said the Egyptian wryly. I was literally suffocating inside the bag around my head.

The order went as follows: They stuffed the air between my clothes and me with ice cubes from my neck to my ankles, and whenever the ice melted they put in new hard ice cubes. Moreover, every once in a while, one of the guards smashed me, most of the time in the face. The ice served both for pain and for wiping out the bruises I had from that afternoon. Everything seemed to be perfectly prepared. Historically, dictators during medieval and pre-medieval times used this method to let the victim die slowly. The other method of hitting the victim while blindfolded in inconsistent intervals of time was used by Nazis during WWII. There is nothing more terrorizing than making somebody expect a smash every single heartbeat.

“I am from Hasi Matruh, where are you from?” said the Egyptian, addressing his Jordanian colleague. He was speaking as if nothing was happening. You could tell he was used to torturing people.

“I am from the south,” answered the Jordanian.

What would it be like if I landed in Egypt after about 25 hours of torture? What would the interrogation look like? ████████, a ████████, described to me his unlucky trip from Pakistan to Egypt. Everything I was now experiencing—ice cubes and smashing—was consistent with ████████’s story. So I expected electric shocks in the pool. How much power can my body, especially my heart, handle? I know something about electricity and its devastating, irreversible damage. I saw ████████ collapsing in the block a couple of times every week with blood gushing out of his nose until it soaked his clothes. ████████ was a martial arts trainer and athletically built.

But what if they don’t believe me? No, they would believe me, because they understand the recipe of terrorism more than the Americans and have more experience. Americans tend to widen the circle of involvement to catch the most possible number of Muslims. They always speak about the big conspiracy against the U.S. I personally had been asked who practiced the basics of the religion and sympathized with Islamic movements; no matter how moderate the movement, I had been asked to prove every detail about it. That is very amazing in a country such as the U.S., where Christian terrorist organizations such as Nazis and white supremacists have the freedom to express themselves and recruit people openly and nobody can bother them, while as a Muslim if you sympathize with the political views of an Islamic organization you’re in big trouble. Even attending the same mosque as a suspect brings big trouble. I mean this fact is clear for everybody who understands the ABC’s of American policy toward the so-called Islamic terrorism.

In Arabic counties, the approach is similar to the U.S. approach to Christian organizations. As long as you are not involved in criminal acts, nobody gives you trouble. Sympathizing and even associating with Islamic organizations is not considered a crime. I know those facts firsthand because I have been dealing with both approaches for a relatively long time.

The Arab/American party was over, and the Arabs turned me over once more to the same U.S. team. They dragged me out of the boat and threw me, I would say, in the same truck as the one that afternoon. Obviously we were riding on a dirt road. “Do not move!” said ████████ but I didn’t recognize any words anymore. I don’t think anybody beat me, but I was not conscious.

When the truck stopped, ████████ and his strong associate towed me from the truck and dragged me over some steps. The cool air of the room hit me, we passed the room atmosphere and boom, they threw me face down on the metal floor of my new home. “Do not move, I told you not to fuck with me, motherfucker!” said ████████, his voice trailing off. Obviously he was tired, and left right away with a promise of more actions, and so did the Arab team.

A short time after my arrival, I felt somebody taking [the hood] off my head. When the blindfold was taken off I saw a ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████. I figured he was a doctor, but why the heck is he hiding behind a mask, and why is he U.S. Army, when the Navy is taking medical care of detainees?

“If you fucking move, I’m gonna hurt you!”

I was wondering how could I possibly move, and what possible damage could I do. I was in chains, and every inch of my body was hurting. That is not a doctor, that is a human butcher! When the young man checked on me, he realized he needed more stuff. He left and soon came back with some medical stuff. I glimpsed his watch; it was about 1:30 a.m., which meant about eight hours since I was kidnapped from ████████ camp.

The doctor started to wash the blood off my face with a soaked bandage. After that, he put me on a mattress—the only item in the stark cell—with the help of the guards. “Do not move,” said the guard, who was standing over me. The doctor wrapped many elastic belts around my chest and ribs area. After that, they made me sit.

“If you try to bite me, I’m gonna fuckin’ hurt you!” said the doctor.

I didn’t respond; they were moving me around like an object. Later they took off the chains, and some time later one of the guards threw a thin, small, and worn-out blanket on me through the bin hole, and that was everything I would have in the room. No soap, no toothbrush, no iso-mat, no Quran, nothing.

I tried to sleep, but I was kidding myself, my body was conspiring against me. It took some time until the medication started to work, then I trailed off, and only woke up when one of the guards hit my cell violently with his boot. “Get up, piece of shit!” The doctor once more gave me a bunch of medication and checked on my ribs.

“Done with the motherfucker,” said he, when he showed me his back heading toward the door. I was so shocked seeing a doctor acting like that, because I knew that at least 50 percent of medical treatment is psychological. I was like, “This is an evil place, since my only solace is this bastard doctor.”

To be continued in Part 6

—

Abu Taubah’s Imprisoned Voice: What Have I Taught You? [Letters Needed before July]

aseerun — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:01:56 +0000

UPDATE: Abu Taubah’s hearing is scheduled for July 2013

If you have already sent a letter, please resend with signature and testimonial clause (see below). If you have not sent a letter… do it now!

As the United States government aggressively seeks to redefine the constitution and its relation to Islam, many prominent Muslim theologians and students have fallen victim to increasingly hostile prosecution against religious beliefs. Abu Taubah’s recent arrest and other such test cases challenging religious and political freedoms, portend a bleak future for all Muslims in the West.
In Abu Taubah’s own words:

(Transcript found here)

Write your testimony today!

Read what Abu Taubah is asking of you
Explain how Abu Taubah’s teachings reflect a striving towards the authentic practice of Islam
If you are able to, cite specific classes or seminars in which you have grasped the meaning of Abu Taubah’s message and teachings
Define key vocabulary such as “sunnah” and “salaf” and concepts such as “seeking knowledge”, “learning Qur’an”, or “performing Hajj” in light of what Abu Taubah himself has taught
Share how Abu Tuabah’s educational endeavours have had a positive impact on your life and spirituality
Affirm the non-violent, practical, holistic, and positive nature of the “Each One Teach One” approach
Refrain from unnecessarily criticizing the blatantly prejudicial application of law
Even if you have never attended a class by Abu Taubah, but have had the opportunity of hearing a lecture online, or viewing a recorded khutbah, elucidate to the best of your ability on the Islamic concepts you have garnered from his own words
If you are unfamiliar with Abu Taubah, read a short biography of him or watch this inspiring interview.
Make sure letters have at the end with this testimonial clause:
I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Please be sure to sign the letter (physically or upload a digital signature), and if you can, get it notarised.
Each letter should be written this way and is to be treated as though the writer is an ACTUAL witness in a federal court of law. Any other letter, the prosecution can call hearsay and dump the letter.

Sample Letter:

To the Honorable Judge Pressnel,

This letter is in support of Marcus Robertson, his character, his principles and teachings. I support them not only because I find the to be true and correct, but because I recognize in Mr. Robertson’s principles and teachings that which is of general benefit to not only Muslims but the United States as well as his teachings and views have been consistent with encouraging and showing Muslim how to successfully integrate into the countries in which they live while serving both the Muslim and greater community at large and better the society for all.

Marcus Robertson is well-known globally for being an Islamic educator whose emphasis is upon teaching the Arabic Language and its sciences as well as the fundamental principles of Islam and its tenets. He is known and open with his views, all of which are based upon universally excepted texts like the Qur’an and the works of Bukhari and other early Islamic writers and which are considered to represent moderate and authentic Islamic teachings.

His character and that of his teachings and principles are as clear as any and indistinguishable from those that all Islamic teachers should hold. Marcus Robertson has a penchant among fellow teachers and students of knowledge for being an inspirational speaker and a moderate voice for Islamic educators. His military service and family history are well-known, as well as his deeply rooted concern and care for Muslim communities in the West and helping to provide a program with the goal of providing Muslims living in the West true Islamic educational instruction in a practical and easily accessible manner for a primarily English-speaking audience. By providing both on-location, traditional face to face, as well as virtual classrooms, he sought to make the program a global rather than local phenomenon that would benefit society at whole and the Muslims.

The curriculum he developed also aimed to foster an outlook and world vision wherein the best of both the Islamic and Western culture could be applied in a constructive manner, synthesizing a spiritual and healthy lifestyle while also enabling the students to realise the feasibility of coexisting alongside those of different faiths and ideologies without a sacrifice of Islamic identity or ideals.

I attest that the teachings of Marcus Robertson reflect those of mainstream Islam over the centuries. His focus on the Arabic language, traditional methods of learning such as memorization, sitting with scholars and teachers, and the texts that he focuses on are all tried and true, well-known and approved of methods and texts of Islamic pedagogy. His principles are entirely in line with those befitting an upstanding Muslim and citizen of the world, and in fact they go above and beyond what is required towards a level of piety and sacrifice known only among the elite religious adherents in Islam.

Please do your best to see through any mischaracterizations and misunderstandings and do what is in your power to clear Mr. Robertson of any wrongdoing as related to his work as an Islamic teacher and community advocate.

Sincerely
[Your Name]

Note: This text makes for a good frame or example upon which your letter can be based. However it is highly recommended that you personalise your letter as much as possible and that you put in personal experiences with the F.I.K.S and or Abu Taubah, no matter how small it may be. Did you watch his Arabic videos, his Khutbahs, read his blog entries, attend a course or class via the internet or AlKauthar or AlMaghrib Institutes, did you see his interviews on the Deen Show: any and everything that shows that Abu Taubah had a personal and direct positive effect on your life and our outlook. Feel free to copy and use all of this letter if you need to, but please put in your own experiences.

If you cannot find the ability or time to do so though, then at least send something, even if you just copy and paste this or another letter and sign your own name. You can find other letters here Insha’Allah.

Another Sample letter can be found here, courtesy of a fellow teacher.

Please remember that all supportive testimonials must be received BEFORE ~~January 5, 2012~~, July 2013 ,as this is the court date for Abu Taubah’s character hearing. Letters should be sent to his attorney at ~~don_west@fd.org~~ (cc: admin@myfiks.org) or mailed to:

~~Donald R. West (Esq.)~~
Seaside Plaza – Suite 300
201 South Orange Avenue
~~Orlando, Florida 32801~~
~~USA~~

Zulaika Elhadi
8381 Fort Thomas Way
Orlando Fl. 32822
USA

(copy requested for: The FIKS, P.O. Box 72-1874, Orlando, Florida 32872, USA)

UPDATE: The following is from the My F.I.K.S facebook Group from one of the wives of Abu Taubah:

As Salaamu alaykum, Please let me clarify the situation with the court case and the results of 1/5/12. The FBI used the gun involved in the case in order to obtain a search warrant of the Ustadh’s homes.

Once in, they were able to arrest the Ustadh on a gun charge. Once he was arrested they had to (by U.S. law) officially charge him with possession of a weapon by a felon. However, the gun has not been the main issue with this case, but the terrorism charges have.

The time limit on being held without a trial for the gun charge started to run out so they officially charged him. However, this gives them ample time to trump up charges on a terrorist case. on 1/5/12 the Ustadh plead guilty to the gun charge.

The letters you all are writing will go towards two things insha Allah:

1. The sentencing phase for the gun in either March or May, as he is facing up to 10 years(we need letters describing the non violent, and good nature of the Ustadh);

2. The pending terrorism charge (these letters would be used to describe the reality of the lessons and dawah Abu Taubah has given us.).

Thank you all for your patience and constant du’a and support.

Barakallahu feekum,
UmmTaubah

Attend the Hearing!

~~For those of you who are in Florida or surrounding areas, please make your presence and support known by attending the court hearing, tentatively set for:~~

~~January 5, 2012 at 1:00 pm~~
~~U.S. Court, Building 401, Suite 1200~~
~~On the corner of Division Street and West Central Boulevard~~
~~Orlando, Florida, 32801~~

There is also an important status hearing coming June 10, 2013 and the family is in need of a significant amount of money to retain a lawyer. Please contribute to the Abu Taubah Family Support and Legal Fund online (enter any amount for Khutbah price):

or by sending checks/money orders payable to:

The Fiks
12040 Fambridge Road
Orlando, FL 328237
USA

Or electronic bank transfers to:

Bank: Wells Fargo Bank NA
420 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94104
Account Name: The FIKS
SWIFT : WFBIUS6S
ABA: 121000248
ACCT: 2120911090

Or Western Union:

Makeen Abdus-Salaam
Orlando, Florida
USA

Please send letters or cards of support to assure Abu Taubah that he and his family are not forgotten in your duas:

John Polk Correctional Facility
Attn: Marcus Robertson 201100011051
211 Bush Boulevard
Sanford, FL 32773
USA

Zachary Adam Chesser: June 2, 2013 (For our Starving Brothers – A Message from Gitmo North)

aseerun — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 17:18:53 +0000

As I write this, I am sitting at a desk in a facility known as Guantanamo North, and my words in support of my brothers in Guantanamo Bay are on behalf other prisoners in this facility, who are unjustly imprisoned by a system which long ago rejected any shred of dignity, honor and justice in order to kowtow to reactionary politics and irrational terror. As one reads this, one should not lose sight of the fact that there is little difference between those being held in Guantanamo North in the mainland of the United States, having been prosecuted for various “crimes,” and those being held in Guantanamo Bay on mere suspicions. One group has simply been bussed through a mere illusion of judicial process, while the others are being held under open and shameless tyranny.

Our brothers in Guantanamo Bay are suffering one of the gravest and most obvious injustices since the turn of the century. Many of them, having already been cleared for release, are being held for purely political reasons. Congress took advantage of their situation by blocking their transfers when America was gripped by a sudden wave of Islamophobia, in 2011. Then, in order to play politics and shift the blame squarely on Congress, President Obama refused to utilize an existing legal mechanism to effect their release.

Children have now become adults with little memory of their fathers. Mothers have gone to their graves without a final kiss goodbye from their sons. Yet, politicians and demagogues have bolted the doors to their freedom, all to promote some political charade.

Thus, they have decided to go on a hunger strike until their demands are met and the injustice which burdens them is lifted from their shoulders. All they are asking is that they not be falsely imprisoned, and that if they must be imprisoned upon lies, then their conditions should at the very minimum afford them an ounce of dignity.

We are imprisoned under harsh circumstances ourselves. We are those with the greatest excuse to turn a blind eye on the suffering of our brothers, but we cannot idly watch events go by in the face of such tyranny. Perhaps in this frozen silence of apathy and cowardice, our meek voices will be heard, as there is little din to drown them out.

We hope that the sacrifice of these brothers should shame the Muslim community to stand up to this injustice. We hope that the general American people will be inspired to demand a higher moral standard from their government. We hope that politicians might place rhetoric aside in pursuit of justice.

In these troubled times, the demagogues are many and the chivalry of the public has died. The tyranny of the elite runs wild in the face of the complacency of the masses. The men and women of the world have lost the courage and commitment to champion the causes of justice and dignity.

Therefore, a small group of individuals in a remote dungeon have shouldered the burden of courage and have risen to the occasion. They have decided to starve until their demands are met, having been abandoned by the world. What they lack in resources shall, by Allah’s Will, be overcome by the tenacity of their resolve.

We encourage all who read this, every soul with any fervor for truth, justice or his fellow man, to stand in solidarity with the oppressed spirits in Guantanamo Bay. We ask the public to stand against this injustice. We challenge the Muslims in America to put aside their fear of being labeled as “un-American,” and to have the courage to stand up for their brethren when their faith demands it.

Is it too much to ask of the world that they raise their voices for a moment? That they take a few minutes to write a letter to the politicians holding these men hostage? Is that a heavy price for the freedom of the unjustly enslaved? Is that such a great burden that it is not worth uniting a father with his children? a husband with his wife? a son with his mother?

The tyranny in Guantanamo Bay is a shame upon every being which calls itself a human. The Draconian subjugation of the innocent is only rivaled by the world’s apathetic silence in this regard. It has been said that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Yet, in light of the duration and acuteness of this undeniable oppression, one is to ask if the good men have all passed.

Zachary Adam Chesser #76715-083
USP Marion
U.S. Penitentiary
PO Box 1000
Marion, IL 62959
USA

Mohamedou Ould Slahi: 2006 (Guantanamo Unclassified: Caribbean Cruise Torture)

aseerun — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 14:13:17 +0000

In July 2003, as Slahi’s “special interrogation” continued, Guantánamo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller added another brutal ruse to Slahi’s interrogation plan. Following days of intensive questioning, Slahi was to be forcibly removed from his cell by a team of military police in riot gear, escorted past menacing dogs, and loaded onto a helicopter, where he would be flown out over the ocean and threatened with death or rendition to a Middle Eastern country—a threat to be made all the more real by the presence of Egyptian and Jordanian interrogators on the flight. The general’s plan was subsequently revised because, as his intelligence chief later told Justice Department investigators, “Miller had decided that [the helicopter] was too difficult logistically to pull off, and that too many people on the base would have to know about it to get it done.” Instead, on Aug. 24, 2003, in accordance with the plan that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ultimately signed, Slahi was abducted from his cell and taken on a three-hour boat trip into the Caribbean, where he was beaten and threatened by U.S. military personnel and two Arab interrogators.

I barely finished my meal, when all of a sudden ████████ and I heard a commotion, guards cursing loudly, “I told you, motherfucker …,” people banging the floor violently with heavy boots, dog barking, doors closed loudly. I froze in my seat. ████████ went speechless. We were staring at each other, not knowing what was going on. My heart was pounding because I knew a detainee was going to be hurt. Yes, and the detainee was me.

Suddenly a commando team of three soldiers and a German shepherd broke into our interrogation room. ████████ punched me violently, which made me fall face down on the floor, and the second guy kept punching me everywhere, mainly on my face and my ribs. Both were masked from head to toe.

“Motherfucker, I told you, you’re gone!” said ████████. His partner kept punching me without saying a word; he didn’t want to be recognized. The third man was not masked, he stayed at the door holding the dog collar, ready to release it on me.

“Who told you to do that? You’re hurting the detainee,” screamed ████████, who was no less terrified than I was.

As to me, I couldn’t digest the situation. My first thought was, they mistook me for somebody else. My second thought was to try to look around, but one of the guards was squeezing my face against the floor. I saw the dog fighting to get loose. I saw ████████ standing up, looking helpless at the guards working on me.

“Blindfold the motherfucker! He’s trying to look—” One of them hit me hard across the face and quickly put goggles on my eyes, earmuffs on my ears, and a small bag over my head. They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterward I started to bleed. All I could hear was ████████ cursing, “F-ing this and F-ing that.” I thought they were going to execute me.

The other guard dragged me out with my toes tracing the way, and threw me in a truck, which immediately took off. The beating party would last for the next three to four hours, before they turned me over to another team that would use different torture techniques.

“Stop praying, motherfucker. You’re killing people,” ████████ said, and punched me hard on my mouth. My mouth and nose started to bleed, and my lips grew so big that I technically could not speak anymore. The colleague of ████████ turned out to be one of my guards; ████████ and ████████ each took one of my sides and started to punch me and smash me against the metal of the truck. One of the guys hit me so that my breath stopped and I was choking. I felt like I was breathing through my ribs.

Did I pass out? Maybe not. All I know is that I kept noticing ████████ several times spraying ammonia in my nose. The funny thing was, Mr. ████████ was at the same time a “lifesaver,” as were the guards I would be dealing with for the year to come; all of them were allowed to give me medication and first aid.

After 10 to 15 minutes, the truck stopped at the beach. My escort team dragged me out of the truck and put me in a high-speed boat. ████████ never gave me a break; they kept hitting me.

“You’re killing people,” said ████████. I believe he was thinking out loud: He knew he was committing the most cowardly crime in the world, torturing a helpless detainee who was completely submissive and turned himself in. ████████ was trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.

Inside the boat, ████████ made me drink salt water, I believe it was direct from the ocean. It was so nasty I threw it up. They put an object in my mouth and shouted, “Swallow, motherfucker!” I decided inside not to swallow the organ-damaging salt water, which choked me as they kept pouring the water in my mouth. “Swallow, you idiot!” I contemplated quickly, and decided for the nasty, damaging water rather than death.

████████ and ████████ had been escorting me for about three hours in the high-speed boat. The goal of such trip was, first, to torture the detainee and claim that the “detainee hurt himself during transport,” and second to make the detainee believe he is being transferred to some far faraway secret prison. We detainees knew all about this; we had detainees who reported flying four hours and finding themselves in the same jail where they started. I knew from the beginning that I was going to be transferred to ████████.

When the boat [landed], ████████ and his colleague dragged me out and made me sit cross-legged. I was moaning from the unbearable pain.

“Uh … Uh … ALLAH. ALLAH … I told you not to fuck with us, didn’t I?” said Mr. X, mimicking me. I hoped I could stop moaning because the gentleman kept mocking me and blaspheming the Lord; however the moaning was necessary so I could breathe. “We appreciate everybody who works with us, thanks gentlemen,” said ████████. I recognized his voice. Although he was addressing his Arab guests, the message was addressed to me more than anybody.

It was nighttime. My blindfold didn’t keep me from feeling the bright lighting, some kind of high-watt projectors.

“We happy for zat. Maybe we take him to Egypt, he say everything,” said an Arab guy whose voice I’d never heard, with a thick Egyptian accent. I could tell the guy was in his late 20s or early 30s based on his voice, his speech, and later on his actions. His English was both poor and decidedly mispronounced.

Then I heard indistinct conversations here and there, after which the Egyptian and another guy approached. Now they’re talking directly to me in Arabic.

“What a coward! You guys ask for civil rights? You get none,” said the Egyptian.

“Somebody like this coward, it takes us only one hour in Jordan until he spits everything,” said the Jordanian. Obviously he didn’t know that I had spent eight months in Jordan and no miracle took place.

“We take him to Egypt,” said the Egyptian, addressing ████████.

“Maybe later,” said ████████.

To be continued in Part 5

—

Mohamedou Ould Slahi: 2006 (Guantanamo Unclassified: ‘Welcome to Hell’)

aseerun — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 06:15:46 +0000

In July 2003, more than a month into his “special interrogation,” documents show that Slahi was interrogated for a week by a new, masked interrogator, kept in a refrigerated cell, and told he would be made to “disappear.” On Aug. 2, 2003, a military interrogator posing as an emissary from the White House visited Slahi carrying a letter saying that Slahi’s mother was in custody and would soon be transferred to Guantánamo, where the U.S government could not guarantee her safety.

“Get the motherfucker back,” shouted ████████, a celebrity among the torture squad. He was about 6 feet tall, athletic-built, and ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████. He was aware that he was committing heavy crimes of war, thus he was ordered by his bosses to cover himself. But if there is any kind of basic justice, he would be busted through his bosses. We know their names and their ranks.

When I got to know ████████ more and heard him speaking, I wondered how could a man as smart as he was possibly accept such a degrading job, which surely is going to haunt him the rest of his life. I later on discussed with some of my guards why they executed the order of stopping me from praying, since it is an unlawful order. “I could have, but my boss would have given me a shitty job, or transferred me to a bad place. I know I can go to hell for what I have done to you,” he said. History repeats itself: after World War II, German soldiers were not excused when they argued that they received orders.

“You’ve been giving ████████ a hard time,” continued ████████, while dragging me into a dark room. With the help of the guards he dropped me on the dirty floor. The room was as dark as ebony. ████████ started playing a track very loudly. I mean very loudly. The song was, “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.” I might never forget that song. ████████ at the same time turned on some colored blinkers that hurt the eyes. “If you fucking fall asleep, I’m gonna hurt you,” he said. I had to listen to the song over and over until the next morning.

“Welcome to hell,” said the ████████ guard when I stepped inside the block. I didn’t answer, and ████████ wasn’t worth it. But I was like, “I think you deserve hell more than I do, because you’re working dutifully to go to hell!” The guards on the block actively participated in the process of torture. The ████████ tell them what to do with the detainee once he came back to the block. I had guards banging on my cell to prevent me from sleeping. They cursed me for no reason. They repeatedly woke me. I never complained to my interrogators about that issue because I knew they planned everything with the guards.

“I told you, I’m gonna bring some people to help me interrogate you,” said ████████ sitting inches away in front of me. ████████ offered me a metal chair. The guest sat almost sticking on my knee. ████████ started to ask me some question I don’t remember.

“Yes or no?” shouted the guest, loud beyond belief, in a show to scare me, and maybe to impress ████████, who knows? I found his method very childish and silly. I looked at him, smiled, and said, “Neither!” The guest violently drew the chair from beneath me. I fell on the chains. Oh, it hurt.

“Stand up, motherfucker,” shouted both, almost synchronous. Then a session of torture and humiliation started. They started to ask me the questions after they made me stand up, but it was too late, because I told them a million times, “Whenever you start to torture me, I’m not gonna say a single word.” And that was always accurate, for the rest of the day, they were the only ones to talk.

████████ turned the air conditioning all the way down to bring me to freezing. This method had been practiced in the camp at least since August ’02. I have seen people who were exposed to the frozen room day after day such as ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████, [who] told me of having suffered the same fate. [All the] Yemeni brothers had been suffering all kinds of humiliation including the frozen room. ████████ the same way. And the list is long. The consequences of the cold room are devastating, such as ████████, but they show up only later because it takes time until they work their way through the bones. Furthermore, the torture squad was so well trained that they had been performing perfect crimes, avoiding leaving any obvious evidence. Nothing was left to chance. They hit in predefined places. They practiced horrible methods, the aftermath of which only manifested later.

Technically, the interrogators turned the AC all the way down trying to reach 0 F, but obviously the AC is not designed to kill. In the well-isolated room the AC fought its way to 49 F, and if you are interested in math like me, that is 9.4 C—in other words very, very cold, especially for somebody who had to stay in it more than 12 hours, had no underwear, had a very thin uniform, and comes from a hot country. Somebody from Saudi Arabia cannot take as much cold as somebody from Sweden, and vice versa, when it comes to hot weather.

You may ask me, “Where were the interrogators, after installing me in the frozen room?” Actually, it’s a good question, and the answer is: First, the interrogators didn’t stay in the room, they just come for humiliation, degradation, and discouragement, or another factor of torture; after that they left and went to the monitoring room next door. Second, interrogators were dressed adequately. For instance, ████████ was dressed like somebody entering a meat locker. In spite of that, they didn’t stay a long time with the detainees. Third, interrogators kept moving in the room, which meant blood circulation, which meant keeping themselves warm while the detainee was ████████ all the time, on the floor, standing up for the most part. All I could do was move my feet and rub my hands. But the Marine guy stopped me from rubbing my hands by ordering a special chain that shackled my hands on my opposite hips. If I get nervous I always start to rub my hands together and write on my body, and that drove my interrogators crazy.

“What are you writing?” shouted ████████ “Either you tell me or you stop the fuck,” but I couldn’t stop anyway, it was unintentional.

The man in [charge of] the show started to throw chairs around, and hit me with his forehead, and described me with all kinds of adjectives I don’t deserve, for no reason. The guy was nuts; he asked me about things I have no clue about, and names I never heard. “I have been in ████████,” he said, “and you know who was our host? The president! We had a good time in the palace.”

The Marine guy asked questions and answered himself. When the man failed to impress me with all the talk and humiliation and the threat to arrest my family (since the ████████ “was an obedient servant of the U.S.”), he started to hurt me more. He brought ice-cold water and soaked me all over my body. My clothes stuck on me. It was so awful, I kept shaking like a Parkinson’s patient. Technically I wasn’t able to talk anymore. The guy was stupid, he was literally executing me but in a slow way. ████████ gestured to him to stop pouring water on me. I refused to eat anything; I couldn’t open my mouth anyway.

The guy was very hot, when ████████ stopped him because he was afraid of the paperwork which would [result] in case of my death. He found another technique; namely, he brought a CD-player with booster and started to play some rap music. I didn’t really mind the music because it made me forget my pain; actually, the music was a blessing in disguise, I was trying to make sense of the words. All I understood was that the music was about love, can you believe it? Love! All I had experienced lately was hatred or the consequences thereof. “Listen to that, motherfucker!” said the guest, while closing the door violently behind him. “You’re gonna get the same shit day after day, and guess what? It’s getting worse. What you’re seeing is only the beginning,” said ████████. I kept praying and ignoring what they were doing.

“Oh, ALLAH, help me. … Oh, Allah, have mercy on me,” ████████ kept mimicking my prayers, “ALLAH … ALLAH … There is no Allah. He let you down!” I smiled at how ignorant ████████ was by talking about the Lord like that.

Between 10 and 11 p.m. ████████ handed me over to ████████ and gave an order to the guards to move me to his specially prepared room. It was so cold and full of pictures showing the glories of the U.S.: weapons arsenal, planes, pictures of G. Bush. “Don’t pray, you insult my country if you pray during my national hymn. We are the greatest country in the free world, and we have the smartest president of the world,” said ████████. For the whole night I had to listen to the U.S. hymn. I hate hymns anyway. All I can remember was the beginning, “Oh say can you see …” over and over.

Between 4 and 5 a.m. ████████ released me just to be taken a couple of hours later by ████████ to start the same routine over and over. The hardest step is the first, the hardest days were the first days; with every day going by I grew stronger. Meanwhile, I was the main subject of talk in the camp, although many other detainees were suffering a similar fate; I was “Criminal No. 1,” and I was appropriately treated. Sometimes, when I was in the rec yard, detainees shouted, “Be patient. Remember Allah tries the people he loves the most.” Comments like that were my only solace beside my faith in the Lord.

[Then] ████████ crawled from behind the scene and appeared in the picture: ████████ had told me a couple of times before ████████ visit about a very high level government person who was going to visit me and talk to me about my family. I personally didn’t take the information negatively; I thought he was going to bring me some messages from my family, but I was wrong. It was about hurting my family. ████████ was escalating the situation relentlessly with me.

████████ came around 11 a.m., escorted by ████████ and the new ████████. He was brief and direct.

“My name is ████████. I work for ████████. My government is desperate to get information out of you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Can you read English?”

“Yes.”

████████ handed me a letter he obviously forged. The letter was from DoD and it said, basically, “Ould Slahi was involved in the Millennium attack and recruited three of the September 11 hijackers. Since Slahi has refused to cooperate, the U.S. government is going to arrest his mother and put her in a special facility.”

I read the letter. “Is that not harsh and unfair?” I said.

“I am not here to maintain justice. I am here to stop people from crashing planes into buildings in my country.”

“Then go and stop them. I have done nothing to your country,” I said.

“You have two options, either being a defendant or a witness.”

“I want neither.”

“You have no choice, and your life is going to change decidedly,” he said.

“Just do it, the sooner, the better!” I said.

To be continued in Part 4

—

Mohamedou Ould Slahi: 2006 (Guantanamo Unclassified:’I was Just Wishing to Pass Out so I Didn’t Have to Suffer’)

aseerun — Fri, 31 May 2013 06:13:32 +0000

For his first several months in Guantánamo, Slahi was interrogated by agents from the FBI and the Navy’s Criminal Investigation Task Force. Both the FBI and CITF favored conventional, “rapport building” interrogation methods; throughout the fall, both agencies clashed repeatedly with Guantánamo’s commanders over the military’s increasingly abusive interrogations, and fought Pentagon plans for the “Special Project” interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a 50-day torture regime of extreme sleep deprivation, 20-hour-a-day interrogations, and repeated physical and sexual humiliations.

By January 2003, military interrogators were agitating to make Slahi their second “Special Project,” drawing up an interrogation plan that mirrored Qahtani’s. Declassified documents show that Slahi’s “special interrogation” began when he was transferred to an isolation cell near the end of May.

Things went more quickly than I thought. ████████ sent me back to the block, and I told my fellow detainees about being overtaken by the torture squad.

“You are not a kid. Those torturers are not worth thinking about. Have faith in Allah,” said my next ████████. I really must have acted like a child all day long before the guards pried me from the population block later that day. You don’t know how terrorizing it is for a human being to be threatened with torture. One becomes literally a child. An Arabic proverb says, “Waiting on torture is worse than torture itself.” I can only confirm this proverb.

The escort team showed up at my cell: “You got to move.”

“Where?”

“Not your problem,” said the hateful ████████ guard. But he was not very smart, for he had my destination written on his glove.

“Brother, pray for me, I am being transferred ████████.” ████████ was reserved by then for the worst detainees in the camp. If one got transferred ████████ many signatures must have been provided, maybe the president of the U.S. The only people I know to have spent some time ████████ since it was designed for torture were ████████ al Kuwaiti and another detainee from ████████, I don’t know the name.

In the block the recipe started. I was deprived of my comfort items, except for a thin iso-mat and a very thin, small, and worn-out blanket. I was deprived of my books, which I owned. I was deprived of my Quran. I was deprived of my soap. I was deprived of my toothpaste. I was deprived of the roll of toilet paper I had. The cell—better, the box—was cooled down so that I was shaking most of the time. I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day. Every once in a while they gave me a rec time in the night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. I was living literally in terror. I don’t remember having slept one night quietly; for the next 70 days to come I wouldn’t know the sweetness of sleeping. Interrogation for 24 hours, three and sometimes four shifts a day. I rarely got a day off.

“We know that you are a criminal.”

“What have I done?”

“You tell me, and we reduce your sentence to 30 years. Otherwise you will never see the light again. If you don’t cooperate we are going to put you in a hole and wipe your name out of our detainees database.” I was so terrified because I knew, even though he couldn’t make such decision on his own, he had the complete backup of the high government level. He didn’t speak from the air.

“I don’t care where you take me, just do it.”

When I failed to give him the answer he wanted to hear, he made me stand up, with my back bent because my hands were shackled with my feet and waist and locked to the floor. ████████ turned the temp control all the way down, and made sure that the guards maintained me in that situation until he decided otherwise. He used to start a fuss before going to his lunch, so he kept me hurt during his lunch, which took at least two to three hours. ████████ likes his food; he never missed his lunch. I was wondering, how could ████████ have possibly passed the fitness test of the Army? But I realized he is in the Army for a reason.

The fact that I wasn’t allowed to see the light made me “enjoy” the short trip between my freakin’ cold cell and the interrogation room. It’s just a blessing when the warm GTMO sun hit me. I felt the life sneaking back into every inch of my body. I always had this fake happiness, though for a very short time. It’s like taking narcotics.

“How you been?” said one of the Puerto Rican escorting guards, with his weak English.

“I’m OK, thanks, and you?”

“No worry, you gonna back to your family,” he said. When he said so I couldn’t help breaking into ████████. Lately, I had become so vulnerable. What’s wrong with me? Just a soothing word in this ocean of agony was enough to make me cry.

████████ we had a complete Puerto Rican division. They were different than other Americans. They were not as vigilant and unfriendly. Sometimes they took detainees to shower ████████. Everybody liked them. Due to their friendly and humane approach to detainees, they got in trouble with those responsible for the camps. I can’t objectively speak about the people from Puerto Rico because I haven’t seen enough, but if you ask me have you ever seen a bad Puerto Rican? My answer would be no.

“We’re gonna talk today about ████████,” [said] ████████ after bribing me with a weathered metal chair.

“I have told what I know about ████████.”

“No, that’s bullshit. Are you gonna tell us more?”

“No, I have no more to tell.” The new ████████ pulled the metal chair away and left me on the floor.

“Talk about it, it wouldn’t hurt,” the new ████████ said.

“No.”

“Today, we’re gonna teach you about great American sex. Get up,” said ████████.

As soon as I stood up, the two ████████ took off their blouses and started to talk all kinds of dirty stuff you can imagine. Both ████████ stuck on me literally from the front, and the other older ████████ stuck on my back, rubbing ████████ whole body on mine. At the same time they were talking dirty to me, and playing with my sexual parts. I am saving you here from quoting the disgusting and degrading talk I had to listen to from noon or before until 10 p.m. when they turned me over to ████████, the new character you’ll learn about later.

To be fair and honest, the ████████ didn’t deprive me of my clothes at any time; everything happened with my uniform on. The senior ████████ was watching everything ████████. I kept praying all the time.

“Stop the fuck praying. You’re having sex with American ████████ and you’re praying? What a hypocrite you are!” said ████████ angrily while entering the room. I refused to stop speaking my prayers. During this session I also refused to eat or to drink, although they offered me water every once in a while. I was just wishing to pass out so I didn’t have to suffer; and that was really the main reason for my hunger strike. I knew people like them don’t get impressed by a hunger strike. Of course they didn’t want me to die, but they understand there are many steps until one dies.

“You’re not gonna die, we’re gonna feed you up your ass,” said ████████.

To be continued in Part 3

—

Mohamedou Ould Slahi: 2006 (Guantanamo Unclassified: ‘Brothers, Don’t Worry; Here, in Cuba, There is No Torture’)

aseerun — Thu, 30 May 2013 06:35:41 +0000

Mohamedou Ould Slahi voluntarily turned himself in for questioning to police in his native Mauritania on Nov. 20, 2001; a week later, at the behest of the U.S. government, he was placed on a rendition flight to Jordan. Slahi, who had lived in Germany and Canada, was interrogated and cleared by Jordanian intelligence of any connection to the Millennium Bomb Plot, the foiled plan of Canadian resident Ahmed Ressam to explode a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Unsatisfied, on July 19, 2002 the CIA retrieved Slahi from Jordan and flew him to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

Detainees were not allowed to talk to each other, but we enjoyed looking at each other. The punishment for talking was hanging the detainee by his hands with the feet barely touching the ground. I saw an Afghan fellow detainee who passed out a couple of times while hanging from his hands. The medics “fixed” him and hung him back up. Other detainees were luckier; they were hung for a certain time and released. Most of the detainees tried to talk while hanging, which makes the guards double their punishment.

There was a very old Afghani fellow, who reportedly was arrested to turn over his son. The guy was mentally sick; he could not stop talking because he didn’t know where he was, nor why. But the guards kept dutifully hanging him. It was so pitiful; one day one of the guards threw him on his face, and he was crying like a baby.

We were put in about six or seven big barbed-wire cells, called after the operations performed against the U.S.: “Nairobi,” “U.S.S. Cole,” “Dar es Salaam,” and so on. In each cell there was a detainee called “English,” who benevolently served as an interpreter to translate the orders to his co-detainees. Our “English” was a gentleman from Sudan named ████████. His English was very basic, thus he asked me secretly whether I spoke English. “No,” I replied. But as it turned out I was a Shakespeare compared to him.

Now I am sitting in front of a bunch of dead-regular U.S. citizens; my first impression, when I saw them chewing without a break: “What’s wrong with these guys, do they have to eat so much?” Most of the guards are tall, and overweight. Some of them were friendly and some very hostile. Whenever I realized that a guard [was hostile], I pretended that I understood no English. I remember one cowboy coming to me with an ugly frown on his face.

“You speak English?” he asked.

“No English,” I replied.

“We don’t like you to speak English, we want you to die slowly,” he said.

“No English,” I kept replying. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that his message arrived. People with hatred have always something to get off their chests, but I wasn’t ready to be that drain.

I had been living the days to follow in horror. Whenever ████████ went past our cell, I looked away, avoiding seeing him so he doesn’t “see” me, exactly like an ostrich. I saw him torturing this other detainee. I don’t want to recount what I heard about him; I just want to tell what I saw with my eyes. It was that Afghani teenager, I would say 16 or 17 years old. ████████ made him stand for about three days, sleepless. I felt so bad for him. Whenever he fell down, the guards came to him shouting, “No sleep for terrorists,” and made him stand again. I remember sleeping and waking up, and he stood like a tree.

On Aug. 4, 2002, Slahi was again hooded, shackled, diapered, and drugged, and put on a flight with 30 other Bagram Air Base detainees for a 36-hour journey to Guantánamo. He arrived depleted from his nine-month ordeal in Jordan and Afghanistan; official Defense Department documents record that Slahi, who stands 5-foot-7, weighed just a little over 109 pounds when he was “inprocessed” on August 5.

The shoutings of my fellow detainees woke me up in the early morning. Life was suddenly blown into ████████. When I came early this morning around 2 a.m., I never thought that human beings could possibly be stored in a bunch of cold boxes. I thought I was the only one, but I was wrong; my fellow detainees were only knocked out due to the harsh punishment trip they had behind them.

While the guards were serving food, we were introducing ourselves. We couldn’t see each other because of the design of the block, but we could hear the others.

“Salaam Alaikum!”

“Walaikum Salam.”

“Who are you?”

“I am from Mauritania, Palestine, Syria … Saudi Arabia …!”

“How was the trip?”

“I almost froze to death,” shouted one guy.

“I slept the whole trip,” replied ████████.

“Why did they put the patch beneath my ear?” shouted another.

“Who was in front of me in the truck?” I asked. “He kept moving, which made the guards beat me all the way from the airport to the camp!”

“Me, too,” shouted another detainee.

We called each other with the ISN numbers we were assigned in Bagram. My number was 760. In the cell on my left was ████████ from ████████. In the right cell, there was a guy from ████████. He spoke poor Arabic, and claimed to have been captured in Karachi, where he attends the university. In front of my cell they put the Sudanese next to each other.

Breakfast was modest, one boiled egg, a hard piece of bread, and something else I don’t know the name. It was my first hot meal since I left Jordan. Oh, the tea was soothing! People shouting all over the place in indistinct conversations: It was just a good feeling when everybody started to recount his story.

I considered the arrival to Cuba a blessing, and so I told my brothers, “Since you guys are not involved in crimes you need to fear nothing. I personally am going to cooperate, since nobody is going to torture me. I don’t want any of you to suffer what I suffered in Jordan.” I wrongly believed that the worst was over, and cared less about the time it would take the Americans to figure out I am not the guy they are looking for. I trusted the American justice system too much, and shared that trust with people from European countries. We all have an idea about how the democratic system works.

The other fellow detainees, for instance from the Middle East, didn’t believe it for a second and didn’t trust the American system. Their argument rested on the growing hostility of extremist Americans against the Muslims and the Arabs. With every day going by, the optimists lost ground, and the interrogation methods worsened considerably as time went by. As you shall see, those responsible in GTMO broke all the principles upon which the U.S. was built.

████████ escort team showed up at my cell. “████████,” said one of the MPs while holding the long chains in his hands. ████████ is the code word for being taken to interrogation. Although I didn’t understand where I was going, I prudently followed their orders until they delivered me to the interrogator. His name was ████████████████████████████████████████████████, wearing a U.S. army uniform. He is an ████████████████████████████████████████, a man with all the paradoxes you may imagine. He spoke Arabic decently with a ████████ accent; you can tell he grew up among ████████ friends. ████████ told me that he is from ████████ and that he used to interpret for the ████████.

I was terrified when I stepped into the room in ████████ building, because of the CamelBak on ████████ back, from which he was sipping. I never saw anything like that before; I thought it was a kind of tool to hook on me as a part of my interrogation. I really don’t know why I was scared, but the fact that I never saw ████████ nor his CamelBak, nor did I expect an Army guy; all these factors contributed to my fear.

The older gentlemen who interrogated me the night before entered the room with some candies and introduced ████████ to me. “I chose ████████ because he speaks your language. We’re going to ask you detailed questions about you ████████. As to me, I am going to leave soon, but my replacement will take care of you. See you later.”

After the introduction he stepped out of the room, leaving me and ████████ to work. ████████ was a friendly guy; he was ████████ in the U.S. Army who believed himself to be lucky in life. ████████ wanted me to repeat to him again my whole story, which I’ve been repeating for the last three years over and over. I got used to interrogators asking me the same things. Before the interrogator even moves his lips I knew his questions, and as soon as he or she started to talk I turned my “tape” on. When I came to the part about Jordan, ████████ felt very sorry!

“Those countries don’t respect human rights. They even torture people.” I was comforted because ████████criticized cruel methods during interrogation; that means that the Americans wouldn’t do something like that. Yes, they were not exactly following the law in Bagram, but that was in Afghanistan, and now we are in a U.S.-controlled territory.

After ████████ finished his interrogations, he sent me back and promised to come back should new questions arise. During the session with ████████ I asked him to use the bathroom.

“No. 1 or No. 2?” he asked. It was the first time I heard the human private business coded in numbers. In the countries I’ve been in it is not customary to ask people about their intention in the bathroom, nor do they have a code.

The team could see very obviously how sick I was; the prints of Jordan and Bagram were more than obvious. I looked like a ghost. On my second or third day in GTMO I collapsed in my cell. I was just driven to my extremes. The medics took me out of my cell; I tried to walk the way to the hospital but as soon as I left ████████, I collapsed once more, which made the medics carry me to the clinic. I threw up so much that I was completely dehydrated. I received first aid and got an IV. The IV was terrible, they must have put in some medication I have allergy against. My mouth dried completely up, and my tongue became so heavy that I couldn’t ask for help. I gestured with hands to the corpsmen to stop dripping the fluid into my body, which they did.

Later that night the guards brought me back to my cell. I was so sick I couldn’t climb on my bed. I slept on the floor the rest of the month. The doctor prescribed me Ensure and some hypertension medicine. Every time I got my sciatic nerve crisis, the corpsmen gave me Motrin.

Although I was physically very weak, the interrogation didn’t stop. But I nonetheless was in good spirits. In the block we were singing, joking, and recounting each other stories. I also got the opportunity to learn about the star detainees such as his excellence ████████████████████████████████████████. ████████ fed us with the latest news from the camp and the rumors. ████████ was transferred to our block due to his “behavior.” ████████ told us that he was tortured in Kandahar with other detainees. “They put us under the sun for a long time, we got beaten, but brothers don’t worry, here in Cuba there is no torture, the rooms are air-conditioned, and some brothers even refuse to talk unless offered food,” he said.

He was captured with four other colleagues of his in his domicile in ████████ after midnight under the cries of his children, and was pried off his kids and his wife; exactly as it happened to his friends, who confirmed the story. I heard tons of such stories and every story made me forget the last one. I couldn’t tell whose story was more saddening. It even started to undermine my story, but the detainees were unanimous that my story was the most saddening. I personally don’t know. The German proverb says, “Wenn das Militar sich Bewegt, bliebt die Wahrheit auf der Strecke”—when the military sets itself in motion, the truth is too slow to keep up, thus it stays behind. The law of war is harsh; if there is anything good at all in a war, it is that it brings the best and the worst out of people. Some people try to use the lawlessness to hurt others, and some try to reduce the suffering to the minimum.

To be continued in Part 2

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