by Mahvish Khan
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.
This lawyer also refused to bring his client food and said he wasn’t there to “entertain” him. I tried to explain that food was important in the meetings, not so much to build trust but because hospitality is a central pillar of Eastern culture. The idea was not so much to “feed” the detainee or “entertain” him; it was a matter of hospitality. Attorneys who’ve visited Afghanistan or the Middle East have always been struck by the extreme hospitality they encountered as they were offered copious amounts of food and tea. Even the poorest Afghans will give a guest the best of what they have. To receive someone empty-handed is an offense that can brand you as bayghairath, or honorless.
Over dozens of meetings, I learned that it was vital that lawyers never coerce their clients into doing anything against their will. The message detainees got from their interrogators was often that they’d better answer questions and do it quickly. But it never worked in anyone’s favor to pressure a prisoner. That included trying to get names of family members or evidentiary documents in addition to signatures on representation forms. Pressure and coercion only gave the prisoner the impression that he was being subjected to yet another form of interrogation.
The best relationships were formed when a prisoner genuinely looked forward to his meetings with his lawyers as a break from the monotony of jail, punishment, solitary confinement, abuse, and interrogation.
The ultimate attorney-client bond I saw was between Chaman Gul, a charismatic six-foot-three Afghan prisoner, and his American lawyer and investigator. I watched with amazement once as he stood up to hug them before they left. Chaman’s legal team worked very hard for him, traveling all the way to Afghanistan and London to collect as much evidence as they could on his behalf. That hug was genuine. The lawyers and the detainee held on with their arms wrapped around each other. The attorneys exchanged letters and poetry with Chaman and genuinely grew to care about him.
I also found that the most comfortable prisoners were those given the greatest levels of control. Detainees had no control over any facet of their lives, including when they woke up, when they saw the sun, when they showered, when they stretched their legs, when they ate, or when they slept. Saying no, even to attorneys, was empowering. Before I went to Gitmo, I studied therapeutic jurisprudence, which emphasizes the importance of collaborating with the legal and psychological needs of prisoners. I thought that the attorneys who applied this model developed better relationships with their clients.
One serious faux pas that occurred on at least two occasions was lawyers’ employing interpreters who had worked for the U.S. military in Bagram or at Guantána
mo Bay. In one instance, the Arab detainee immediately recognized the interpreter who had been present during his military interrogations. The detainee and interpreter started having a heated dispute in rapid Arabic, which the lawyer obviously didn’t follow. Eventually, the irate detainee kicked everyone out, and the meeting was over before it began.
Interrogations were a source of pain, anxiety, and shame for prisoners. It obviously wasn’t a good idea for habeas counsel to bring in individuals who’d been present when their client was interrogated or tortured. This was a major setback to ever gaining the prisoner’s trust. And it hurt not just the one law firm but had the potential to hurt the entire habeas team.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JUMAH AL-DOSSARY
Jumah al-Dossary needed to take a quick bathroom break during a meeting with his lawyer. The guards came and unshackled the Bahraini detainee from the floor and led him to a nearby cell with a toilet. His lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, also stepped out of the Camp Echo meeting room and, watching the pouring rain, waited outside for al-Dossary to call out to the guards that he was finished.
Several minutes later, there was still no sound from the prisoner. Colangelo-Bryan began to feel anxious, wondering what was taking so long.
He walked over to the cell, pulled the door open, and poked his head in. Before he could call out his client’s name, he saw a puddle of blood on the floor. He threw the door open and rushed in to find al-Dossary hanging from the steel mesh wall of the cage, his face engorged, a noose around his neck. His tongue lolled from his mouth, and his eyes had rolled back into his head. Before hanging himself, al-Dossary had slashed his arm.
Colangelo-Bryan rushed over to the cage.
“Jumah!” he shouted but got no response.
“Jumah!” he shouted again. Panicking, he yelled for help. Guards rushed in and unlocked the cage. They cut the noose, laid al-Dossary on the floor, and ordered the attorney out of the room.
Later that night, Colangelo-Bryan was relieved to learn that his client was in stable condition. He had been revived and given treatment for his injuries, including fourteen stitches in his arm.
It was the thirty-two-year-old’s eighth suicide attempt since he’d been brought to Gitmo in February 2002. But al-Dossary told his lawyer that it wouldn’t be his last: as soon as he got the chance, he’d try to end his “worthless life” again. Colangelo- Bryan immediately filed a motion, claiming physical and religious abuse, as well as sexual humiliation and vicious interrogations. He asked that the military be ordered to improve al-Dossary’s conditions: that he be given books other than the Qu’ran and more recreation time, that he be allowed to see a home video of his family, and that the lights be turned off at night so he could sleep. Otherwise, he faced “irreparable injury,” his lawyer told the Washington, D.C., federal district court.
The court never ruled on this motion.
After witnessing his client’s grisly suicide attempt, Colangelo- Bryan returned to work in the New York offices of Dorsey and Whitney. Once it was cleared by Department of Defense, he received a chilling reminder of what he’d seen in Guantánamo Bay: the sealed suicide note al-Dossary had given him before his bathroom break. It read,
October 2005
In fact, I don’t know how to begin, or where to begin. . . . I feel very sorry for forcing you to see . . . a human being who suffered too much . . . dying before your eyes. There was no alternative to make our voice heard by the world from the depths of the detention centers. . . .
I hope you will always remember that you met and sat with a “human being” called “Jumah” who suffered too much and was abused in his belief, his self, in his dignity and also in his humanity. He was imprisoned, tortured and deprived of his homeland, his family and his young daughter. . . . Remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—they are in the same situation of suffering and misfortune. They were captured, tortured and detained with no offense or reason. Their lives might end like mine. . . .
When you remember me in my last gasps of life before dying, while my soul is leaving my body to rise to its creator, remember that the world let us down and let our case down. . . . Remember that our governments let us down. . . . Remember the unreasonable delay of the courts in looking into our case and to side with the victims of injustice. If there were judges who had been fair, I wouldn’t have been wrapped in death shrouds now and my family—my father, my mother, my brothers, sisters and my little daughter—would not have to lose [me] . . . but what else can I do?
Take some of my blood . . . take pieces of my death shrouds . . . take some of my remains . . . take pictures of my dead body when I am placed in my grave. Send it to the world, to the judges . . . the people with a live conscience . . . to the people with principles and values. . . .
At this moment, I see death looming in front of me while I write this letter. . . . Death has a bad odor that cannot be smelled except by those who are going through its agony.
Farewell. . . . I thank you for everything you have done for me, but I have a final request. . . . Show the world the letters I gave you, let the world read them. Let the world know the agonies of the detainees in Cuba. . . .
Prisoner of Deprivation
Jumah Abdel Latif al-Dossary
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba1
The Department of Defense later confirmed that al-Dossary made another attempt to kill himself. “The purpose of Guan-tánamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed,” he told his attorney.
All al-Dossary’s statements and most of the facts in this chapter are based on his unclassified writings and his lawyer’s unclassified notes. Despite the humiliation he underwent, al- Dossary decided to speak out about his torture in order to shed light on what was happening in the prison. His lawyer had written to him about the importance of disclosing his name to the media and of convincing other prisoners to do the same.
“I heard that some American officials deny that human rights violations are occurring in Cuba and deny that there are sexual assaults on detainees and that some journalists are also skewing the facts,” he wrote.
Al-Dossary’s detailed account of his captivity is one of the strongest claims of prisoner abuse at the hands of the U.S. military.
“How will I write about these horrors, and must I swallow the bitter lump that forms in my throat when I remember them?” al-Dossary wrote. “The revolting torture and those vile attacks . . . whenever I look back on them, I wonder how my soft heart could bear them, how my body could bear the pain of the torture and how my mind could bear all that stress.”
Many prisoners shied away from speaking about the indignities they’d suffered, preferring not to relive the shame. Military officials, however, maintain that Gitmo detainees are masters of deceit, carefully following al-Qaeda training manual instructions on how to dupe Westerners.
“These detainees are trained to lie, they’re trained to say they were tortured, and the minute we release them or the minute they get a lawyer, very frequently they’ll go out and they will announce that they’ve been tortured,” then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox News in June 2005.
Statements like that angered al-Dossary’s lawyer, who watched his client crumble under years of methodical torture.
“So, are the FBI agents and military personnel who have described inhumane treatment of detainees also taking a page out of the al-Qaeda playbook,” asked Colangelo-Bryan, “or are they just describing what they’ve seen?”
Some detainees clearly lied. One Afghan told us on a first meeting that he was illiterate. But when we saw him a few months later, he was reading and writing flawlessly. It was only after perhaps noticing the odd look on my face that he suddenly remembered his lack of education and began to stammer and sound words out like a kindergartner.
Nonetheless, the evidence of torture was extensive. Countless detainees, aid workers, and even U.S. soldiers repeatedly described the use of the same type of torture,
sexual humiliation, and religious degradation. Al-Dossary insisted that his story was not contrived in “a flight of fancy or a moment of madness” but was based on “established facts and events,” witnessed by other prisoners, the Red Cross, interpreters, and U.S. soldiers, who he said had filmed it all. So, he sat in solitary confinement and wrote a memoir of what he presumed would be his final years.
In his written account, al-Dossary described how his journey to Guantánamo began with a long walk to the Pakistani border in December 2001 to flee the bombs dropping on Afghanistan. He told the Pakistani soldiers at the border that he needed to go to the Bahraini Embassy. They seemed helpful and even welcoming, but instead of the embassy, they took him to a filthy Pakistani jail packed with Arabs and other foreigners, who had suddenly become valuable war commodities. There were no bathrooms and no mattresses, only men crammed shoulder to shoulder, reeking of unwashed bodies and fear.
To protect the prisoners from the winter cold, the Pakistanis doled out vermin-infested blankets. The only food the men received was a hunk of hard bread, which quickly led to malnutrition. The Pakistanis treated him badly, al-Dossary wrote, but the real suffering started when he was blindfolded and delivered to the Americans.
In a long letter to his lawyer, he described how the Pakistanis took him to an airport and handed him over to U.S. soldiers. When the Pakistanis left, a female interpreter came close and told him in Arabic that the soldiers were going to get him ready for the flight to the U.S. military base in Kandahar. He was to keep quiet and obey the commands he was given. Moments later, someone seized him roughly and threw him down on the pavement. The Americans searched his body carefully and violently, then dragged him onto a windowless military cargo plane and bound him with chains to the cabin floor. They ripped off his blindfold, and before they covered his head with a sack, he glimpsed about thirty other prisoners on board.