Notes from a Guantanamo Survivor

POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Monday, December 23, 2024 17:11
VIEWED: 2143
PAGE 1 of 3

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE LAST PAGE

CANTTAKESKY

Sunday, January 8, 2012 8:47 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantan
amo-survivor.html?_r=2&src=tp

Quote:
I LEFT Guantánamo Bay much as I had arrived almost five years earlier — shackled hand-to-waist, waist-to-ankles, and ankles to a bolt on the airplane floor. My ears and eyes were goggled, my head hooded, and even though I was the only detainee on the flight this time, I was drugged and guarded by at least 10 soldiers. This time though, my jumpsuit was American denim rather than Guantánamo orange. I later learned that my C-17 military flight from Guantánamo to Ramstein Air Base in my home country, Germany, cost more than $1 million.

When we landed, the American officers unshackled me before they handed me over to a delegation of German officials. The American officer offered to re-shackle my wrists with a fresh, plastic pair. But the commanding German officer strongly refused: “He has committed no crime; here, he is a free man.”

I was not a strong secondary school student in Bremen, but I remember learning that after World War II, the Americans insisted on a trial for war criminals at Nuremberg, and that event helped turn Germany into a democratic country. Strange, I thought, as I stood on the tarmac watching the Germans teach the Americans a basic lesson about the rule of law.

How did I arrive at this point? This Wednesday is the 10th anniversary of the opening of the detention camp at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. I am not a terrorist. I have never been a member of Al Qaeda or supported them. I don’t even understand their ideas. I am the son of Turkish immigrants who came to Germany in search of work. My father has worked for years in a Mercedes factory. In 2001, when I was 18, I married a devout Turkish woman and wanted to learn more about Islam and to lead a better life. I did not have much money. Some of the elders in my town suggested I travel to Pakistan to learn to study the Koran with a religious group there.

I made my plans just before 9/11. I was 19 then and was naïve and did not think war in Afghanistan would have anything to do with Pakistan or my trip there. So I went ahead with my trip.

I was in Pakistan, on a public bus on my way to the airport to return to Germany when the police stopped the bus I was riding in. I was the only non-Pakistani on the bus — some people joke that my reddish hair makes me look Irish — so the police asked me to step off to look at my papers and ask some questions. German journalists told me the same thing happened to them. I was not a journalist, but a tourist, I explained. The police detained me but promised they would soon let me go to the airport. After a few days, the Pakistanis turned me over to American officials. At this point, I was relieved to be in American hands; Americans, I thought, would treat me fairly.

I later learned the United States paid a $3,000 bounty for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently the United States distributed thousands of fliers all over Afghanistan, promising that people who turned over Taliban or Qaeda suspects would, in the words of one flier, get “enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.” A great number of men wound up in Guantánamo as a result.

I was taken to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, where American interrogators asked me the same questions for several weeks: Where is Osama bin Laden? Was I with Al Qaeda? No, I told them, I was not with Al Qaeda. No, I had no idea where bin Laden was. I begged the interrogators to please call Germany and find out who I was. During their interrogations, they dunked my head under water and punched me in the stomach; they don’t call this waterboarding but it amounts to the same thing. I was sure I would drown.

At one point, I was chained to the ceiling of a building and hung by my hands for days. A doctor sometimes checked if I was O.K.; then I would be strung up again. The pain was unbearable.

After about two months in Kandahar, I was transferred to Guantá

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Sunday, January 8, 2012 11:11 PM

G'Mo really is a nasty stain on American conduct in the world. One that will linger, no how many times you try to put it through the wash.

CANTTAKESKY

Monday, January 9, 2012 12:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
G'Mo really is a nasty stain on American conduct in the world. One that will linger, no how many times you try to put it through the wash.

Not just Gitmo. Also Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

Concentration torture camps are funny about leaving stains that way.

-----
I love, therefore I am.

HKCAVALIER

Monday, January 9, 2012 12:33 AM

So beyond disgusting. I just want this country to own up. I don't hate America, I am indignant at the corruption destroying our way of life. Own up.

By no stretch of the imagination can a reasonable person believe that this man was detained at Gitmo for 5 years of his life to expand our military's intelligence base. It does not take 5 years to find out someone doesn't know anything. The man was punished with 30 days of solitary confinement and darkness for feeding fucking iguanas through the fence! Did they capture and interrogate the iguanas as well?

This is a complete outrage. I can have no respect for those who minimize our crimes against humanity.

Own up, America. Own up and accept the consequences.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

PIRATENEWS

Monday, January 9, 2012 1:03 AM

I wish a violent painful disgusting death upon everyone who voted for Bushobama, preferably by arrest, torture, courts martial then execution for treason in their favorite hellhole at Gitmo. No lawyers allowed.

Cuts on their genitals without anesthesia would be a welcome addition to their incarceration, as Bushobama loves doing.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who will end these 8 wars, and avoid WW3.

CANTTAKESKY

Monday, January 9, 2012 1:07 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
I don't hate America, ...

I am deeply ashamed of America.

If you get a chance, rent or buy "My Name is Khan," a bollywood movie about anti-Muslim hate in America. It portrays the outrage that is Gitmo. It is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.

-----
I love, therefore I am.

FREMDFIRMA

Monday, January 9, 2012 6:24 AM

What upsets me about it as much or more, HKCav, is how these bastards honed and refined their techniques right here, under our very noses...

On children.

And till not very long ago there wasn't anydamnbody willing to say word one against it save a few like me who caught endless shit for it.

After a fashion you could almost say that I saw this coming a decade and more in advance, but you know what ?
Doesn't make it one whit less ugly, if anything it makes it more so, cause of watching the banal selfishness and ignorance that allowed it to come to this.

And yes, I too an shamed at what our country has become, or at least finally more or less admitted, despite being there since around 1950, and those who once fought against it, back in the 60's and 70's are now willing servants thereof ?
Fuckin pansies - I don't mean to quit, not now, not EVER.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

RIONAEIRE

Monday, January 9, 2012 6:36 AM

That's awful. I guess I didn't realize how bad it was.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Monday, January 9, 2012 7:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by piratenews:
I wish a violent painful disgusting death upon everyone who voted for Bushobama, preferably by arrest, torture, courts martial then execution for treason in their favorite hellhole at Gitmo. No lawyers allowed.

Cuts on their genitals without anesthesia would be a welcome addition to their incarceration, as Bushobama loves doing.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who will end these 8 wars, and avoid WW3.

Yeah, more revenge, torture and death. That is what the world badly needs.

BYTEMITE

Monday, January 9, 2012 3:15 PM

Magon: I voted for Obama because I thought, naively, he might be a change from Bush. I deserve every punishment PN suggested and more. For now, I settle for refusing to vote, EVER AGAIN. I hope eventually I can redeem myself, and only through death will I find peace from my guilt.

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE LAST PAGE