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, 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
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.
Tags: Guantanamo Bay, Jordan, medical negligence, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, physical abuse, torture, waterboarding
‘… Sister Maryam Uloho has had her shoulder dislocated by a prison guard. The guard that attacked Maryam Uloho and dislocated her shoulder should be brought up on charges and dismissed. She is unable to receive packages of basic needs of religious items because she is being punished for refusing sex with a staff member at LCIW. Is this a state run correctional facility or a concentration camp? These women have the right to be treated humanly even while incarcerated.’
From a letter dated 4 December 2003
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: administrative abuse, Mary Uloho, Maryam Uloho, physical abuse, religious persecution, setup, sexual abuse, You
Special report: Rendition ordeal that raises new questions about secret trials
In 2004, Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, were detained en route to the UK, and rendered to Libya. This is the story of their imprisonment, and the trail of evidence that reveals the involvement of the British government.
Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her feet. They moved upwards, she says, along her legs, winding the tape around and around, binding her to the stretcher. They taped her stomach, her arms and then her chest. She was bound tight, unable to move.
Bouchar says there were three Americans: two tall, thin men and an equally tall woman. Mostly they were silent. She never saw their faces: they dressed in black and always wore black balaclavas. Bouchar was terrified. They didn’t stop at her chest – she says they also wound the tape around her head, covering her eyes. Then they put a hood and earmuffs on her. She was unable to move, to hear or to see. “My left eye was closed when the tape was applied,” she says, speaking about her ordeal for the first time. “But my right eye was open, and it stayed open throughout the journey. It was agony.” The journey would last around 17 hours.
Bouchar, then aged 30, had become a victim of the process known as extraordinary rendition. She and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a Libyan Islamist militant fighting Muammar Gaddafi, had been abducted in Bangkok and were being flown to one of Gaddafi’s prisons in Libya, a country where she had never before set foot. However, Bouchar’s case is different from the countless other renditions that the world has learned about over the past few years, and not just because she was one of the few female victims.
Documents discovered in Tripoli show that the operation was initiated by British intelligence officers, rather than the masked Americans or their superiors in the US. There is also some evidence that the operation may have been linked to a second British-initiated operation, which saw two men detained in Iraq and rendered to Afghanistan. Furthermore, the timing of the operation, and the questions that Bouchar’s husband and a second rendition victim say were subsequently put to them under torture, raise disturbing new questions about the secret court system that considers immigration appeals in terrorist cases in the UK – a system that the government has pledged to extend to civil trials in which the government itself is the defendant.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Abdel Hakim Belhaj, Abdullah al-Sadiq, Abu Munthir al-Saadi, abuse, Aero Contractors, Amanatullah Ali, CIA, Cori Crider, Extraordinary Rendition, Fatima Bouchar, Gaddafi, Gareth Peirce, Jack Straw, Libya, LIFG, Mark Allen, MI6, Moussa Koussa, N313P, Operation Aston, physical abuse, Reprieve, Sapna Malik, secret prisons, SIAC, Tajoura, torture, Yunus Rahmatullah
… It’s Much More Merciful
Peace upon those who follow the guidance:
We the undersigned Nouzha Amrani and Fatiha Hassani (Um Adam El-Mejjati), the lawful wives of Moulay Umar Amrani Hadi who is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment unjustly. He is constantly being transferred to and from Toulal 2 prison and Sale’ 2 prison. We appeal to the American government to transfer its prisoner from its previously mentioned prisons to its detention centre in Guantanamo, Cuba.
This is for the following reasons:
Your prisoner suffers from various chronic illnesses, he is 47 years old, yet he is always subjected to torture. Bearing in mind he was sentenced to prison only not prison and torture.
Types of torture:
Psychological torture:
Subjecting him to constant psychological pressure by, Provocation, humiliation, Insults and threats. He is held in a wing with the general prison population where cigarette smoke fills the air, abusive language is the norm and there is constant noise that prevents him from sleeping. For nine months he has been held in solitary confinement, in a very small cell that lacks the conditions for human residence. He was put in a punishment cell twice within three months. He is prevented from direct visits (without barriers), and being with his wife Nouzha Amrani. They suffice with a barrier visit, even his kids, Abdulrahman, 7, and Zainab, 5. Since three weeks ago his son visited him without a barrier for 15 minutes only in an office. They had a desk in-between them and were surrounded by guards. Zainab refused to go to the visit because of what she experienced before. She would remember the barriers and small windows and the fact she couldn’t sit with her father nor kiss him. He is prevented from seeing his second wife Um Adam, since the 4th of July 2011, even if the visit is a barrier visit. This continues although she has legal permission from the general prosecutor of the King in Meknes. The prison administration and all those behind it, have sought to hinder the process of completing a legal (marriage) contract, bearing in mind we have completed all the necessary procedures on our part from the date of the 28th of February 2011. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ahmed Hu, beating, Benghazi, Casablanca, Fatiha Hassani, Fez, forced nudity, Guantanamo, hyperthermic torture, medical negligence, Mohammed al-Sabbar, Morocco, Moulay Umar Amrani Hadi, Nouzha Amrani, percussive torture, physical abuse, psychological torture, Sale Prison, Sale Prison 2, sleep deprivation, solitary, solitary confinement, torture, Toulal Prison 2, Um Adam El-Mejjati
(January 2010)
[Original Scan]
Dear Gordon Brown,
I hope you are in good health. I am writing to ask you for my father’s release. As you might know, my father has been away for 8 years, he was taken away since I was four years old. It has been most of my life.
My brother Faris has never seen his father and misses him a lot. Sometimes he thinks other people are his father. Once a man came to do our garden, Faris (has) a lot of fun and laughs with him. When he left, Faris asked my Mum, “Is that my Dad?” He has never felt what it’s like to be with a father or to go out with him. Faris has had no experience at all of what it’s like to have a father just like every child does.
My mother is very patient but sometimes when she misses him too much she gets depressed. My mother is also a psychiatric patient. Whenever she gets depressed we have to go to my grandparents’ house where my grandparents look after her. When she is ill she is in bed day and night and can’t do much. I really hate it when she gets depressed.
At school, when it is time to go home, most of the children have their fathers pick them up which makes me miss him even more. I never really go[t] to do things with my father.
Also there is no reason for my father to be in prison. There have never been any charges made against him and he is innocent. My father has suffered for eight years in prison for no reason. I hope there can be a change now. He has got so many illnesses such as asthma and many physical problems. He is also the only British resident there.
I take that you understand this as a father and a husband. Nobody would like to be separated from their fathers or mothers. It is not nowhere near fun to be without a father we’ve missed so much.
I hope this letter can make a difference and that my father is released as soon as possible.
Thank you.
From
Johina Aamer
Daughter of Shaker Aamer
Tags: GITMO, Guantanamo Bay, Johina Aamer, medical negligence, physical abuse, Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, Shaker Aamer, solitary confinement, SSAC, torture
It is vital that the British Government secure the immediate release of Shaker Aamer, the alternative, namely inaction, could mean sentencing Shaker to a slow lingering death.
Shaker Aamer’s life is in danger. Human rights charity Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith saw Shaker last week and was “horrified at what he found”. The view of Clive Stafford Smith Director of Reprieve is that he is gradually dying in Guantánamo. Shaker has made it absolutely clear he is totally innocent of any crime. His incarceration in Guantánamo, the conditions in which he has been held, the abuse and torture he has undergone, have led to his present terrible state of health. It is now known he is suffering from many ailments – arthritis, asthma, prostate problems, pains in his kidneys and neck, shoulder and back pain resulting from beatings – a direct result of his unjust imprisonment.
The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign (SSAC) has repeatedly requested the UK Government make a full medical assessment and regularly monitor Shaker’s health as well as the conditions in which he has been held. This is the very least British Governments should have done over the last 10 years since Shaker’s detention and rendition by the two US Administrations. Such action should be carried out by the British Government immediately. There can be no reason not to do this.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: abuse, Action Alert, Clive Stafford Smith, FCE, forcible cell extraction, GITMO, Guantanamo Bay, medical negligence, physical abuse, Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, Shaker Aamer, solitary confinement, SSAC, torture
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
███████████
If Allah wills, I intend to answer you questions in detail. However, before I do, I will provide brief responses at the beginning of this correspondence for the sake of clarity.
What interested me in jihad?
My religion, the state of affairs in the Muslim world, and a desire to alleviate suffering within it led me to desire to fight jihad.
What interested me in the internet?
For my generation this is tantamount to asking the question, “What interested you in the phone?” It is simply the most dynamic and convenient form of media there is. If I had continued with Revolution Muslim, it would now be pulling in a larger audience than many television stations (here I am referring to the ones beyond basic cable). I was on the internet before I became Muslim, so there was no real decision to be made.
Did any real-world interactions play a role?
Yes, they played essentially the same role as the online ones.
What led me to post my own material?
It is a means to an end. Had I been a kid in Afghanistan, I would have chosen a different means. This is the theme of “Open Source Jihad.” Certain opportunities do not exist in the West, so people in the West have pursued others. These roles turned out to be more important than the other ones, so you now see Americans, Canadians and Europeans shaping the nature of the jihad movement. Essentially you have Hollywood meets al-Qa’idah, and the result is dramatic.
Have I had any insight into the “why” of my story?
Yes, basically I saw a nasty situation in the world and I turned to my religion for a solution. The one I believed to be most accurate was the one I followed.
Describe my interactions with law enforcement?
My first two interviews seemed to be aimed at convincing me to be an informant, as essentially no specifics were gleaned from either interview. I was briefly a neo-salafi during this time, and one can see that from my postings on Hizb ut-Tahrir on al-Awlaqi’s website and my early activity on my most well known Youtube channel. However, at some point around the time of these interviews law enforcement raided the house where I became Muslim, which angered me tremendously, destroyed my movement away from jihad, and caused me to refuse further contact. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Abu Talhah, Abu Talhah al-Amriiki, Abu Talhah Zakariyya al-Amriiki, Abu Yahah all-Libi, abuse, al-Shabaab, al-Shabab, Anjem Choudhary, Ansar Forum, Anwar al-Aulaqi, Anwar al-Awlaki, Colleen LaRose, Colleen R. La Rose, FBI informant, FBI misconduct, FBI sting, Form 302, Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin, Homeland Security, Inspire, Jarret Brachmann, jihad, John Brennan, Material support, Michelle Bachmann, Mohamed Alessa, Open Source Jihad, Peter King, physical abuse, religious persecution, Secret Service, Senate Intelligence Committee, Shabaab, Shabab, shady informants, Somalia, Taliban, Tom Ridge, Zachary Adam Chesser
![Sanâbil: [ Faith | Finance | Family ] French Advocacy Association (French | English)](http://aseerun.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/sanabil.png?w=128&h=128 "Sanâbil: [ Faith | Finance | Family ] French Advocacy Association (French | English)")
![Defence of Human Rights: [ Determination | Awareness | Courage ] Pakistani Rights Group (English | Urdu)](http://aseerun.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/defenceofhumanrights.png?w=128&h=128 "Defence of Human Rights: [ Determination | Awareness | Courage ] Pakistani Rights Group (English | Urdu)")
