Uzbek and Uighur detainees in Guantanamo concentration camp

Detainees’ Mental Health Is Latest Legal Battle
By William Glaberson

(Excerpt)
Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense.

But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Mr. Hamdan has essentially been driven crazy by solitary confinement in an 8-foot-by-12-foot cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo “boil his mind.”
“He will shout at us,” said his military defense lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer. “He will bang his fists on the table.”

His lawyers have asked a military judge to stop his case until Mr. Hamdan is placed in less restrictive conditions at Guantánamo, saying he cannot get a fair trial if he cannot focus on defending himself. The judge is to hear arguments as soon as Monday on whether he has the power to consider the claim.

Critics have long asserted that Guantánamo’s climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for madness. But turning that into a legal claim marks a new stage for the military commissions at Guantánamo. As military prosecutors push to get trials under way, they are being met with challenges not just to the charges, but to Guantánamo itself.

Pentagon officials say that Guantánamo holds dangerous men humanely and that there is no unusual quantity of mental illness there. Guantánamo, a military spokeswoman said, does not have solitary confinement, only “single-occupancy cells.”
In response to questions, Cmdr. Pauline A. Storum, the spokeswoman for Guantánamo, asserted that detainees were much healthier psychologically than the population in American prisons. Commander Storum said about 10 percent could be found mentally ill, compared, she said with data showing that more than half of inmates in American correctional institutions had mental health problems.

With their filings, Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers are setting the stage for similar challenges to the procedures of Guantánamo in some 80 expected war crimes cases, lawyers for other detainees say. “The issue of mistreatment of prisoners, the miserable lives they live in these cells, will come up in every case,” said Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer for 35 detainees.

The case of Salim Hamdan is already a landmark because the Supreme Court used an earlier case against him to strike down the Bush administration’s first military commission system in 2006. But that case, like most of the legal battles over Guantánamo, did not affect conditions there.

Detainees lawyers argue that the effects of intense isolation have gradually turned the prison camp into something of a highly fortified mental ward. Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers say his place as one of the best-known detainees has not spared him.

In more than six years of detention, Mr. Hamdan has had two phone calls to his family and no visits. He has been disciplined, legal filings say, for having a Snickers bar that was given to him by his lawyers and for possessing too many socks.

“Conditions are asphalt, excrement and worse,” he wrote his lawyers in February. “Why, why, why?”

At Guantánamo, there are no family visits, no televisions and no radios. A new policy will for the first time permit one telephone call a year.

In the cells where Mr. Hamdan and more than 200 of Guantánamo’s 280 detainees are held, communication with other detainees is generally by shouting through the slit in the door used for the delivery of meals. Mail is late and often censored, lawyers say.
Conditions are more isolating than many death rows and maximum-security prisons in the United States, said Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is an expert on American prison conditions.

The military prosecutors declined to comment on the claims about Mr. Hamdan’s condition. As is common at Guantánamo, their legal filings were not made public before the scheduled court date. But defense filings released by Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers recited some prosecution arguments.
The prosecutors argued that the way that Mr. Hamdan was being held did not constitute solitary confinement in part because “detainees can communicate through the walls.” They said that Mr. Hamdan had denied having mental problems and that he was no model detainee, spitting at guards, threatening assault and throwing urine.
Speaking generally, Commander Storum said, detainees are enemy combatants held safely. “We are holding the right people,” she added, “in the right place, for the right reasons, and doing it the right way.”
Prosecutors have said Mr. Hamdan, now about 39, helped Mr. bin Laden elude capture after the 2001 terror attacks. He is charged with transporting weapons for Al Qaeda and being a bin Laden bodyguard and driver.

In recent weeks, his case has drawn wide notice because the defense asserted that senior Pentagon officials exerted improper influence over military prosecutors and pressed cases for political reasons. Hearings on that issue, also scheduled for next week, may expose the internal workings of the military commissions. The former chief Guantánamo prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis, who has become a critic of the way the war crimes system is run, is slated to testify for Mr. Hamdan.

But the claim about Mr. Hamdan’s mental health could expose the workings of Guantánamo. According to military statistics, three-quarters of the detainees have been held recently in two “camps” that look much like American prisons. Camp 5 and Camp 6, heavily guarded concrete buildings, hold men who have yet to face trial. Behind a heavy door, each cell has a handful of sanctioned items including a cup and a Koran.

Officials concede that the daily two hours of recreation in a chain-link pen is sometimes offered in the dark. From inside their cells, detainees cannot see the outdoors. From the exercise pens they sometimes can see only a sliver of sky.

Michael E. Mone Jr., a Boston lawyer, visited a client last month in Camp 5, where Mr. Hamdan is held. Mr. Mone said his client, an Uzbek detainee, asked why he could not be held in a place where he could see the sun.
This winter, lawyers for Abdulghappar Turkistani, a detainee in Camp 6, received a letter describing life there. “Losing any contact with anyone,” he wrote, “also being forbidden from the natural sunlight, natural air, being surrounded with a metal box all around is not suitable for a human being.”

Reporters are not permitted to interview detainees, and some international groups, like Amnesty International, have been denied access to detainees.

In leaked reports in 2004 investigators for the International Committee of the Red Cross, who do see detainees, said their treatment, including solitary confinement, amounted to torture. But the Red Cross usually keeps its conclusions private.

As a result, much of what is known about current conditions at Guantánamo comes from lawyers, who visit regularly under tight restrictions. Many describe the men as depressed or delusional. Some, they say, show obvious signs of what some of them call Guantánamo psychosis.
Four detainees are believed to have committed suicide in 2006 and 2007, but the military has never released the official details.

Some of the men are increasingly paranoid and some are losing touch with reality, said Rebecca P. Dick, a Washington lawyer who visited two Afghan detainees in March. “One client said, ‘I’m talking to the ceiling now,’ ” Ms. Dick recalled.

Six detainees, according to military officials, are now on hunger strikes. They are fed liquid nutrition through tubes inserted in their nostrils daily.

Mr. Stafford Smith said one of his clients, a hunger striker, was fixated on a mathematical formula that he believed proves that he will be the next to die.
Another detainee, Mr. Stafford Smith said, has smeared feces on his cell walls. “When I asked him why he was doing it, he told me he had no idea,” Mr. Stafford Smith said.

Last month a lawyer for nine detainees who are members of China’s Uighur ethnic minority told a Congressional committee that one of them, Huzaifa Parhat, said that life at Guantánamo was like having already died. The lawyer, P. Sabin Willett, said Mr. Parhat asked the lawyers to pass on a message. He told them to tell his wife to remarry.

Military officials often dismiss such descriptions as accounts by gullible lawyers manipulated by terrorists trained to make false claims of mistreatment.
Detainees’ lawyers say the military methodically understates the mental illness at Guantánamo for public relations reasons.
In military commission proceedings in recent weeks, there have been hints that some of the men facing charges may be deteriorating psychologically.
A military lawyer for a Sudanese detainee said her client appeared frantic and asked that he be evaluated.
When a judge asked a Saudi detainee the name of a lawyer, the detainee’s answer was: “I have been here for six years. Thank God I can even still remember the names of my own family.”
But Mr. Hamdan’s case is the first in the current system to try to air fully the claim that Guantánamo is warping the minds of the men held there.

Commander Mizer said Mr. Hamdan talked unendingly about his desire to moved to Camp 4, the only place at Guantánamo where detainees are permitted to live communally. Camp 4 is believed to house 50 or fewer detainees who officials classify as highly compliant. Mr. Hamdan blames his lawyers for failing to get him out of Camp 5, Commander Mizer said, and will talk only about that. “He refuses to talk about his case,” he said.

The trial is now set to begin on May 28. But twice in recent months, Commander Mizer said, Mr. Hamdan has said he was dismissing Commander Mizer from the case. “He said, ‘I don’t ever want to see you again,’ ” Commander Mizer said.
There is only one subject, he said, that Mr. Hamdan discusses: Getting out of his cell in Camp 5 at Guantánamo Bay.

Stephen Soldz: Psychoanalyst, Psychologist, Researcher, and Activist -
Driving Guantanamo Detainees Insane:

http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19834.htm

UIGHURS IN GUANTANAMO

March 28, 2008
A Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea From Gitmo
by Andy Worthington

The stories of the Uighurs in Guantánamo – Muslims from the oppressed Xinjiang province of China, formerly known as East Turkistan – have long demonstrated chronic injustice on the part of the U.S. authorities to those who know of them, although they have only sporadically registered on the media's radar.

Numbering 22 men in total, three were picked up randomly in Afghanistan, another was caught crossing the Pakistani border disguised in a burqa, while the other 18 were seized together by opportunistic Pakistani villagers after fleeing Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001, and sold to U.S. forces for a bounty, as was common at the time. A leaflet dropped by U.S. planes offered enterprising villagers and soldiers "millions of dollars for helping the anti-Taliban force catch al-Qaeda and Taliban murderers."

These 18 men, who had fled their homeland because of persecution, in search of a new life, or in the hope of gaining some sort of training to enable them to fight back against their oppressors, had been living together in a small, run-down hamlet in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains, mending the settlement's ruined buildings, and occasionally training on their only weapon, an aging AK-47.

After the U.S.-led invasion, they were targeted in a U.S. bombing raid, in which several men died. The survivors then made their way across the mountains to the Pakistani border, where they were first welcomed by the villagers, then betrayed by them. In U.S. custody, they attracted attention because of their supposed insights into the workings of the Chinese government, but it was apparent from early on that they had not been involved with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and that there was no reason to hold them.

Unfortunately for the Uighurs, however, the declaration of their innocence only prefaced further problems, as they joined one of Guantánamo's least enviable groups: cleared prisoners who, because of international treaties, cannot be returned to their home countries for fear that they will be subjected to torture, or worse. The U.S. government had obligingly declared those opposed to Chinese rule in Xinjiang province as "terrorists," in order to secure support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and had even allowed – or invited – Chinese interrogators to question the men in Guantánamo, but when it came to returning them to China they refused to do so.

Attempts to persuade other countries to accept the Uighurs – and other cleared prisoners who faced similar problems with repatriation – were both long and largely futile. Despite the fact that some of these men had been regarded as wrongly detained while they were in U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and many had been cleared after military tribunals in Guantánamo in 2004, it was not until May 2006 that one country – Albania, one of Europe's poorest nations – could be prevailed upon to accept five of the men, who were joined, in December 2006, by another three cleared prisoners from Algeria, Egypt, and the former Soviet Union.

Living in a UN refugee camp in Tirana has not been without its problems – there is no Uighur community in Albania, no prospect of work, and no opportunity for the men to have contact with their families – but it is at least better than being in Guantánamo, where their compatriots, who have, for the most part, also been cleared for release (the exact details are, like much else at Guantánamo, difficult to gauge with absolute confidence), remain in a limbo that seems, literally, to be without end.

Compounding their suffering, the Uighurs, like the majority of the dozens of other cleared prisoners, are held not in comfort in Camp 4 (Guantánamo's only block with communal dorms) but in Camp 6, a maximum security prison in which they are held in complete isolation, in metal cells without windows, for 22 to 23 hours a day.

One of these men is Abdulghappar, who is now 35 years old. In 2004, he explained to his military tribunal that he had traveled to Afghanistan to "get some training to fight back against the Chinese government," and added that he had nothing against the United States. He said that his own people "and my own family are being tortured under the Chinese government," and when asked, "Was it your intention when you were training to fight against the U.S. or its allies?" came up with an answer that summed up the feelings of all his imprisoned compatriots: "I have one point: a billion Chinese enemies, that is enough for me. Why would I get more enemies?"
Abdulghappar recently wrote a letter to his lawyers, which was declassified by the military censors who review all correspondence between lawyers and their clients. It was then passed to the Associated Press, who quoted parts of the letter in an article last week, which was then picked up by other media outlets.

In the hope of providing Abdulghappar with more of his own voice, however, I asked his lawyers for a copy of the letter, which I reproduce in its entirety below. As it is a translation, I have taken the liberty of editing the language to convey his message more fully.

Abdulghappar's Letter From Guantánamo

How are you, Mr. J. Wells Dixon and Ms. Seema Saifee? I hope that this letter reaches you before you come over, and I hope that it will be a little beneficial for our Turkistani brothers' situation here.

We, the Turkistani brothers, left our homeland in order to escape from the brutal suppression and unfair treatment from the Chinese government towards our people. The Uighur youth back home were either incarcerated because of false accusations or prosecuted and executed because of bogus allegations. It was extremely difficult for any Uighur to see a future for themselves within our homeland, and both young and middle-aged Uighurs started to leave East Turkistan and try to find survival abroad, if anyone could find a way to get out. We, the Uighurs in Guantánamo, are also like those Uighurs. We left our homeland for the same cause and sought solace in our neighboring countries.

As you know, for some specific reasons we ended up in Afghanistan. When we arrived in Afghanistan, the U.S. army invaded. We had to depart for Pakistan, since we could not stay in Afghanistan. As we did not know anyone who could help us there, we had no other choice but to leave. The Pakistani people then arrested us and turned us over to the Pakistani government. Subsequently, the Pakistani government sold us to the U.S. Army for bounties. The U.S. Army then brought us to Guantánamo.

Since the very beginning of the interrogations, we have been saying this. Our circumstances are very clear to the U.S. government, the U.S. Army and related agencies. Thus, the East Turkistani people and we, the Uighurs in Guantánamo, have never had any revulsion against the U.S. at any time, and this would never be possible, because our homeland is being occupied and we need the help of others.

We were very pleased at the beginning when the Pakistanis turned us over to American custody. We sincerely hoped that America would be sympathetic to us and help us. Unfortunately, the facts were different. Although in 2004 and 2005 we were told that we were innocent, we have been incarcerated in jail for the past six years until the present day. We fail to know why we are still in jail here.

We still hope that the U.S. government will free us soon and send us to a safe place. Being away from family, away from our homeland, and also away from the outside world and losing any contact with anyone is not suitable for a human being, as, also, is being forbidden from experiencing natural sunlight and natural air, and being surrounded by a metal box on all sides.
I was very healthy in the past. However, since I was brought to Camp 6, I got rheumatism. My joints started to hurt all the time and are getting worse. My kidneys started to hurt ten days ago.

My countryman Abdulrazaq used to have rheumatism for a while, and since he came to Camp 6 it got worse. Sometime in early August, the U.S. Army told Abdulrazaq that he was cleared to be released, and also issued the release form to him in writing. As a result, Abdulrazaq requested to move to a camp that had better conditions, for health reasons. When his request was ignored he embarked on a hunger strike, which has lasted for over a month now.

Currently, he is on punishment and his situation is even worse. He is shackled to the restraint chair and force-fed twice a day by the guards, who wear glass shields on their faces. This has taken place for the past 20 days. For someone who has not eaten for a long time, such treatment is not humane. Abdulrazaq would never want to go on hunger strike. However, the circumstances here forced him to do so, as he had no other choice. If the oppression was not unbearable, who would want to throw himself on a burning fire? In the U.S. Constitution, is it a crime for someone to ask to protect his health and to ask for his rights? If it does count as a crime, then what is the difference between the U.S. Constitution and the Communist constitution? What is the difference between this and Hitler's policies during the Second World War?

I have heard that an Egyptian man broke his back and became handicapped while he was being handled by a team in Camp 1 or 2, and then he was sent home as a crippled person for the rest of his life [Sami el-Leithi, released in October 2005]. Another Libyan broke his arm also. I worry that Abdulrazaq will face a similar or worse situation while being force-fed twice a day for a long time, and I am also concerned for his psychological condition as it is extremely difficult for him to keep his mental state normal under such circumstances.

Recently, I started to wonder, "Why are we staying in this jail for so long?" I wonder if we will be released after we damage our internal and external organs and our arms and legs. Or is it necessary for a few Turkistanis to die, as happened in the past here in this jail, in order to gain others' attention and their concern towards our matter?

Such thoughts are in my mind all the time. The reason I am writing this letter to you is that I sincerely hope that you and others related to law and enforcement can solve this issue quickly and help us in a practical manner.

Abdulghappar Turkistani (281)

December 12, 2007

Guantánamo Bay jail, Camp 6

[For more on the Uighurs in Guantánamo, see my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison.]

Olga Zrihen : condamner le système et les procédures de détention en application à Guantanamo !

Mme la Sénatrice Olga ZRIHEN

Olga ZRIHEN, Belgian Senator

Ms. Olga ZRIHEN, Belgian Senator (Socialist Party), took part in the demonstration organized by Amnesty International, on Friday 11th January 2008 in Brussels, condemning the system and the detention procedures enforced in Guantanamo.

le 15/01/2008


Le PS, par la présence de la sénatrice Olga Zrihen, a pleinement participé à la manifestation organisée par Amnesty International, le vendredi 11 janvier 2008 à Bruxelles, condamnant le système et les procédures de détention en application à Guantanamo.

Cette date du 11 janvier 2008 n’est, quant à elle, pas le fruit du hasard puisqu’elle marque le 6ème anniversaire du jour où les premiers détenus ont été transférés à Guantanamo.

Olga Zrihen, pour quelles raisons était-il essentiel que les parlementaires soient présents à cette manifestation?


Olga Zrihen : Tout simplement pour rappeler que 6 ans après les premiers transferts de prisonniers dans les geôles de Guantanamo, celles-ci demeurent, malgré nos prises de positions antérieures et les protestations internationales, une zone de non droit, un lieu au sein duquel ne sont toujours pas respectés les droits les plus élémentaires de la personne humaine. Il est dès lors évident que les parlementaires doivent soutenir le combat d’Amnesty International et de tous les démocrates pour que cessent ces détentions illégales pratiquées par le gouvernement des États-Unis au nom de la lutte contre le terrorisme. Le dernier rapport d’Amnesty va en ce sens et dénonce les conditions d’emprisonnement prévalant actuellement dans le centre de détention de Guantanamo.

Par notre présence, nous espérons continuer à jeter la lumière sur les violations des droits humains qui prévalent actuellement à Guantanamo et rappeler que le premier objectif est d’obtenir la fermeture définitive de ce centre de détention dans des conditions qui garantissent le respect des droits humains.

Pour ma part, je ne peux que réaffirmer les conclusions de la Commission de la Liberté Publique du Parlement européen selon lesquelles la lutte contre le terrorisme est légitime tant qu’elle demeure dans la légalité internationale, c’est-à-dire tant qu’elle s’engage à respecter les libertés fondamentales dans le cadre des procédures engagées.

Quelle a été la teneur des entretiens que vous avez pu avoir avec les représentants américains au sein de l’ambassade?

Olga Zrihen : Une délégation de 7 personnes a pu effectivement rencontrer Monsieur Alexander, conseiller politique de l’Ambassadeur américain en Belgique. Il semblerait, selon les informations qui ont pu filtrer, que certaines voix au sein de la diplomatie et de l’administration américaines s’élèvent pour que le centre de détention de Guantanamo ferme définitivement ses portes. Cependant, alors qu’il paraît acquis que peu d’avancements sont envisagés sous l’administration Bush, nous osons espérer que la prochaine administration présidentielle américaine aura le courage de revoir une politique sécuritaire nationale peu respectueuse des libertés fondamentales et de certaines situations humanitaires existantes.

Il nous a également été confirmé que, parmi les 275 personnes actuellement emprisonnées à Guantanamo, toutes ne représentaient pas un danger, ne fût-ce minime, pour la sécurité internationale. Malheureusement, nous avons eu des réponses évasives de la part des représentants américains lorsque nous avons engagé les discussions sur les éventuelles compensations auxquelles pourraient prétendre les personnes antérieurement emprisonnées à Guantanamo et reconnues non coupables.

Quoiqu’il en soit, par la dénonciation de l’existence même de cette prison et des procédures illégales qui y ont cours, nous avons clairement signifier que la meilleure manière de combattre le terrorisme demeure encore et toujours le respect et l’application des règles des droits de l’Homme!

En savoir plus ? Amnesty International