Book Excerpt: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo (Murat Kurnaz / Esquire)

[struggle4progress]

... excerpt from ... Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo ...

By Murat Kurnaz ...

"After the incident with the Koran, we went ahead and elected a leader. All of the prisoners were allowed to nominate a candidate. It was a secret vote—the Americans knew nothing about it. Out of 500 prisoners, ten men were chosen, and suggestions were collected and evaluated. Those ten men chose three other men, who in turn elected our leader. We called him the emir. No one but the three men who had elected him knew who he was. Officially this man was not our leader. We chose a spokesperson to deal with the Americans and to appear as out leader. In that way, the real emir could remain in the background, undetected.

…Before long the spokesperson disappeared for months…But the real emir was making decisions behind the scenes. He collected opinions from all the prisoners’ representatives and decided what the figurehead emir would tell the Americans.

We wanted to put an end to the defilements of the Koran. We wanted the Americans to respect our faith and stop playing the U.S. national anthem during our prayers. We wanted to restrict the level of torture and get medicine for some of the wounded prisoners. Sometimes the Americans seemed to accede to our demands, for example regarding medicine, but of course we had exactly no way of knowing what exactly it was that they were giving the sick prisoners. We wanted them to treat the sick, elderly, and handicapped prisoners more respectfully. We wanted proper food.”

http://www.esquire.com/features/wifl-08-extras/guantanamo-book-excerpt-0808