Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo by Murat Kurnaz

[leftchick]

I certainly hope President Obama's legal team addresses the issues of the innocents still being held....

:(



Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo by Murat Kurnaz (part 1)

A Turkish citizen born and raised in Germany, Murat Kurnaz was only 19 when he was arrested without explanation in Pakistan in October 2001. Handed over to the US, he spent the next 1,600 days enduring the brutal life of a prisoner at Guantanamo and various forms of torture, before being released without explanation or apology in August 2006. Here he describes the early days in his cage in Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/23/extract

<snip>

"Do you know why you're here?" I heard the man with the nametag ask.

"Do you know what the Germans did to the Jews?" he said. "That's exactly what we're going to do with you."

<snip>

Nuri was a Turk I'd met in Kandahar. He sat next to me in front of the hangar while we were waiting to be loaded on to the plane. He had looked terrible. His eyes were swollen, his lips were split, his wrists and ankles bled from the cuffs, and some of his teeth had been knocked out. I had asked him what his name was and where he came from. He said he came from Izmir. That was the city where my father was born.

Nuri was an electrician. He was married and had two children. We had heard the constant screaming of prisoners being tortured in the hangar. Nuri had said: "Now we're going back to where we came from."

Allah, he said, had created us from earth, and the earth was where we would return.

"Do you think," Nuri had asked, "that they'll just let us go after all they've done to us?"

"In any case, it will be better than here," I had answered, "whether or not they kill us."

Nuri had laughed. "You're right. But I'm still worried about my children."

So Nuri was here. I heard him, but I wasn't able to turn my head enough to see him. I couldn't answer.




http://www.esquire.com/features/what-it-feels-like/guantanamo-prisoner-0808





They used to beat everybody. There was a man — he was really old and couldn’t see and couldn’t hear. If the guards told him something to do and he didn’t do it because he couldn’t hear, they went into his cage and beat him up. They did this for a couple minutes, and after that they took him out and brought him to isolation. That happened to me as well, a lot of times.

There doesn’t need to be a reason. First they would use a pepper spray. It’s burning. It is hot. You have trouble breathing and opening your eyes. All of your face is burning — your eyes especially and inside your nose. You can’t open your eyes because they are burning very hot. Since you have trouble breathing, you have to cough all the time. Then they’d punch me with their elbows. After they were done, they would write something down as to what could be the reason for it.

We were allowed to do the call to prayer every day, but they used to play music over us at the same time. The music some of the time was rock music, but most of the time they played the national anthem. Or they used to kick the doors.

The worst thing about being in Guantánamo was having to live in the small cages. Most of the time there was nothing in there with me. Sometimes I had only my shorts on and nothing else. Nothing else except my shorts and myself.

I never lost my hope, of course. Not losing my hope is an important part of my religion.

[PDJane]

1. I have the book.

I haven't read it, because I can't manage to get through it. It's still sitting here on my shelves as a reminder of how cruel an empire can be.

[leftchick]

2. I have several books like that

worse than watergate, etc.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R