Yesterday marked the 21st anniversary of the opening of the US prison in Guantanamo Bay. During those 21 years, 779 men were imprisoned in the six known camps of that extrajudicial detention center. Over the course of two decades, Guantanamo has grown from a small makeshift camp with cages to a maximum-security facility with cement bunker-like structures that spend close to $540 million a year.
Twenty-one years is a long time - a whole generation was born and grew up in that time. Four US presidents have resigned. The World Trade Center was rebuilt.
During this time, the US military, CIA and other intelligence agencies experimented with torture and other human rights abuses. Soldiers and even leaders have committed war crimes. The US Congress researched, wrote and released a report documenting the torture, abuse and inhumane treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other secret locations around the world, while preventing Guantanamo from closing.
Of those 779 prisoners at Guantanamo, nine are known to have died there; 706 were released or transferred to other locations; 20 were recommended for transfer but remain there; 12 of them were charged with crimes; two have been convicted, and three will remain in custody indefinitely until someone requests their release.
I was 19 years old when I was sent to Guantanamo. I arrived on February 9, 2002, blindfolded, with a bag over my head, chains on my hands and feet, beaten. When the soldiers removed the bandage, all I saw were cages with orange figures. I am tortured. I was lost, scared and confused. I didn't know where I was, or why I was taken there. I didn't know how long I would be locked up, or what would happen to me. No one knew where I was. I got the number and found myself between life and death.
I didn't know much about America. I knew it was supposed to be a land of law and chance. Everyone wanted to live there. We all believed that our detention would be short. We didn't do anything. They couldn't hold us for long without anyone caring. I could not even imagine that I would spend eight years in solitary confinement, that I would be imprisoned for 15 years and released, without ever being charged.
I recently turned 40, and even though I'm a grown man, I still feel like a 19-year-old who first arrived at Guantánamo. In a way, I got there - learning how to protest prisons, how to use my body to hunger strike, how to resist. I think a lot about the time I spent there. While my childhood friends were going to university, getting married, getting jobs, and starting their lives, I was fighting prison guards who harassed me while I tried to pray.
In the early days of Guantánamo, when it was still an undeveloped prison, a baby in fact, we all had questions: When will we be freed? Why are trials getting worse? Why doesn't anyone believe what we tell them? But we weren't the only ones with questions. The young guards also wanted to know what they are doing there, who we are, and why some leaders say we are the "worst of the worst" terrorists while others say we are "nobodies" and "farmers".
I think even Guantanamo himself wondered the same thing. I think Guantanamo wanted to know what kind of place it would become, how much use it would have, whether it would be useful.
We all waited for those answers, year after year, as we got older. My beard grew and my hair turned gray. Guantanamo was rusting, peeling, decaying; Camp X-Ray, the first camp is overgrown with grass. The guards changed, as did the prison managers. Guards who were kind to us were often demoted, punished, or left Guantánamo confused by the conflict between their official duty and what they knew was right. General Mueller, the architect of what the United States calls "advanced interrogation" and everyone else calls torture, went to Iraq and Abu Ghraib. Some prisoners were released. Some - like Jasir (21), Ali (26) and Mani (30) - died violently and mysteriously in custody.
Politicians outside of Guantánamo have learned to use the prison to create their false narratives - stories fed to us to sow fear. Because of them, Guantanamo remained open
The years passed like chapters in a book, and with each chapter we thought we would get answers to our questions or that the chapters would at least change. There were new beginnings and new phases, but the story remained the same: the trials continued. As well as inhumane treatment and religious harassment.
Each chapter grew darker as we lost touch with the stories of our lives before Guantánamo. When we were taken to Guantanamo we were fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, we had families, dreams and lives in the outside world. In Guantanamo, we were just numbers, animals in cages, completely cut off from the world we knew, caught in an endless loop of interrogations during which they try to force us to admit that we are Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. We lived the lawlessness and abuse of Guantanamo, we watched Guantanamo grow and develop, while our story remained trapped.
We were becoming Guantanamo like our stories. We resisted and protested our arbitrary indefinite detention, we fought and went on hunger strike so that the world would hear about us, see our suffering, and know our humanity. We also had moments of joy, creativity and brotherhood. We sang, danced, joked and laughed. We were creating art. We became brothers and friends, even with some guards and employees who treated us humanly. We gradually lost touch with ourselves from the time before Guantanamo became our life, our world, our only story.
As Guantanamo aged, became stronger, more durable, we also aged but became weaker and more fragile and still reduced to cages. We heard that some people around the world protested our imprisonment and torture and campaigned to close Guantanamo. This gave us hope and made us feel that we were not forgotten. But others, like politicians outside of Guantánamo, have learned to use the prison to create their false narratives—stories fed to us to sow fear. Because of them, Guantanamo remained open.
Towards the end of my imprisonment, Guantanamo grew, in a way it became more mature and open. We have changed too; we have connected with the outside world. We tried to recover those parts of ourselves that were taken from us and lost. I took classes and created art. I learned English and wrote stories about Guantanamo. After 15 years, I worried that I wouldn't survive in the world once I got out. I grew up and became a man. Guantanamo was all I knew. My friends were there.
I thought that by coming out I would finally be able to write new chapters; different, with a good ending. That I would end the story the way I wanted: Guantanamo would become just a memory; I will move on, go to school, get married, start my life. But the prison didn't want to let me go. He surprised me with a new story.
Like me, hundreds of men have been freed from Guantánamo. Some went to their homelands to stay with their families. Many were sent to places they did not know - Uruguay, Kazakhstan, Slovakia. I was sent to Serbia, where I had no friends or family and did not speak the language. We tried to create our stories in those new places, stories without Guantanamo. However, Guantanamo would not let us go. We live with the stigma of being there.
Thirty-five men are still there. President Biden is quietly working to shut down the prison camp, but without the cooperation of the US Congress, Guantanamo will remain open.
For years, ex-prisoners, activists, lawyers and journalists have been working to write the final chapter at Guantánamo, a chapter that ends with justice, accountability, reconciliation and prison closure. Let's make it happen, so that one year we can write a new story about life after Guantánamo.
The author is an artist, activist and former Guantanamo detainee; he was released in 2016 after spending more than 15 years in prison without charge or trial. He is the author of the memoir "Don't Forget Us: Lost and Found in Guantanamo".
The article was taken from "Gadijan"
Translation: N. Bogetić
Bonus video:
