My first Guantánamo

Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac, we’re told to enter the gates, put our bags on the ground in front of us and stand with our backs against the wire-link fence. It's my first time at Guantánamo Bay.

Dogs are brought through, sniffing each bag one by one.“Go,” we’re told as soon as our bags pass the sniff test. The three of us walk to the podium where they take our paperwork. “Welcome to Guantánamo!” the guard says waving us through the checkpoint.

As a paralegal with Reprieve's Guantánamo team, this is my first trip to see to our clients imprisoned in the US military facility in Cuba. Thankfully, I’m accompanied by my colleague, Tara Murray and our Arabic interpreter, Felice. That morning, Tara and I met at the airport in Washington, D.C. After three hours of flight, we arrived at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida airport where we proceeded to check-in for Air Sunshine (no joke – that’s actually the name of the airline). We board the tiny, no-frills plane from the tarmac and fly for five hours over some of the bluest water I’ve ever seen. We finally touch down in Guantánamo on the leeward side.

After the security screening, we board an old school bus painted white and I have a quick tour of the leeward part of the island. We pull up in front of the hotel, aptly named The Certified Bachelors’ Quarters (or casually referred to as the CBQ) which, in its past life, were dorm rooms for the Navy guys. The rooms are quite large and consist of a double bedroom, a sitting room, a large bathroom and a kitchenette with a posh coffee maker (my saving grace), a microwave, stove, hob and fridge. A leather-bound book in the living room lists all of the entertainment one can experience in the Bay: cinema, bowling, beaches. The CBQ feels extremely out of place in Guantánamo Bay.

Tara and I headed out for dinner at the galley – the military cafeteria. We paid, went down the food line choosing whatever caught our fancy (insert flashbacks of school lunches here) and sat beneath massive fans which surrounded the room. We sat in silence after a long day of travel and two long weeks at the secure facility in Washington DC (where we have to go to read the classified documentation on our clients) and thinking about the next four days that loomed in front of us. Back at the CBQ, we went to our respective rooms to settle down and prepare for our client meetings the next day.

The alarm went off at 5.30am. I met Tara and Felice out front to take the bus to the ferry. I was dressed in a long skirt and long sleeves (so as not to offend our clients) and the morning heat was already stifling – not to mention that I tripped up the stairs after catching my foot in all the excess fabric of the skirt.

We boarded the ferry to the windward side with the locals who work on the base, but live on the leeward side. Felice knew just about everyone and asked them how their kids were doing, if they had plans to go home anytime soon, etc. Many of the people who live in Guantánamo Bay are refugees and work there to save enough money to send to their families back home. Sadly, they make next to nothing – far less than the minimum wage in the United States. We sat on the top deck of the ferry, which showed amazing views of the never-ending ocean. The ride was about 30 minutes long and then we disembarked where we had to wait for a habeas escort to pick us up and take us to breakfast.

Lawyers and their translators are not allowed to be left alone at any time on the windward side; at all times you are in the company of a habeas escort. The escorts are men and women who had previously worked in the camps with the detainees, but have been transferred to chauffeuring the habeas teams around. When it’s just you and your interpreter, this is not a bad deal. The escorts take you where you need to go – the library, the restaurants, the galley, the 'superstore' (aka the Navy Exchange or NEX) – when you need to go. However, if there is more than one habeas team there, it is a mess of a system. Petty arguments break out about where to eat lunch, when someone needs to go to the library to print out documents, when to catch the return ferry… Luckily, we were the only team at GTMO for the moment.

As an aside, Guantánamo is lousy with iguanas. One young escort told us how fearless they were of people because they had been fed so much by humans over the years – which also meant they were massive beasts. It is illegal to kill or maim an iguana in Guantánamo Bay which leaves them to overrun the base (in Cuba proper, they are eaten quite regularly). The escort detailed how you can throw a scrap of food and the iguana will jump to catch it in its mouth like a dog and how one habeas attorney had a part of his finger bitten off when dangling food out for an iguana.

There had been a miscommunication in the habeas department that day and they were not there when we arrived. After a few calls made by Felice, our escort arrived in an air-conditioned mini-van.  It’s about 8.30 in the morning on the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and the only place open is McDonalds. I hadn’t eaten McDonalds in years, but after being prodded by the escort to choose quickly since we were already running late, I picked a yogurt parfait, a bottle of water and massive cup of coffee. This was going to be my breakfast for the next four days. We ate in and then scuttled off to the waiting mini-van.

Since it was our first day on the base, Tara and I had to collect our security badges. We were taken to a little outbuilding (think of the buildings your school classes were held in when the proper building was too full to hold you all), showed them our security clearance papers, had our pictures taken and given a badge which we were to wear at all times.  

As we drove, I took note of what a strange, little locale this actually was. Scattered about were small housing communities that looked like they were straight out of the 1950s America, playgrounds included. They were all titled something pleasant (think along the lines of “Turtle Bay” or “Cove Beach”) which would almost make you want to live there until you remembered you were in GTMO. We drove through a security check-point where I had to hold my security badge up to my face to prove it was me (in case the habeas escort had accidentally picked up a random along the way?). They waved us through and in front of us loomed the ludicrous sign:

HONOR BOUND

painted on the fence surrounding the prison.

We pulled up to the gate which prominently displayed the dress code (a little late, no?) which mentioned no shorts, no hoop earrings, no open-toed shoes, etc. Our escort called inside and someone came to open the gate. The three of us walked into yet another portable room which was far too air-conditioned and went through a metal detector. We were then wanded one by one to guarantee we had no contraband, while another soldier flipped through our notes and notebooks to make sure we really weren’t smuggling anything in.

Normally, we would have brought sackfuls of food for the men, but we had come during Ramadan. This means the men would be fasting and would be at prayer most of the day. Instead, we had arrived with only an armful of books to submit to the SJA (Special Judge Advocate) for approval to give to our clients.  I also submitted photos of various flowers I had cut from ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ for our client, Ayman, who is quite the artist and likes to draw pictures of flowers. Bringing books straight to the base for approval was a brand new rule. I was quickly learning that GTMO changes and morphs almost every week. The portable room in which we were now standing was new since Tara’s last trip – previously it had been a tent without air-conditioning and before that, nothing. Lawyers and interpreters just stood in the heat while waiting to meet with clients.

After we were cleared to see our client (no contraband!), Tara and I went to the restroom to veil. She and I had bought new hijabs while in Washington, DC and had asked the salesclerk to show us how to properly veil. After a few attempts, we had the technique down.

We were led through two locked gates to yet another portable outbuilding (I was starting to realize that GTMO was almost purely made-up of these portable buildings). The military offered us each a bottle of cold water, but we refused as our client was most likely fasting (including water) and we did not want to drink in front of him.

I have been working at Reprieve for over two years and have read thousands of documents relating the conditions at Guantánamo. I still stopped short when I entered the room. On the right was a window-less room with a “bed” (or a padded bench is more correct) and a toilet situated behind a chain-link fence. It was a cage.

In front of us sat our client, Ahmed Belbacha behind a table…with his foot shackled to the floor. I knew that our clients had been shackled more often than not for the last seven, eight or nine years, but to see a human being chained to the floor is quite a different thing altogether. I strained to make sure my face didn’t portray the horror I was feeling. There was an extremely noisy air-conditioner behind him and a clock on the wall to our left.

Since we met with Ahmed in the morning, our meeting was only 2.5 hours long. The meetings with the client in the afternoon are 3.5 hours, although not during Ramadan (for prayer purposes) and not if there are more than one or two habeas teams on the base (to make sure everyone is cleared and gets to the ferry on time).

When our time was almost up, a guard knocked on the door and said “15 minutes”, closing the door behind him. When he returned, we had to pack everything up, say our goodbyes and return to the cold room for the military to go back through our notes. We got back into the mini-van where we submitted our notes we took during the meeting with the client. Habeas lawyers must submit all notes taken with clients to the Privilege Review Team in Washington, DC. They decide what is classified, what is For Official Use Only, and what is unclassified. They then return only those pages falling into the latter two categories to us. The notes deemed classified are held in the secure facility and it is only there that we can read them.

Our escort asked us where we wanted to eat lunch. We settled on the windward side galley so we could eat quickly and go to the library to print out documents for our afternoon meeting. We then headed to the NEX to grab food for dinner and I made a trip to the gift shop. You read that right – the gift shop. Guantánamo’s gift shop has an array of tacky things to send to your loved ones: mugs, snow globes, shot glasses, sweatshirts, Christmas ornaments… If you’re really keen, you can even get these items engraved in the back of the shop. I will repeat, again, that GTMO is a strange land indeed.

We loaded back into the van early to guarantee that we would be right on time for our next meeting. Tara, Felice and I followed the routine we had that morning. GTMO is one big routine, day in and day out. After the meeting, our escort drove us back to the ferry where we once again boarded with all the locals, done with work for the day.

Our interpreter, Felice, has his “own” room in the CBQ and he often leaves behind clothes, food, work, etc. since he is there at least once a week. This is pretty standard for the interpreters and many of the GTMO defence attorneys. Felice told us to unwind, prepare a bit for the next day and then come up to his room for dinner. We arrived and he had an amazing spread of hummus, spiced chicken, flatbread, olives – all made, amazingly, in the small quarters of his kitchenette. Tara and I returned to our rooms, once again to prepare for the next day.

The next two days went just like the first. I would compare it very much to the movie “Groundhog Day”, waking up at the same time, eating the same thing, going through the same actions (mainly, showing your badge, going through the metal detector, being wanded and so on). However, the great variance from day to day was meeting the brothers.  Meeting them was fantastic in that I got to put a personality to each guy and realise just how different they are. Some like to joke, others are more serious, some are loud and boisterous while some were so soft-spoken I could barely hear them over the hum of the entirely-too-loud air conditioner.

On the third night, we said our good-byes to Felice as the next day we did not need an interpreter. The next morning, waiting for the bus, we found another attorney and his interpreter standing there. It was a bit tricky to work out a schedule for the day with another team – we wanted to go to the library, they wanted to go to McDonalds first thing in the morning. Luckily, we got both tasks in. Tara and I decided to get our client some McDonalds that morning as well as we had heard that he was not fasting. The men in Guantánamo pass messages to each other to tell whomever is meeting with a lawyer next to get in touch with so-and-so, to bring such-and-such, etc. The base is like its own little telegram office.

As we passed through security this time, the captain took out his tiny little notebook from his breast pocket and wrote down, in minute detail, each item of food we brought in:

“One tea. 3 packets of sugar. 2 pots of cream.
2 hashbrowns
1 egg McMuffin – no meat”

And so on. It was one of the most time-consuming processes I’d seen at Guantánamo, which is saying something. He also took extensive notes of the food we had when we exited.

Our last day visiting the brothers ended, and we were exhausted. Guantánamo’s heat is exhausting, but moreover, the sheer emotional exhaustion was absolutely shattering. Tara and I went to the galley and grabbed a cafeteria dinner. On our walk back to the CBQ, we decided to wander down to the beach – a good 20 minute walk from the “main road”. We walked down the steep pathway and were greeted by a breathtaking view: a pebble beach littered with shells gradually turned to fine sand, sloping into turquoise water reigned in by a semi-circle of cragged rocks standing straight up into the air. Beyond the semi-circle was a vast expanse of ocean and rising behind us was a sheer cliff-face. We decided to turn back to the CBQ before we were lost in the dark, it felt like our day ended in a completely different world than where it had begun.

The next morning we set out early to wait for the bus to take us back to the airfield. We went through check-in and baggage screening (new rule) like one would at any other airport and set off back to Fort Lauderdale.

I realized then that as glad as I was to leave that strange place behind me, the men I had met that week had been there for seven, eight or even nine years. Over a hundred men are left behind, many without resettlement in sight.