Op-Ed Columnist
A Prison of Shame, and It=92s Ours
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinion/04kristof.html?th&emc=3Dth
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 4, 2008
My Times colleague Barry Bearak was imprisoned by the brutal regime in
Zimbabwe last month. Barry was not beaten, but he was infected with
scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a
court after four nights in jail and then released.
Alas, we don=92t treat our own inmates in Guant=E1namo with even that much
respect for law. On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a
cameraman for Al Jazeera who had been held without charges for more
than six years. Mr. Hajj has credibly alleged that he was beaten, and
that he was punished for a hunger strike by having feeding tubes
forcibly inserted in his nose and throat without lubricant, so as to
rub tissue raw.
=93Conditions in Guant=E1namo are very, very bad,=94 Mr. Hajj said in a
televised interview from his hospital bed in Sudan, adding, =93In
Guant=E1namo, you have animals that are called iguanas ... that are
treated with more humanity.=94
Al Jazeera=92s director general, Wadah Khanfar, said by telephone from
the hospital that Mr. Hajj was so frail when he arrived that he had to
be carried off the plane and into an ambulance. Guant=E1namo inmates are
not allowed to see their families, so that evening Mr. Hajj met his 7-
year-old son, whom he had last seen as a baby.
Reliable information is still scarce about Guant=E1namo, but
increasingly we=92re gaining glimpses of life there =97 and they are
painful to read.
Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, has just published
a memoir of his nearly five years in Guant=E1namo. He describes
prolonged torture that included interruptions by a doctor to ensure
that he was well enough for the torture to continue.
Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, an American woman of Afghan descent who worked
as an interpreter, has written a book to be published next month, =93My
Guant=E1namo Diary,=94 that is wrenching to read. She describes a
pediatrician who returned to Afghanistan in 2003 to help rebuild his
country =97 and was then arrested by Americans, beaten, doused with icy
water and paraded around ****d. Finally, after three years, officials
apparently decided he was innocent and sent him home.
A third powerful new book about Guant=E1namo, by an American lawyer
named Steven Wax, is summed up by its title: =93Kafka Comes to America.=94
The new material suggests two essential truths about Guant=E1namo:
First, most of the inmates were probably innocent all along, but
Pakistanis or Afghans turned them over to America in exchange for
large cash rewards. The moment we offered $25,000 rewards for Al Qaeda
sup****ters, any Arab in the region risked being kidnapped and turned
over as a terrorism suspect.
Second, torture was routine, especially early on. That=92s why more than
100 prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Guant=E1namo.
One of the men still in Guant=E1namo is Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi. He is a
Libyan who had been running a bakery in Afghanistan with his Afghan
wife. Bounty hunters turned him over to the United States as a
terrorism suspect, and he has been in custody for more than six
years.
Mr. Ghizzawi was taken before a =93combatant status review tribunal,=94
which ruled unanimously in November 2004 that he was not an =93enemy
combatant.=94 One member of the tribunal later scoffed that the supposed
evidence against him was =93garbage.=94 But a later tribunal reversed the
first one=92s finding, and Mr. Ghizzawi is being held indefinitely,
though he is unlikely to face trial.
Candace Gorman, a lawyer for Mr. Ghizzawi, says that his health has
sharply deteriorated since she first saw him. He is in constant pain
from severe liver disease resulting from hepatitis B that first
manifested itself in Guant=E1namo, Ms. Gorman said, adding that he also
contracted tuberculosis there.
Worse, a doctor at Guant=E1namo twice told Mr. Ghizzawi in December that
he has H.I.V., she said. Ms. Gorman believes that officials were just
trying to torment him.
A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, denied that any doctor
ever told Mr. Ghizzawi that he had H.I.V., or that Mr. Ghizzawi
contracted tuberculosis or first suffered from hepatitis while in
Guant=E1namo.
Granted, it can be hard to figure out what version to believe. When I
started writing about Guant=E1namo several years ago, I thought the
inmates might be lying and the Pentagon telling the truth. No doubt
some inmates lie, and some surely are terrorists. But over time =97 and
it=92s painful to write this =97 I=92ve found the inmates to be more
credible than American officials.
Both Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates have pushed to shut down
Guant=E1namo because it undermines America=92s standing and influence.
They have been overruled by Dick Cheney and other hard-liners. In
reality, it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America=92s image
and interests as much as President Bush and Mr. Cheney already have
with Guant=E1namo.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog,
www.nytimes.com/onthegrou=
nd,
and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
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