Detainee writes, ‘Purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people’

The L.A. Times is featuring an Op-Ed assembled from letters written by a detainee held in the “darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo.”

“I am writing from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world,” Jumah al-Dossari, a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain writes. “My hand quivers as I hold the pen.”

The detainee speaks of the “torture and humiliation he has experienced at Guantanamo since 2002,” and says that he would “rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times.”

“The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed,” al-Dossari writes.

Excerpts from Op-Ed:

#
In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.

At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.

During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen.

Read the article here

Raw Story