My Guantanamo Diary (21 page)

The military made clear what it wanted, said Stafford Smith: for al-Haj to turn spy and inform on Al-Jazeera.

Al-Haj refused.

It’s no secret that Washington doesn’t like Al-Jazeera. The network angered U.S. officials with its unsanitized approach to covering combat. In its typical no-holds-barred reporting style, Al-Jazeera filmed and televised Iraqi war victims, dead U.S. soldiers, and scores of civilian casualties. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly called its coverage of the war “vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.” The news team defended its broadcasts by stating that “the pictures do not lie.”

The network, which has millions of Middle Eastern viewers, is also known for broadcasting videotapes sent in by al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. As a result, Americans have come to suspect that Al-Jazeera is in the business of aiding terrorists, even though the same videos are usually replayed by U.S. networks.

When Al-Jazeera’s Kabul office was wiped out by U.S. bombs in 2002, and when U.S. air strikes took out the Baghdad office a year later, killing Al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub, the news staff began to suspect that they were a target of U.S. armed forces.

Al-Jazeera producer Ahmad Ibrahim told me how terrifying this was for his staff. Al-Jazeera journalists, he said, are no different from other reporters and have never been tied to any political groups.

“We have operated in the most professional manner throughout our ten-year history,” Ibrahim said from his office in Doha, Qatar. “There is not a single instance where Al- Jazeera has operated in a way that favored any group, political party or country over another.”

He said that Al-Jazeera never agreed with the concept of “embedded” journalism, that is, allowing a news reporter to travel with a military unit involved in armed conflict. Embedding during the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Washington’s response to the broad and sometimes unfavorable coverage of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. But Al-Jazeera staffers wouldn’t go along with the way Washington wanted them to conduct their journalism.

“[Washington] wanted us to operate as embedded journalists— seeing the world from their Humvees or aircraft carriers—and treating that as the only opinion,” Ibrahim said. But “our motto is ‘the opinion, and the other opinion.’” Reporters should gather news independently, he said; embedding with the military would provide an incomplete and lopsided view of the war.

As al-Haj’s lawyers saw it, his continued detention was a political game that had little to do with him. “He is a clearly a pawn in a game much bigger than he is—human collateral in the United States government’s grudge against the television station,” said Katznelson.

A transcript of al-Haj’s Annual Review Board hearing on August 12, 2005, quoted the prisoner pleading for mercy and
stating that he would like to return to his family. He had been arrested in error, he told the board.

“I can say without hesitation that I am not a threat to the United States or to anyone else,” he said. “I strongly condemn any act that is taken against innocent people, and I strongly condemn the tragic attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Islam properly understood would never allow the killing of innocent people in this way.”

Al-Haj’s imprisonment frightened his coworkers and threatened their profession globally, they said. They think twice now before covering a subject that might anger the United States. Many fear that they too could be targeted.

“All journalists feel less safe now than before,” said Ibrahim. “Personally, I think twice before I head to cover certain events in certain places, but I go anyway.”

Still, al-Haj’s colleagues stood behind him. His face became familiar in the Middle East as Al-Jazeera carried frequent news updates on his case. A documentary detailing his arrest, torture, and detention called
Prisoner 345
caused public outrage and led to calls for his release.

His imprisonment also got the attention of Reporters sans frontières (Reporters without Borders), an international group headquartered in Paris that defends press freedom and the rights of journalists all over the world. The watchdog group has advocated tirelessly for al-Haj’s release.

Sudanese government officials also followed his hunger strike and imprisonment. In April 2007, Sudanese minister of justice Mohammad Ali al-Marazi publicly condemned al-Haj’s imprisonment without charge or trial. The United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a parade of world leaders also condemned it.

When you arrive at Guantánamo Bay, you’re greeted by a large plaque inscribed “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.” Every time I saw it, I wondered whether the men in charge of that colossal operation had any true concept of honor, or that freedom might be a universal, not narrowly American, right.

Every trip to Gitmo was full of drama, with boozy beachside barbecues and endless storytelling. In and outside the detention camps, the military base is a surreal place, peopled with curious characters. I often found myself wondering who the people around me were and why they were at Guantánamo Bay.

Like the legless man.

Each morning, when I took the ferry to the windward side, I would see a young Cuban man with prosthetic legs. He always wore shorts, so I’d catch myself sneaking peeks at his plastic legs and wondering what had happened to him. One day, he told Peter Ryan and an Arabic interpreter his incredible story.

His name was Amadoo. One day, he’d decided to flee Fidel Castro’s Cuba. But instead of trying to sail to Miami in a makeshift raft, as most refugees do, he thought he would go
over land and try to reach Guantánamo Bay, where he would ask the Americans for asylum. Unfortunately, Cuban soldiers spotted him from a guard tower as he neared the base and shot him in the leg. The gunfire drew the attention of U.S. border guards, who ordered the Cubans to pull back and allow him passage. The Cubans refused, and a standoff ensued.

A U.S. and a Cuban helicopter both flew out and hovered over him for a time. Finally, perhaps not wanting to create an international incident, both choppers retreated, and Amadoo dragged himself as quickly as he could toward the American side.

There were once seventy-five thousand land mines placed by U.S. troops across “no man’s land” between the U.S. and Cuban border, creating the second-largest minefield in the world and the largest in the Western Hemisphere (the first largest is in Afghanistan). But President Bill Clinton ordered them removed in 1996, and they have since been replaced with motion and sound sensors to detect intruders. Unluckily for Amadoo, however, the Cuban government hadn’t cleared the minefield on its side of the border. As he hobbled along, trying to make his way to the U.S. side, a Cuban land mine took out his other leg.

For hours he lay unconscious, slowly bleeding to death, as neither U.S. nor Cuban soldiers made any move to help him. Finally, that night a Cuban soldier, assuming that Amadoo was dead, picked him up and threw him into a nearby cemetery. He was discovered the next morning, barely breathing, by other Cubans, who took him to a hospital, where he was fitted with his artificial legs. As soon as he had recovered, he fled again. This time he made it across the border. He’d been living at Gitmo ever since. He was eventually granted political
asylum in the United States, but his wife and children remained in Cuba.

There was a sizable Cuban community on the leeward side of the base, and more Cubans dropped in all the time. One day, two surrendered to one of the Arabic interpreters, who was chain-smoking outside the Combined Bachelors Quarters when they came ashore. The elderly translator was the first person they saw, so they threw their bags down and put their hands up in the air.

A number of Cubans who’d been intercepted by the Coast Guard while trying to make it to Florida were also living on the base. Cubans who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay, but if they’re intercepted at sea, they’re sent back to Cuba on the basis of so-called wet-foot, dry-foot statutes. Instead of sending some refugees back to Cuba, though, the Coast Guard brought them to Guantánamo.

On my first trip to the base, I saw an adorable little brown-haired boy carrying a red Spiderman backpack on the morning ferry. His older brother was playing video games on his Sony PSP. His father wore a red polo shirt with a yellow Mc- Donald’s insignia. Over the months, I got to know little Jordan Lopez. His father, Jorge, said the family had fled Cuba on a homemade motorized raft that had run out of fuel just a few miles from Miami. They’d been picked up by the Coast Guard and brought to Guantánamo Bay, where Jorge worked at Mc- Donald’s. He looked over his shoulder constantly as he spoke to me. Immigration officers were always monitoring them, he
explained. After spending about a year at Guantánamo, the family was finally granted political asylum in the Czech Republic.

Alex, another Cuban, was not so fortunate. He pulled out military papers to show me that he had been reprimanded for “familiarizing with a Jamaican.” After three separate violations, Alex said, he was thrown into solitary confinement for several days with only one hour of recreation each day, during which a guard would give him a ball to kick around. The Cubans, Alex complained, were treated like the detainees, their letters home censored and their phone calls monitored. “I am not a criminal,” he said. “But they treat me like a spy.”

I was always glad to see the familiar faces of our military escorts, who became like old friends over the months. They always greeted me with happy smiles or hugs.

“Long time!” they’d joke sarcastically. I’d come in expecting the captains and escorts to be hostile, robotic jerks. I was so wrong, just as I had been in my prejudgments of the detainees. I grew to genuinely like many of the military guys. I learned about their families, their plans to go to college, their relationships, their divorces, and their affairs. They told me about the girlfriends and fiancées they missed back home. I keep in touch with some who have left the military and have invited others to my home in San Diego. One soldier told me that she hated it when people insulted “the military.” “It’s always the soldiers at the bottom who feel the brunt of the criticism,” she said, not the men who make the rules.

Once in a while, I’d run into young soldiers who referred to the detainees as terrorists or “the enemy,” but most of the
time, they had no idea who the nameless, numbered prisoners they were charged with guarding were. Sometimes, when we were delayed in meeting with a detainee, we’d play guessing games with the guards, who were required to remove the Velcro name tags from their uniforms when dealing with attorneys and prisoners.

“So, what’s your name?” someone would ask.

“I can’t disclose that,” the guard would respond.

“Where are you from in the States?”

“I can’t disclose that either.”

We’d try to guess.

“Are you from Florida?”

“No.”

In about twenty minutes, we would have it narrowed down to the Northwest. But then we’d get bored with that game.

“So, what do you all day?” we’d start over.

“I can’t disclose that.”

“Do you have any pets?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“A dog, ma’am.”

Sometimes, I’d offer the guards some of the ice cream or Twinkies I’d brought for the detainees. Sometimes, if they were hungry, they’d accept; otherwise, they’d tell me it was against the rules to eat my Klondike bars.

“I am not allowed to accept gifts.”

One time, as we waited around again, I asked a guard whether the prisoners treated him well or whether he’d ever received a detainee cocktail, a concoction of feces and urine— shaken and hurled.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I treat them like human beings, and they respond to me the same way.”

“Are there some guards who treat them badly?” I asked, a little shocked that he was engaging me.

“Some of the young ones have tempers and have not acted professionally, but they’re often moved quickly,” he responded. “I’m just doing my job. I don’t think it’s my place to judge them.”

“That’s open-minded of you,” I said, meaning it.

“The sooner this place is closed, the better it will be for all of us,” he replied.

On the windward side, the base bristled with guard towers, barbed wire, military vehicles, dungeonlike prisons, and U.S. flags waving high. Photography on that side of the island was strictly prohibited, though everyone thought that was an exceedingly stupid rule. After all, you can study the base in minute detail just by going to Google Earth.

On the drive into the detention center, we always stopped at a checkpoint. On one occasion, the Arab interpreters who had been on the base for weeks were itching to mix up the mundane procedures. As armed soldiers approached our vehicle to check our badges, one of the interpreters, a guy in dark shades, shouted out, “Honor bound!” the phrase senior military officials use to greet junior soldiers. Without missing a beat, the guard saluted and replied, “To defend freedom, sir!” As we drove on toward the camps, our military escort tried hard to control his laughter. He told us that we’d probably been mistaken for intelligence.

Most of the detainees—understandably, given the length of time they’d been held—initially assumed their attorneys were interrogators or government agents of some kind. But habeas counsel were probably the only positive face of the United States that many of these men would ever encounter. I think the lawyers had an obligation that went beyond providing legal remedies. They had a duty to treat these men with respect, hospitality, and empathy. In a place like Gitmo, small acts of kindness could be immensely therapeutic.

One lawyer became hostile when his client didn’t trust him enough to sign his forms. His colleague and I were both appalled when he abruptly stood up, picked up the wall phone, and called the guards to end the meeting.

When I asked why he’d done that, he said it was a tactic to gain control of the meeting. By walking out, he said, he may have given the detainee the sense that his lawyers weren’t coming back.

I think he forgot that these men had been interrogated hundreds of times, had been tortured and continuously humiliated for years on end. They’d been taken, many from their beds at night, halfway around the world and held in secret without any determination that they’d done anything wrong. Many had attempted suicide, suffered religious humiliation, and participated in hunger strikes. Many suffered from depression and trusted no one—certainly not a lawyer who traipsed in demanding a signature on a form after just a few hours, then punished the prisoner by making him feel as though his only lifeline to the world was leaving him.