Guantánamo Diary, March 2006

Ten questions about torture and degrading punishment for Senator John McCain.

Dear Senator McCain:

On December 20, 2005, you managed to press through your McCain Amendment, which you have said “firmly establishes in law that the United States will not subject any individual in our custody, regardless of nationality or physical location, to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The idea is admirable, but I am being held in Guantanamo Bay, and I have a few questions about the practical reality:

1. The S.O.G. (Sergeant of the Guard) in Camp V apologized to me recently when I asked about a particular dictate, and said that the rules were there “just to degrade” me. If so, is it not time that they stopped degrading me and all the other men here?

2. On March 4, 2006, Ahmed Errachidi, a chef who lived not far from me in London, refused to eat and they strapped him into one of the torture chairs and shaved his beard off as punishment. I know you understand what a beard means to a Muslim man. Do you consider shaving a Muslim’s beard because he refuses to eat his meal degrading?

3. India and Romeo Blocks in Guantanamo which are specifically designed to degrade the prisoners. For example, they force us to let them watch us use the toilet. Do you think that is degrading?

4. They leave us in only our underpants, because they know that this violates the religious beliefs of a Muslim man. When we wash them, we are naked, and the underpants don’t dry because the cell is icy cold. Is this degrading?

5. They have banned most books, and all education. If we are the Worst of the Worst, perhaps there is a way to make us better. Why not let us read civilizing books? Why not let teenagers learn? Why do they deny us dictionaries, language books, and even books on religion? Why do they tell me, quote, “We don’t want you to benefit educationally or in any other way from your time here”? Without education, what do they expect us to be? Is this cruel, degrading, or just foolish?

6. Do you consider desecrating the Qur’an degrading? They did it to mine just yesterday. If so, is it appropriate to put American soldiers in the position of having to commit this desecration?

7. How long did you live in a cage in Vietnam? I have now spent 1,432 days in American cages in Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, many of them under torture. How long did you think that you could last before you finally lost touch with your sanity?

8. Would you have felt that your dignity was being respected if the Vietnamese had put you on trial, charged with conspiring with other Americans, as I am charged with conspiring with other Muslims? Would you have felt degraded if your tribunal had been televised, and you had been banned from speaking on your own behalf, while a Vietnamese military officer ‘represented’ you in front of six Vietnamese colonels, with a seventh Vietnamese colonel as judge who just gave a lecture on the need to use torture?

9. When will you come to visit the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay? You have a security clearance, so you can talk to me. Please do come to hear the truth.

10. When will the McCain Amendment really come into force?

Binyam Mohamed is a 27 year old Ethiopian man, who lived in London until 2001; he was seized in Pakistan, and rendered by the United States to Morocco where he was tortured for 18 months; he spent a further five months being abused in the Dark Prison in Kabul, before he was taken to Guantanamo, where he is now one of just ten prisoners who face a military commission – the rigged military courts that have been condemned by the U.N. and virtually every government in the world.