John Grisham [email protected] Hundreds of Arabs have been sent to Gitmo, never charged and later secretly transferred back to their home countries A ering them to the prison, but they were not being allowed in because of “im- permissible content”. I became curi- ous and tracked down a detainee who enjoys my books. His name is Nabil Hadjarab, 34, an Algerian who grew up in France. He learned to speak French before he learned to speak Arabic. He has close family and friends in France, but not in Algeria. Tragically for Nabil, he has spent the past eleven years as a prisoner at Guantánamo, much of the time in solitary confinement. Starting in February, he went on hunger strike, which led to his being force-fed. For reasons that had nothing to do with terror, war or criminal behaviour, Nabil was living peacefully in an Algerian guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 11, 2001. Guantánamo Bay: US was dead wrong, but no one can admit it bout two months ago I learned that some of my books had been banned at Guantánamo Bay. Ap- parently detainees were requesting them, and their lawyers were deliv- S Following the United States invasion (a month later), word spread among the Arab communities that Afghani- stan’s Northern Alliance was round- ing up and killing foreign Arabs. Nabil and many others headed for Pakistan in a desperate effort to escape the danger. En-route, he said, he was wounded in a bombing raid and woke up in a hospital in Jalalabad. At that time, the US was throwing money at anyone who could deliver an out-of-town Arab found in the region. Nabil was sold to the US for a bounty of $5,000 (about Sh400,000) and taken to an underground prison in Kabul. There he experienced torture for the first time. To house the prisoners of its war on terror, the US military put up a makeshift prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Bagram would quickly become notorious, and make Guantánamo look like a church camp. When Nabil arrived there in January 2002, as one of the first prisoners, there were no walls, only razor-wire cages. Nabil was forced to sleep on the floor without cover. Food and water were scarce. During interrogation, Nabil was beaten by US soldiers and dragged up and down concrete stairs. Other prisoners died. After a month in Bagram, Nabil was transferred to a prison at Kandahar. Throughout his incarceration in Afghanistan, Nabil strenuously denied any connection to al-Qaeda, the Taliban or anyone or any organisation remotely linked to the 9/11 attacks. The Americans had no proof of his involvement, save for bogus claims implicating him from other prisoners extracted in a Kabul torture chamber. access to sunlight, almost no recreation and limited medical care. Nabil has not been the only “mistake” in our war on terror. Hundreds of other Arabs have been sent to Gitmo, chewed up by the system there, never charged and later secretly transferred back to their home countries. There have been no apologies, no official statements of regret, no compensation and nothing of the sort. The US was dead wrong, but no one can admit it. The Obama administration has announced it is transferring some more Arab prisoners back to Algeria. It is likely that Nabil will be one of them, and if that happens another tragic mistake will be made. Instead of showing some guts and admitting they were wrong, the US authorities will whisk him away, dump him on the streets of Algiers and wash their hands. What should they do? Or what should we do? First, admit the mistake and make the apology. Second, provide compensation. US taxpayers have spent $2 million a year for eleven years to keep Nabil at Gitmo; give the guy a few thousand bucks to get on his feet. Third, pressure the French to allow his re-entry. This sounds simple, but it will never happen. Reprinted from The New York Times everal US interrogators told him his was a case of mis- taken identity. Nonethe- less, the US had adopted strict rules for Arabs in cus- tody – all were to be sent to Guantánamo. On Febru- ary 15, 2002, Nabil was flown to Cuba; shackled, bound and hooded. Since then, Nabil has been subjected to all the horrors of the Gitmo handbook: sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, temperature extremes, prolonged isolation, lack of Nabil was sold to the US for a bounty of $5,000 (about Sh400,000) and taken to an underground prison in Kabul
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 06:36:18 +0000