How To Survive Guantanamo Prison
During his campaign for election, Barack Obama promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He said, on many occasions, that he would close Camp X-ray within the first year of his presidency.
His year is up!
After a year of “closing” the prison, 200 prisoners remain in the facility. Many of those, still in detention, have been there for eight years. 800 prisoners have been released so far. Of those let go, only one has been found guilty of any crime. He was convicted by a dubious military commission, a verdict that is likely to be overturned.
How does one survive in a detention facility for years? Ask Omar Deghayes.
“For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was imprisoned in Guantánamo and subjected to such brutal torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and his sanity.
Deghayes developed a personal policy of resistance. Guards would typically arrive at a prisoner’s cell and spray pepper and other chemicals through the “bean-hole”, the hatch in the door. While most prisoners cowered at the back of their cell, Deghayes says he would grab the guards’ hands and attack them. He fought back, as viciously as he could, trying to take the fights with guards out of the privacy of his cell and into the corridors.
“It was chaos; they would fall on top of each other and it was embarrassing [for them]. They were wearing all this heavy stuff [body armour] which didn’t help either,” he says. Some guards became afraid of going into his cell. Most, he says, were Puerto Rican and were not driven by the patriotism of the “war on terror”. They did not want to get hurt for their meagre wages.”
How I fought to survive Guantánamo (Guardian UK)
Tags: CIA, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo, prison, torture
