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al-qaida
The US Is Guantánamo's Greatest Captive
We weren't the only victims of Guantánamo: All Americans and America's values and justice system were as well.
Feb 24, 2023
It was 21 years ago this month that I was flown in the belly of a U.S. cargo plane, hooded, blindfolded, gagged, and chained in an orange jumpsuit, for over 40 hours. I didn't know where I was being taken, or why.
My journey into the unknown started when I was sold to the CIA as an "Egyptian Al-Qaida general" in 2001 after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. I was 18 years old, and I am from Yemen. After I was imprisoned for around three months in a black site in Afghanistan, I was taken to Kandahar military prison, an airbase that served as a transit station to the unknown. I wasn't the only one being held there.
When a huge cargo plane landed in Kandahar three weeks later, we all knew that some of us would disappear. Without being able to see, hear, or speak, we were dragged to the first plane blindfolded, and then chained to the floor. It was a journey of pain and suffering. When the plane eventually landed, we hoped it would be the end to our suffering. It wasn't. It was only the beginning of a longer, more brutal journey.
Without being able to see, hear, or speak, we were dragged to the first plane blindfolded, and then chained to the floor.
Soldiers never seem to get tired of the beating and shouting. When the second flight ended, it was still not the end of the journey. The U.S. Marines snatched and dragged me onto a bus, and then onto a ferry. Where was I going? The first clue came from the sea, which was the first friend who welcomed me. A Marine shouted in English and an Arab Marine translated: "You are under the control of the U.S. Marines!" They continued to shout and physically assault us for the rest of the way.
The ferry eventually docked and a bus took us on the final leg of the journey. We were disembarked by being snatched, one after another. I was forced to sit on my knees for hours. The duct tape over my mouth blocked my screams. Every cell in my body was screaming but no one could hear my cries. They could see the pain, and I felt like maybe their twisted humanity was screaming back, too.
After going through the processing station—where we experienced humiliation and degradation over and over again—soldiers dragged my naked body over sharp gravel to a cage where an IRF (Immediate Reaction Force) team piled on top of me and started removing the chains violently; then the hood, goggles, earmuffs, and the duct tape. Soldiers shouted into my ears: "DETAINEE 441! STOP RESISTING!" Resisting? I was barely breathing. Without knowing it, what they did at that moment was introduce the word "resist" into my mental landscape. That's what I needed to do; I just had no idea how.
At night, it took a while for my sight to come back, but it was still blurry. All I could see was an ocean of orange figures caged just like me, all I could hear were rattling chains, slamming doors, soldiers shouting in their loudest voice, "SHUT THE F**K UP, DON'T LOOK AT ME, LOOK DOWN, NO TALKING!" The dogs barking in the near distance sounded less aggressive than them. The barking never stopped. As in never. It sounded as though they were protesting at the inhumane treatment in their own way.
On my first morning in Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp—for that is where I was—I took a long look around me. I found myself caged in a rose chain-link cage where even animals wouldn't survive. There were many others there too. I could see swollen faces with bruises, black eyes, shaved heads and faces, split lips, and bleeding wounds. We all looked the same. It was like a signature that the soldiers wanted to leave on us all. U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration needed to prove that they were "winning" the "War on Terror," so they called us the worst of the worst.
We were dragged to this unknown place from different parts of the world; some of us were sold for a bounty and some were handed over to the CIA by their own governments. It was the first time in history that such a thing was done: There we were; 800 men and children—yes, children—from 50 nationalities, speaking over 20 different languages, having different mindsets and cultures, snatched and flown to a dark hole hidden from the rest of the world. This American prison camp wasn't even in America.
Everything was taken from us, and we became just orange figures with numbers printed on a bracelet locked on our wrists. Our captors stripped us of our freedom and imprisoned our bodies and wanted to control us and deny our humanity, but they failed to understand that what really makes us unique individuals are characteristics such as our names, values, relations, morals, beliefs, ethics, emotions, memories, language, knowledge, experiences, talents, feelings, dreams, nationalities and, of course, our innate distinctive humanity. These were part of another DNA, and a survival kit which the U.S. government didn't want to know about. They thought that they could control our bodies and freedom, but they would never control our hearts and souls.
Yes, we were isolated and disconnected from our families and the rest of the world, but even in America's dark hole, life won. We created our own world. Yes, we were tortured and abused, but we also sang, danced, resisted, and survived. Also, we soon found other generous guests at Guantánamo who came to visit us regularly, who challenged the U.S. restrictions and never had CIA clearance to visit. They came to share our meals, to listen to us, and to tell us that everything will be okay. We became friends and families with the iguanas, cats, birds, and banana rats.
Guantánamo started with a selection of Muslims from around the world, but it kept changing, evolving, and growing. We lived through Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta, Camp 5, Camp 6, Camp Echo, and others. We went through the torture programs and abuse by interrogators, psychologists, and a whole host of camp staff. We went on hunger strike to protest against the torture and injustice, only to be tortured more. We lived through all the years of Guantánamo: We lived through its Dark Age, its Golden Age, and back again to the Dark Age. With each year we grew older and our imprisonment only settled into us more deeply. Our captors got more creative in developing torture techniques to break us and to try to turn us into something we were not.
To survive through the darkness in that dark hole, we only had each other and whatever makes U.S. human beings. We were fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons from different parts of the world. Some of us were teachers, doctors, soldiers, commanders, journalists, lawyers, tribal elders, mafia men, poets, and professors; and some were spies. We had no shared life before Guantánamo, nothing in common. At first, we started introducing ourselves to each other, and getting to know each other. I wish our captives had taken time to get to know who we really were as well, instead of just needing to prove that we were hardened terrorists.
The cycle of hardship and the torture we endured forged strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship that helped us to survive.
The cycle of hardship and the torture we endured forged strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship that helped us to survive. We started developing a new shared life and a new "us" at Guantánamo. Our brains started constructing new memories, relations, knowledge, and experiences, but everything related back to and was based on Guantánamo life. Sharing our knowledge, experience, and culture with each other created a beautiful Guantánamo where we sang songs in different languages, danced dances from different cultures, and laughed and cried together. After years, we grew together and became part of each other's lives and memories. Guantánamo became part of us and part of our life. Guantánamo kept growing, evolving, and changing, feeding on our lives and humanity. With it, we grew old too.
We weren't the only victims of Guantánamo: All Americans and America's values and justice system were as well. There were many Americans who came to work in the detention camp, and they became victims too when they refused to abandon their humanity and treat us badly. Some took a stand against the system and were imprisoned; others were fired or demoted. We fought for them as much as we fought for each other because they were humans and victims too, regardless of their nationality or which side they were on. Injustice has no boundaries, color, or nationality. As we were living in Guantánamo, we didn't want anyone else to experience it.
Through the Dark Age of 2002-2010, we protested and carried out hunger strikes for years. We fought back as much as we could; we learned from each other and taught each other. In Guantánamo's Golden Age we learned English and art; we painted and we made ships, cabinets, trees, all from remnants of trash and leftover cardboard.
In Guantánamo, I grew up, from a young boy to a caged man. My world was Guantánamo and it's where half of my life was taken, where days, months, and years were the same.
Then after around 15 years, I was forced to leave Guantánamo the way that I was taken there, hooded and chained. When they came to tell me about my release, they told me, "You have no choice." I made peace with Guantánamo in Guantánamo and made the decision that it wouldn't change me; it's part of me and of who I am.
The whole world agrees that Guantánamo is a stain on our humanity and one of the biggest human right violations of the 21st century. There are those who tortured and abused us at Guantánamo who are still bragging about their time there and their work. Their humanity was the first real victim of that place.
Despite all these reflections, though, Guantánamo hasn't left us yet. Even today, there are 34 men still in Guantánamo, 20 of whom have been cleared for release. There are many calls for the closure of America's black hole detention center. For us, closing Guantánamo does not only mean shutting down the facility, but also there being full accountability for the U.S. government for what happened there: acknowledgment of the cruel and inhumane treatment, a full and unreserved apology, and reparations for the victims.
Guantánamo symbolizes oppression, injustice, torture, and lawlessness. In this way, Guantánamo is now everywhere, and I can say—in the strangest of ironies—that even though we were prisoners of the U.S. destructive "War on Terror", the United States is and always has been a prisoner of its own violence. Guantánamo is yet another chapter of this violence and one whose legacy will live on long after the prison is closed. The United States of America itself is Guantánamo's greatest captive.
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We Don't Need to Wait for Chilcot, Blair Lied to Us About Iraq. Here's the Evidence.
With the help of the BBC and Dr David Morrison, I carried out my own inquiry. The facts are devastating for Blair, for Parliament and for all of us.
Oct 29, 2015
Two weeks ago, I found myself in conversation with Dr Hans Blix, head of the United Nations weapons inspection team, ahead of the Iraq invasion in 2003.
Dr Blix told me that Tony Blair's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were simply not an accurate reflection of the intelligence provided to the British government.
"The big difference in the British dossier," Dr Blix told me, "was that they simply asserted that these items are there. But when Mr Blair asserts that there were weapons, well, that's an assertion, which was not supported by evidence. Both the UK and the US replaced question marks with exclamation marks. I certainly think it was a misrepresentation."
"Both the UK and the US replaced question marks by exclamation marks. I certainly think it was a misrepresentation."
--Hans Blix
He talked about how cautious assessments were turned into bold statements by Blair and the UK government. For example, intelligence chiefs gave this assessment on March 15, 2002: "Intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles programs is sporadic and patchy."
Three weeks later, the prime minister stridently claimed: "We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons."
Shaken by the force of his testimony, I eventually said to Dr Blix: "That's devastating. And so basically you are telling me that Mr Blair misrepresented the truth, lied indeed to the British parliament to make the case for an illegal war?"
He paused. Then he said: "Well, I'm a diplomat, so I'm not using such... such words. But in substance, yes. They misrepresented what we did, and they did so in order to get the authorization that they shouldn't have had".
Lies, delays, and a national embarrassment
Dr Blix's comments were made before Tony Blair claimed to CNN earlier this week that the information he had received was "wrong". As far as Hans Blix is concerned, Tony Blair misled the British public and parliament about the intelligence he was given.
My conversation with Dr Blix was the culminating moment of my search for the truth about how Britain came to invade Iraq. It is now a matter of days before John Chilcot writes to David Cameron, setting out the timetable for publication of his long-delayed inquiry into the Iraq war.
One report has suggested that Chilcot may push back his report as far as 2017 - no less than seven years late, and a full decade after the last British troops pulled out of Iraq in 2007. The delay in his inquiry, commissioned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009, has become a national scandal. This is why I approached the BBC a few months ago and asked the Corporation for permission to carry out my Chilcot inquiry.
I pointed out that most of the testimony to Chilcot was publicly available. I also suggested that we should call our own witnesses.
The BBC agreed. For the last few weeks a producer, a researcher and I have been seeking answers to the key questions about the lead up to the Iraq war. The results can be heard tonight on BBC Radio 4.
What we need to know
As background to our work, I asked my friend Dr David Morrison to prepare a series of background narratives on the four crucial questions. These are published today by openDemocracy and they address four key questions:
Question 3:Was the war legal?
Question 4:Did our military action in Iraq increase the terrorist threat to Britain?
I have known Dr Morrison for more than 12 years. Back in 2003, I read the devastating evidence that he dispatched to the Foreign Affairs Committee as it made its report into the Iraq war. The Foreign Affairs Committee ignored the thrust of Dr Morrison's arguments. However, they published his brilliant paper as a memorandum for their own report.
His paper and a later one on the Committee's findings, which are still worth reading today, provided devastating evidence that Tony Blair misled the British public about the threat from Saddam Hussein in order to make the case for war.
I have not accepted all of Morrison's arguments. However, his narratives provided an invaluable basis for our work, because he has a remarkable gift for highlighting like nothing else the key issues.
These documents set out with great clarity the key facts that everyone will need in order to assess whether John Chilcot has produced a fair report. I have summarised Morrison's most devastating points here.
Tony Blair misrepresented the evidence on WMD
On February 14 2003, Hans Blix told the UN Security Council: "Many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which Iraq provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent were 'unaccounted for'. One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist."
Yet less than a month later, on March 18, Tony Blair told MPs: "When the inspectors left in 1998, they left unaccounted for 10,000 liters of anthrax; a far-reaching VX nerve agent program; up to 6,500 chemical munitions; at least 80 tonnes of mustard gas, and possibly more than 10 times that amount; unquantifiable amounts of sarin, botulinum toxin and a host of other biological poisons; and an entire Scud missile program. We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years--contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence--Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd."
There, Tony Blair stated as a fact that proscribed material deemed "unaccounted for" by inspectors actually existed. In doing so, he seriously misled the House of Commons.
Furthermore. Blair neglected to mention that his own intelligence services had advised that even if Saddam still had weapons stockpiled, they would have degraded to the point where they were unusable.
Tony Blair stated as a fact that proscribed material deemed "unaccounted for" by inspectors actually existed. In doing so, he seriously misled the House of Commons.
According to a 2002 report the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), much of Iraq's pre-Gulf war stocks of chemical and biological agents listed by Blair, if they existed at all, would have degraded to such an extent that they would no longer be effective as warfare agents. The government's own dossier, which was published a few weeks later, referred to the IISS approvingly as "an independent and well-researched overview."
Among other things, the IISS report notes: "As a practical matter, any nerve agent from this period [pre-1991] would have deteriorated by now ..." It also says: "Any VX produced by Iraq before 1991 is likely to have decomposed over the past decade ...Any G-agent or V-agent stocks that Iraq concealed from UNSCOM inspections are likely to have deteriorated by now. Any botulinum toxin produced in 1989-90 would no longer be useful".
The prime minister didn't tell MPs any of this on 18 March 2003 when they voted to go to war.
What Blair didn't tell us about Hussein Kamal
Blair also used vital testimony selectively in order to build the case for war. On 18 March 2003, he told MPs:
In August [1995], it [Iraq] provided yet another full and final declaration. Then, a week later, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. He disclosed a far more extensive biological weapons program and, for the first time, said that Iraq had weaponized the program--something that Saddam had always strenuously denied. All this had been happening while the inspectors were in Iraq."
The prime minister chose not to divulge to MPs that Kamal also told UN inspectors that, on his orders, all Iraq's proscribed weapons had been destroyed.
A transcript of the IAEA/UNSCOM interview with Kamal came into the public domain in early 2003. In that interview, he said: "I ordered destruction [sic] of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed". He described anthrax as the "main focus" of Iraq's biological program, and when asked, "Were weapons and agents destroyed?" he replied: "Nothing remained". Of missiles, he said: "not a single missile left but they had blueprints and molds [sic] for production. All missiles were destroyed."
A transcript of a CNN interview with Hussein Kamal on 21 September 1995 can be read here. In it, he said "Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction".
The Iraq war made Britain more vulnerable to terrorist attacks
In the build up to the Iraq war, Blair's government was repeatedly warned by intelligence chiefs that invading Iraq would dramatically increase the threat of terrorist attacks on UK soil, and act as a recruiting tool for al Qaida and other extremists across the world.
Sir David Omand, Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator in the Cabinet Office from June 2003 until April 2005, has testified to Chilcot that the Joint Intelligence Committee [JIC] "judged that the build-up of forces in the Gulf, in the region, before an attack on Iraq, would increase public hostility to the west and western interests.
He also said the JIC "warned that AQ [al-Qaeda] and other Islamist extremists may initiate attacks in response to coalition military action. We [the intelligence services] pointed out that AQ would use an attack on Iraq as justification ... for terrorist attacks on Western or Israeli targets. We pointed out that AQ was already in their propaganda portraying US-led operations as being a war on Islam and that, indeed, this view was attracting widespread support across the Muslim community".
"Coalition attacks would, we said, radicalize increasing numbers... [and] that the threat from AQ would increase at the onset of any attack on Iraq and that we should all be prepared for a higher threat level to be announced and for more terrorist activity in the event of war."
In addition, Eliza Manningham Butler, head of MI5 at the time, has testified to Chilcot that the Iraq war "substantially" exacerbated the overall terrorist threat MI5 and fellow services had to deal with. She said there was hard evidence for this, for instance "numerical evidence of the number of plots, the number of leads, the number of people identified, and the correlation of that to Iraq and statements of people as to why they were involved, the discussions between them as to what they were doing".
"Coalition attacks would, we said, radicalize increasing numbers... [and] that the threat from Al Qaeda would increase at the onset of any attack on Iraq."
--Sir David Omand
She added: "By 2003, I needed to ask the prime minister to double our budget. This is unheard of, it's certainly unheard of today, but he and the Treasury and the Chancellor accepted that because I was able to demonstrate the scale of the problem that we were confronted by."
In the build up to war, Blair's government was very keen to bring intelligence assessments of the threat from Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" to public attention, but it kept silent about the pre-war intelligence assessments that the al-Qaeda threat to Britain would be heightened by British participation in military action against Iraq. Had MPs been aware of these assessments on 18 March 2003, they might not have given the green light to military action.
On that day, Tony Blair did not tell them that al-Qaida activity in Britain would likely increase with murderous effect if they voted for war. On the contrary, he told them that a vote for war was a vote to combat al-Qaida; that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would prevent a future alliance between him and al-Qaida, as a consequence of which al-Qaida would be armed with "weapons of mass destruction".
'Go blame the French'
On March 18 2003 Tony Blair claimed that France had undermined support for a second UN resolution, which would have authorized the use of force to disarm Saddam. He told the House of Commons: "Last Monday [10 March], we were getting very close with it [the second resolution]. We very nearly had the majority agreement... Then, on Monday night, France said that it would veto a second resolution, whatever the circumstances."
In fact, France said no such thing. On the contrary, in an interview that Monday night, President Chirac made it very clear that there were circumstances in which France would not veto a resolution for war. Early in the interview, he identified two different scenarios, one when the UN inspectors report progress and the other when the inspectors say their task is impossible - in which case, in his words, "regrettably, the war would become inevitable." That portion reads:
"The inspectors have to tell us: 'we can continue and, at the end of a period which we think should be of a few months' - I'm saying a few months because that's what they have said - 'we shall have completed our work and Iraq will be disarmed'. Or they will come and tell the Security Council: 'we are sorry but Iraq isn't cooperating, the progress isn't sufficient, we aren't in a position to achieve our goal, we won't be able to guarantee Iraq's disarmament'. In that case it will be for the Security Council and it alone to decide the right thing to do. But in that case, of course, regrettably, the war would become inevitable. It isn't today."
From that, it is plain as a pikestaff that there were circumstances in which France would not have vetoed military action, namely, if the UN inspectors reported that they couldn't do their job. They had never reported this. By contrast, as Hans Blix told the Chilcot Inquiry in 2010, inspectors were given access to every site they asked to visit and inspect: "on no particular occasion were we denied access".
Tony Blair gave Alastair Campbell "his marching orders to play the anti-French card with the Sun and others."
This is not the story the British public was told. The day after Chirac's interview, on 11 March 2003, Blair blamed France for the US/UK failure to persuade more than two other members of the UN Security Council (Spain and Bulgaria) to vote for war. We know this from evidence given to the Chilcot inquiry on 19 January 2011 by Stephen Wall, who was Tony Blair's EU adviser from 2000 to 2004. He confirmed that he had witnessed Tony Blair in a Downing Street corridor give Alastair Campbell "his marching orders to play the anti-French card with the Sun and others".
Over to Chilcot
On the basis of the evidence before Chilcot, there is little reason to doubt that the Blair government misrepresented the intelligence to parliament and to the British public to make the case for an illegal war in which 179 British soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died.
The invasion of Iraq was intended to deal with international terrorism. It is plain that the terrorist threat to Britain has increased beyond measure as a result of the decision to go into Iraq.
Let's see if John Chilcot agrees.
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Set Artists Hack 'Homeland' to Expose Show's Racist Narrative
Thanks to creative intervention, Arabic graffiti stating 'Homeland is racist' featured in key scene
Oct 15, 2015
The U.S. television series "Homeland"--widely criticized as Islamophobic and racist--was hacked by three street artists who were hired to paint "authentic" Arabic graffiti for a film set depicting a refugee camp on the Syria/Lebanon border.
The artists staged an intervention by tagging the slogan "Homeland is racist" on the set, which is located just outside of Berlin. Because the production company could not read the Arabic graffiti, the subversive message was featured in a key scene of Season V, Episode II that aired Sunday and depicts the character of CIA agent Carrie Mathison, played by actress Claire Danes.
"In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completes the horror-fantasy of the Middle East, a poster image dehumanizing an entire region to human-less figures in black burkas and moreover, this season, to refugees," declared the artists--Heba Amin, Caram Kapp, and Stone--in a statement released Wednesday.
The artists painted numerous other slogans on the set, including: "This show does not represent the views of the artists" and "Black Lives Matter."
The trio said they were hired after being approached in June by a German artist contacted by "Homeland's" production company that was looking for "Arabian street artists."
In their initial meeting, the artists said they were "given a set of images of pro-Assad graffiti--apparently natural in a Syrian refugee camp. Our instructions were: (1) the graffiti has to be apolitical, (2) you cannot copy the images because of copyright infringement, (3) writing Mohamed is the greatest, is okay of course.'"
The artists wrote that they ultimately decided to take the job to seize on "our moment to make our point by subverting the message using the show itself."
The Showtime series has been widely criticized for its Islamophobic and racist stereotypes, as well as its glaring misinformation about the Middle East. Writer Laura Durkay argued last year in the Washington Post, "The entire structure of 'Homeland' is built on mashing together every manifestation of political Islam, Arabs, Muslims and the whole Middle East into a Frankenstein-monster global terrorist threat that simply doesn't exist."
"Granted, the show gets high praise from the American audience for its criticism of American government ethics, but not without dangerously feeding into the racism of the hysterical moment we find ourselves in today."
--Artists Heba Amin, Caram Kapp, and Stone
And Pakistani lawyer and social activist Mohammad Jibran pointed out that Season IV, which sends CIA character Carrie Mathison to Pakistan, is rife with inaccuracies and absurdities, including naming a terrorist villain after the actual former Pakistani ambassador to the United States.
The "Arabian street artists" behind this latest sabotage listed numerous other offenses. "The very first season of 'Homeland' explained to the American public that Al Qaida is actually an Iranian venture," they wrote. "According to the storyline, they are not only closely tied to Hezbollah, but Al Qaida even sought revenge against the U.S. on behalf of Iran. This dangerous phantasm has become mainstream 'knowledge' in the US and has been repeated as fact by many mass media outlets."
"Five seasons later, the plot has come a long way, but the thinly veiled propaganda is no less blatant," the artists continue. "Now the target is freedom of information and privacy neatly packaged as the threat posed by Whistleblowers, the Islamic State, and the rest of Shia Islam."
Yet the program continues to receive high accolades and viewership, in what critics say reflects--and perhaps feeds--a culture of racism and ignorance that has real consequences.
"Granted, the show gets high praise from the American audience for its criticism of American government ethics," the artists noted, "but not without dangerously feeding into the racism of the hysterical moment we find ourselves in today."
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