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On Engineering Perverse and Targeted Torture

The sexual humiliation of Muslims in the War on Terror

وَلَا تَقْرَبُوا الزِّنَىٰ ۖإِنَّهُ كَانَ فَاحِشَةً وَسَاءَ سَبِيلًا
And do not approach unlawful sexual intercourse. Indeed, it is ever an immorality and is evil as a way. (17:32)

Sex in Islam is a matter that carries with it a great deal of modesty and shame – the above verse indicates the clear and unequivocal ban on extramarital relations.

It is considered a private matter between a husband and his wife, whether it is in a monogamous or polygynous relationship. Indeed, covering oneself to maintain a minimum level of dignity even when alone is recommended according to the shari’ah (Islamic law).

As part of the psyche of Muslim communities around the world, they respond to sexuality and references to sexuality based on the societies they have grown up in and the extent of conservatism within their communities. For Muslims living in the Western world, overexposure to images of sex and nakedness in order to sell objects, is commonplace, thus having a desensitising impact on their psyche, however much they may dislike what they see. For those living in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, such images are far less commonplace, in fact non-existent, resulting in a greater degree of sensitivity.

On 4 April 2012, the Zelikow torture memo (previously thought to be destroyed) was released, which effectively confirmed that years after criticism of the way in which torture has been systematically used, that enforced nudity is still to be considered an acceptable practice in interrogations,

“The control conditions, such as nudity, sleep deprivation, and liquid diet, may also be sustainable, depending on the circumstances and details of how these techniques are used.”

The Tipton Three (Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed) were amongst the first to detail the forms of sexual humiliation that detainees in Guantanamo were suffering. Shafiq Rasul described a cavity search that was conducted on him soon after his arrival in Guantanamo as being, “both painful and humiliating.” However, the shame that was associated with such acts resulted in the slow acceptance that this was taking place,

“We didn’t hear anybody talking about being sexually humiliated or subjected to sexual provocation before General Miller came. After that we did.

Although sexual provocation, molestation did not happen to us, we are sure that it happened to others. It did not come about at first that people came back and told about it. They didn’t.

What happened was that one detainee came back from interrogation crying and confiding in another what had happened. That detainee in turn thought that it was so shocking he told others and then other detainees revealed that it had happened to them but they had been too ashamed to admit it.”

In their statement, the men highlighted the case of one of the Algerians, one of whom was treated to a particularly horrific incident,

“We were told by one Algerian (not one of the Bosnian Algerians) that he had been taken to interrogation and been forced to stand naked. He also told us he had been forced to watch a video supposedly showing two detainees dressed in orange, one sodomising the other and was told that it would happen to him if he didn’t cooperate.”    Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in News Items

 

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Palestinian Female Detainees detail Horrific Accounts of Abuse in Israeli Prisons

وَمَا لَكُمْ لاَ تُقَـتِلُونَ فِى سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَالْمُسْتَضْعَفِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ وَالنِّسَآءِ وَالْوِلْدَنِ الَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَآ أَخْرِجْنَا مِنْ هَـذِهِ الْقَرْيَةِ الظَّـلِمِ أَهْلُهَا وَاجْعَلْ لَّنَا مِن لَّدُنْكَ وَلِيّاً وَاجْعَلْ لَّنَا مِن لَّدُنْكَ نَصِيراً ﴿

{And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the cause of Allah and the oppressed among men, women, and children who say, “Our Lord, take us out of this city of oppressive people and appoint for us from Yourself a protector and appoint for us from Yourself a helper?”}

Throughout the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, around 800,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli authorities, more than 10,000 of whom are women. Many of those female detainees were subjected to several forms of abuse, sexual in particular, but very few were willing to talk. On the eve of International Women’s Day, however, some decided to break their silence.

S.H., who refused to disclose her full name, was arrested for a few days to put pressure on her husband, also detained at the time, and extract confessions from him.

They stripped me and the officer who was interrogating me sat beside me and tried to molest me but I resisted,” she told al-Arabiya.

Hanaa Shalabi, the 30-year-old prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for 21 days in protest of the humiliation to which she was subjected in detention, said that an officer in civil clothes claimed he was a nurse at the prison and asked her to take off her clothes so he could search her.

When I refused, he called other officers who tied me up and started beating me,” she said in a statement to the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

Shalabi’s lawyer Mahmoud Hassan said that one of the female officers wanted her to take off all her clothes in front of the other interrogators for the search.

Read the rest of this entry »
 
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Posted by on March 9, 2012 in News Items

 

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Jesse Curtis Morton: February 17, 2012* (Solitary Confinement: A First-Hand Reflection on Domestic Torture in a Time of Terror)

 

They locked me in this room, Alone, by myself, just me –
With no one to talk to except for the walls, or the face in the mirror I see.
So I sit, listen, and watch
the television in my head
Not a notion to move nor a second spared
I record everything that is said –
Absence of Kindness, Distinct Memories of Pain
Caused by the things that they took away
So I’m holding my breath,until they let me out
But I’m afraid of what might happen the next time I breathe.

I wrote that poem when I was 17.  These days I am living it; all over again.  Then it was a proverbial prison.  I was a conscious youth inside one of the most dangerous institutions of America:  the public high school.  Today, 16 years later, I am in another – the U.S.prison system where I am but one of a growing number of Muslim Americans who dared to speak out.  Today I am a pretrial federal inmate housed in solitary confinement and in conditions that best resemble those of Guantanamo Bay.

Trust me I am not alone.  In 1994, my junior year of high school, the U.S. Justice Department announced that the prison population had reached one million.  By 2009, that number had more than doubled to 2.3 million with 5 million more on probation or parole.  U.S. citizens now represent only 5% of the global population but account for 25% of the world’s prisoners.  Additionally,1 in15 Americans is in “extreme poverty” with 48% of Americans labeled “in poverty” or “working poor”, but a recent Gallup poll documented that the percentage of Americans that realize the levels of poverty are so high, has dramatically decreased.  These two seemingly distinct sets of statistics suggest something more sinister is going on.

The civil rights era included prison protests like the Attica riots of 1971 and paved a way for productive reform, but today talk of human rights tends to cover a manipulative compromise with the power elite and diverts attention away from structural cause.  Generally prisoners today have enhanced rights and services but like the starving people fed by NGO’s in Africa or refugee camps in Afghanistan, such rights and philanthropy are counterproductive where they allow society to ignore the root causes of such appalling levels of crime, punishment, hunger or war.  These contradictions become apparent with regard to civil liberties in a time of confrontation, when the citizen is reduced to an object of propaganda about domestic enemies in order to maintain public support for wars abroad.

The authors of the American constitution unanimously resented any sacrifice of civil liberties in the name of national security, but the reaction to 9/11, the immediate passage of the Patriot Act and a new approach to law enforcement the Bush Administration called a “preventative paradigm” ushered in an order of sustained national liberty sacrifice.  These changes disproportionately affected American Muslims, however while “terrorists” abroad were “disappeared”, water boarded and held without charges at Guantanamo Bay, the courts approved warrantless wiretapping, ethnic profiling, blacksite rendition and preventative detention targeting Muslims on America’s shores.  Wartime propaganda alongside a wave of arrests utilizing entrapment, where undercover agents encourage fund, and coerce potential terrorist attacks, have helped to sustain support.  Recent polling documents that two-thirds of Americans support sacrificing some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on February 20, 2012 in Letters from Jesse Curtis Morton, Risala

 

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“We want them to help us; We don’t have anything”

“I want them to helps us in freeing my father.”



From our friends at Behind Bars

Aicha El-Khodry, discusses the condition of her son, Youssef El-Khodry, after he was brutally tortured this Ramadan in the infamous Toulal Prison 2 where he has been serving a fifteen year sentence since his kidnapping at the age of seventeen.  

Azzouhra Ghazali, wife of Mohamed Mouniime, testifies about life without her husband who was arrested in 2003 and is now confined in Knitra Central Prison. A mother of three, (Yassine (14), Moadh (12 ), and two-year-old Sohaib who was born in prison) struggles to make ends meet as a maid while often her children are sent to sell plastic bags when money falls short. Like many of the wives of incarcerated men, she is condemned to live in the squalor of a tin shack near a garbage dump. She cannot afford to visit her husband and thus is only able to see him herself once every two to three months, while her children are able to visit maybe once a year. 

Um Mohamed Hasna Moussaid, wife of Yassine Bounajra, was arrested with her husband in 2007. She was three months pregnant when her husband was sentenced to ten years and later gave birth in prison to Amal, now four years old. Although released after one year and eight months of incarceration, Um Mohamed recounts the difficulties of being abandoned by family, the stigma of jail, and the non-existent financial and emotional support for her and her two daughters, Salma and Alma.

Stay informed regarding the plight and affairs of the prisoners and their families in the Maghrib, and find out how you can take action or help by frequenting the following sites and contacting our brothers and sisters at: Behind Bars (facebook page), & Maroc Reality,  A Voice For The Political Detainees In Morocco (Voice-For Detainees – facebook administrator’s page) 
 
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Posted by on November 13, 2011 in Collateral Damage, Videos

 

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Report on Protest for Prisoner Rights 23 October & Conditions in Morocco

The Joint Committee of former “Islamist Detainees” in co-ordination with “Al-Haqiqa: for Defending Prisoners of Conscience and Belief” announces that the protest planned for October 23rd had been subjected to barbaric methods of suppression and intimidation by the Moroccan Government. This protest was organised under the banner of ‘Together for the Sake of Ending Oppression and Ending the Sexual Abuse Taking Place in Moroccan Prisons.’

During the repression by the Moroccan authorities, protesters were subjected to severe brutality to the extent that severe injuries were reported including broken bones and the victimisation of children. The slew of injuries occurred when protesters were stamped on, hit by sticks, chased along the streets, arrested and detained for long hours. Human rights activist, Mohammed Haqiqi, director of Al Karama, was also targeted in a savage assault by the security forces as they stamped on him, tore off his clothes and arrested him as well.

We would like to say that in the case of the Islamist detainees, they have endured horrendous forms of abuse and are still undergoing this inhumane treatment.  The abuse varies from kidnapping, torture (physical and mental), electrocution, rape and other forms of sexual abuse, stress positions, and mock trials.  This category of prisoners is not given even their basic legal rights and forced to take part in biased and unfair trials with no access to legal representation.  Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on October 30, 2011 in News Items

 

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Djamel Beghal a Calusualty in the Advent of America & Europe’s War on Islam

Written by Arnaud Mafille
Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Ten years after the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, many in America, in Europe or in the Muslim world now challenge the western presence there. In 2001, some of those sentiments already existed but were covered by the trauma of 9/11.  In that context of fear and emotion, the announcement of the arrest of a European “al Qaeda lieutenant” was a key element to conduct and justify the invasion of Afghanistan both in France and the UK.

On 7 October 2001, allied armed forces officially launched “Operation Enduring Freedom”, the invasion of Afghanistan. The enemy had been designated and the US and the UK governments had secret evidence proving that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks and the Taliban were the helpers of Al Qaeda. Questions regarding the official line were not given any weight.

Emotion and fear were also at their pinnacle in France. When George W. Bush Jr sent an ultimatum to the Taliban regime only few days after the 9/11, the French population was wondering if their military should be part of the foreseeable invasion of Afghanistan.  Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on October 13, 2011 in News Items

 

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The Forgotten 2 Charity Event

Friday, September 16 ·
6:30pm - 9:30pm
Granville Plus Centre, Carlton Vale, NW6 5HG

An Exclusive insight into what really happned to our brothers who were raped in Toulal 2 prison, Morocco. Yvonne Ridely has visited the families of the rape victims and the head of all prisons in Morocco recently. She Will Speak About her time there and what she saw and heard.

Also to Highlight the Plight of our brothers and sisters behind bars all over the world. A chance to remember, think and derive lessons from the stories of those who faced the injustice of remaining behind bars.
A time to learn what rights do our brothers and sisters have over us.

Tickets: £20.00
Hotline:
Please Email Your Name to
Voiceforprisoners@hotmail.co.uk

Payment will be at the Doors

Buses: 6, 31,414
Train: Queesn Park Station
Kilburn Park Station

Speakers:

Aasim Qureishi (Cageprisoners) TBC
Ustadh Uthman Lateef
Yvonne Ridley (Exclusive Report Directly From Morocco)

 

Full Dinner Included

Brothers and Sisters All Welcomed – Segregation Maintained

ALL PROCEEDS WILL GO TO THE FAMILIES OF THE DETAINEES

 
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Posted by on September 14, 2011 in News Items

 

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Fulan al-Maghribi: August 3, 2010

3rd August 2010

All Praise is due to Allah and peace and blessing be upon His final Messenger, as to what follows,
My brother and the reader of this letter, as-Salaamu ‘alaykum warahamatullaahi wabarakaatuhu, may Allah bless you.

My brother, I couldn’t find a brother here in Macomar prison able to write good English so I had to write to you Arabic, also I want to write a lot to you in this letter after the harsh treatment that I received.

As you know after all the different trials and plots we were sentenced from 8 to 5 years, all Praise is due to Allah for every state.

The only news in our case is that the 6th person convicted surrendered to the Italian authorities after coming back from Libya hoping he will be freed from the charges due to the fact that he’s married to an Italian women and they have one daughter. He stated in court that “The same day the brothers were arrested in Italy, three other brothers were arrested in Tunisia for the same charges and he was one of them.”

This brother narrated the disturbing events and the physical torture he went through inside the dungeons of the Tunisian Intelligence.

He told the police, journalists and relatives attending his court hearing that he was raped four times, they made him drink oil, wanted to cut his male parts, hanged him for 12 hours and beat him. The effects of beating are still on his body till this day. They wanted him to confess to trumped-up charges regarding his brothers in Italy but he refused.

He confirmed to the Italian court that there’s constant collaboration between the Tunisian and Italian Intelligence agencies, he found in Tunisian complete reports for this case. He was tortured for 23 days in Tunisia then he was presented to the court on a wheel chair. All Praise is due to Allah the judge freed him of all charges after seeing the state he was in and Allah knows best.

One that day, he told everything that happened to him to the Italian court, his poor wife had a miscarriage in the court room, and we were all affected by what we heard, so a brother threw his shoe at the officer sitting in front of the cage we were in held in, but sadly he didn’t get him, he got a worker from the prison instead. There was chaos in the court room, one brother was screaming: criminals, criminals so they took us out of the room barefoot and handcuffed. On the same day, the judge sentenced the first brother for 9 years, sentenced another for 8 years, the brother tortured in Tunisia and the rest of the brothers for 5 years.

The public prosecutor presented a written testimony from a Tunisian man inside the Italian army whom we all know, and the brother tortured in Tunisia told us that he saw him in the Interior Ministry in Tunisia at the time of his arrest.

He states in his testimony that we have the Islamic Jihadi and extremist ideology and that we used distribute jihadi and suicide bombings videos and everything else related to jihad. Hasbiyallaah wa ni’mal wakeel. When the lawyers asked for him to come to court the public prosecutor claimed that he was unable to get through to him so the judge accepted his written testimony and made it part of the charges.

They lawyers spoke for 4 hours in our defence and can you believe that the judge was asleep during that time, qaddarallaah wa mashaa’a fa’al. Towards the end of that day, the judge set the day 17th of June for our sentencing.

That cursed judge sentenced us with harsh prison terms on the 17th of June 2010. I ask Allah the All-Mighty the Most Strong to punish them severely and He is capable of all things. That’s all I can remember and was able to write forgive me my brother for prolonging this letter.

Last time you asked about my family, they are well alhamdulillaah but as you may know, they took away my wife and daughters’ residency so their stay in this country is illegal, Allah is the Protector. Unfortunately being in Macomer prison, I am unable to meet with them because it’s very difficult to travel to this island due to costs and other stuff. I might stay here for at least a year alhamdulillah ‘ala kulli hal. I call them 4 times a month and once a month I call my mother and family in Tunisia.

My brother, I don’t mind if you wish to publish this story but without the mentioning of my names, you may say it’s a media release or anything else you see fit.

The last thing for me to tell you is that the appeal for our case will be soon and some things might change, Allah knows best, especially after other trials in the city of Milano were many brothers were freed from terrorism related charges including the three brothers who were brought from Britain, Habib Qanawat, Ali Shalbadi, and Muhammad Khmayri, All Praise is due to Allah the Lord of the worlds, and other are free now.
In any case, nothing will happen except what Allah has decreed for us.

Lastly I ask Allah the Most High, the All-Powerful to allow you, your family and the rest of the muslims to witness the month of Ramadan and to grant you tawfeeq in your fasting and night prayers, Allaahumma Ameen.

A poor slave of Allah wrote this letter on Tuesday 8th of Sha’ban 1431.
Remember us in your supplications.

 
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Posted by on August 10, 2010 in Letters from Fulan, Risala

 

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Aafia Siddiqui: February 15, 2010 (My Dead Nation)

My name is Dr. Afia educated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) with three children and aim of helping my nation with my high class education is very pleased from your help.

I was kidnapped from my own country by my brothers and sold to America. I was brutally treated, raped, tortured, again and again given name prisoner 650. I prayed for my Muhammad Bin Qasim for every second of my years in prison in a Muslim country Afghanistan.

I am sister of 1/5 world’s Muslim population . My nation is historically famous in defending and protecting their citizens right from the beginning. Hazrat Omar (RA) Said, if a dog dies near river Arafat, Omar will be responsible on day of judgment.

At the moment I can’t walk on my own, one kidney is removed, bullet wound in my chest, denied any medical and legal aid and not sure whether I will be alive or not.

I would like to revoke my status of sister. I am a proud Muslim, follower of Hazrat Muhammad SAW, daughter of Hazrat Abubakar, Hazrat Umar, Hazrat Usman and Hazrat Ali and Companions and their true followers. I don’t want to be your sister.

They are my protectors and I will seek Allah’s help not yours.

I don’t want to be Pakistani who has 600,000 troops and special force SSG but fail to protect me, they sworn to protect me but refused when I was looking at them for help.

My so called Muslim Ummah having millions of soldiers, guns, tanks. Automatic weapons, fighter plans, submarines and yet they failed to save me.

Don’t worry about day of judgment you won’t be answerable as you are not my brothers in Islam. You are Arabic, Persian, Palestinians, African, Malaysian, Indonesian, South Asian but not Muslims.

I am sorry if hurts you but you can’t imagine how hurt I am.

Aafia Siddiqui …..

 
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Posted by on February 15, 2010 in Letters from Aafia Siddiqui

 

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Bahrom Nasruddinov: February 12, 2003 (Uzbekistan)

…There [in Koson Prison] I was met by officers and military wardens at the head of captain Boboev. The moment I entered within doors they began to bludgeon and beat. They had beaten me one after another. Beating at the same time captain Boboev gave a “talk” to me. They brought one convict who by order of the heads raped those newly arrived convicts who tried to remain inviolable. Every newly arrived prisoner, especially Muslim, was inevitably presented to specially selected sex fiend convicts. Boboev threatened me saying “If you do not take a different belief then I’ll order them to rape you.” In the East allowing a man to rape you is considered as the most awful shame.

It was cold, and I had aches and pains all over. That’s why it was too painful for me changing my clothes to prison overalls. Then I was taken to a quarantine unit. There I was received by Hamro Parpiev, approved person [inmate] of prison administration. He used to say to me and others: “You should carry out that which I order to you. No matter you are young or an aged, healthy or sick one. You have asked for trouble yourselves by coming here.” This is the way he looked at the matters.

After breakfast and supper he used to force convicts to march for two hours. Also this monster-prisoner used to compel convicts to carry out absolutely useless work in the courtyard after breakfast, lunch and supper. At times such waste of time was continuing past midnight. Jeering at people, crushing their will – this was the purpose of such inventions. There was no benefit from these works at all. Neither for convicts nor for the prison. Throwing earth from one heap to another, hourly changing the heap places, moulding the loam into small pieces and burying them after they became dried, then once again puddling the loam and moulding it into small pieces and so continuously. Such work wasn’t interrupted even in winter. The warder-convict forced to puddle and mould the loam into pieces barehanded in cold.

In the courtyard the manager of the penal battalion was a convict by the name Quziboy from Marghilon. He always had a rubber hose with him. He was managing “ploughing” in a garden-plot. The “ploughing” meant the next: 10-12 prisoners were harnessed to brake to pull it where Quziboy was mounting on. If it seemed to him that someone pulled the brake badly then he used to lash him with his rubber hose. Another pastime he was taking a pleasure in was the dragging of a big concrete block from one place to another. He forced convicts to return the block to its former place.

In a quarantine unit water was lacking not only for washing but also for drinking. Each prisoner received two mugs of water a day – morning and evening. In huts where prisoners spent the night bed linen was completely lacking. Before going to bed prisoners would settle themselves on boards or the concrete floor five by five penned up together. Anyone who objected to this was lashed by Hamro Parpiev. Hamro and Quziboy are the most blood-thirsty and pitiless men I have witnessed in my life.

Besides, almost every day or every other day I was taken away to prison headquarters and beaten to repudiate from my belief [Islam]. Especially, I was cruelly tortured in rooms # 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10. When wardens caught sight of me performing my prayers, unknown to others, they summoned me to headquarters and punished me to puddle the loam in standing wave and mould it into small pieces or to pull the brake in addition to brutal beatings.

Convicts were forced to participate in different “creative contests”. In 2001 during one of such contests I was forced to play a part of a woman. I refused saying that it conflicts with my status of man and therefore it’s unacceptable to me. In response officer Shomurod brutally beat me in room #5.

In summer 2000 I was forced as a punishment to sit in the baking sun from 8.30a.m till 8.30pm. This kind of torture would last for more than a month. I came down with some diseases: heart attacks, my legs became paralysed, my tongue failed me, and I began to lose consciousness frequently. Then I was deported to medical unit where the head of the unit Arabov refused to treat me at all and deported me back. However, shortly after I felt bad again. I witnessed how captain Boboev would fling mud at prisoner Isroil from Beshariq while sex fiends were raping him.

That day I spent the time sitting in the sun and the incident just finished me – I lost consciousness after a heart attack. Instead of medical care officer Ikhtiyar pulled me away into his office and began to beat me. Then he ordered to me, Mamatov Qudratulla, Ahmedov and other prisoners to strip down to the skin and line up one after another to be “touched”. I refused to. I can’t recollect how long he beaten me.
I wrote only some of episodes of my existence in prison #64/51. Lately a representative of the religious committee came and distributed among prisoners a questionnaire. Having studied my answers he said: “You see, it turns out that you the most recalcitrant one. You will never go back home.

Every time when my wife and children arrive to see me, traveling more than 1000 km I nearly go crazy with seeing their state. Excuse me, I can’t continue to write any longer. And the praise to Allah! Ameen!

 
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Posted by on February 12, 2003 in Letters from Bahrom Nasruddinov, Risala

 

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