THE HANDSTAND |
FEBRUARY-MARCH2010
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How I Fought to
Survive Guantánamo
For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was
imprisoned in Guantánamo and subjected to such brutal
torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from
being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and
his sanity
By Patrick Barkham
January 22, 2010 "The Guardian" January 21, 2010 -- It is
not hot stabbing pain that Omar Deghayes remembers from
the day a Guantánamo guard blinded him, but the cool
sensation of fingers being stabbed deep into his
eyeballs. He had joined other prisoners in protesting
against a new humiliation inmates being forced
to take off their trousers and walk round in their pants
and a group of guards had entered his cell to
punish him. He was held down and bound with chains.
I didnt realize what was going on until the
guy had pushed his fingers inside my eyes and I could
feel the coldness of his fingers. Then I realized he was
trying to gouge out my eyes, Deghayes says. He
wanted to scream in agony, but was determined not to give
his torturers the satisfaction. Then the officer standing
over him instructed the eye-stabber to push harder.
When he pulled his hands out, I remember I
couldnt see anything Id lost sight
completely in both eyes. Deghayes was dumped in a
cell, fluid streaming from his eyes.
The sight in his left eye returned over the following
days, but he is still blind in his right eye. He also has
a crooked nose (from being punched by the guards, he says)
and a scar across his forefinger (slammed in a prison
door), but otherwise this resident of Saltdean, near
Brighton, appears relatively unscarred from the more
than five years he spent locked in Guantánamo Bay. Two
years after his release, he speaks softly and calmly; he
has the unlined skin and thick hair of a man younger than
his 40 years; he has just remarried and has, for the
first time in his life, a firm feeling that his home is
on the clifftops of East Sussex.
Deghayes must, however, live with the darkness of
Guantánamo for the rest of his days. There are reminders
everywhere, from the beautiful picture of Saltdean that
was painted for him while he was incarcerated, to the
fact that Guantánamo remains open 12 months after Barack
Obama vowed to close it within a year.
There are still around 200 prisoners left in the
detention camp, many of whom have been there for eight
years. [574 have been freed, and] only one [of the 198
men still there, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul,] has been found
guilty of any crime and he was convicted by a dubious
military commission, a verdict that is likely to be
overturned. Deghayes, too, does not want to forget. He
says there is so much still to be exposed about the
conditions there, and about British collusion in the
extraordinary rendition and torture of men such as him in
the months following the American-led invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001.
Deghayes, one of five children of a prominent Libyan
lawyer, first came to Saltdean from Tripoli aged five, to
learn English with his brothers and sisters on their
summer holidays. He would return and stay with British
families every summer. Then, in 1980, his father, an
opponent of the increasingly totalitarian Gaddafi, was
taken away by the authorities. Three days later,
Deghayes uncle was told to collect his body from
the morgue. Harassed and increasingly fearful for their
safety, Deghayes mother sought asylum for her
family in Britain. They settled in the place they knew
best, Saltdean, in a large white house with fine views
over the sea. More than two decades on, the family still
lives there.
After a secular upbringing in Saltdean, Deghayes became
a practicing Muslim while at university in
Wolverhampton, where he graduated in law. When he
finished studying to become a solicitor, he had a
longing to return to Libya but couldnt
because of his family name and opposition to Gaddafi, so
he left for a round-the-world trip to experience Arabic
cultures and visit university friends. He enjoyed
Pakistans mixture of west and east, and was then
tempted into a trip to Afghanistan: he saw business
opportunities and the chance to use his languages (Farsi,
Arabic and English) and legal training (understanding
both western and Sharia law) to help import-export
companies.
He fell in love with the country and an Afghani woman;
they married and had a son. I liked the country
such beautiful rivers and different terrains. The
people were difficult to get to know at first, but if
they knew you and liked you, theyd open their
hearts and houses to you, he says. Afghanistan, it
seems, triggered many ambitious dreams: he says he helped
set up a school in Kabul, assisted NGOs, experimented
with an agricultural social enterprise and exported
apples to Peshawar. I was generating income for
myself but I had more ambition than that to
establish myself as a lawyer, he says.
Things were really good. Then this war broke out
and everything was shattered.
Fearing for his new familys safety, he paid people-smugglers
to get them all back to Pakistan in early 2002 after the
US-led invasion of Afghanistan. He hoped his mother would
take his wife and child back to England, while he planned
to return to Afghanistan and continue his NGO and legal
work. I still thought I had nothing to fear. Even
if there was an invasion, there was nothing I had been
doing that was illegal.
They rented a house in Lahore, far away from the
war atmosphere. But then the Americans began paying
large amounts of money to find Arabs who had been in
Afghanistan. Suddenly, he was lucrative bounty for the
Pakistani authorities. The atmosphere changed
completely. Nice Pakistan turned into a trap, he
says. One day, their house was surrounded by armed police.
He was seized, but not taken to a normal police station.
Instead he was driven, fast and under heavily armed guard,
between secure rooms in hotels and villas. A Kafkaesque
nightmare had begun.
Deghayes says he was beaten and interrogated first by
Pakistani officials. He thinks the Americans and the
Libyans competed to buy him from the
Pakistanis, and it appears the Americans won: when he was
moved from Lahore to Islamabad, a man introduced
himself as the head of the CIAs Libyan section.
Taken between hotels by armed guards, Deghayes believes
he saw a man who is now listed as a disappeared prisoner:
an Italian Moroccan. I remember seeing him; he was
with me in the same car in Islamabad. He came out crying
from the meeting, scared; he was saying, No,
dont do this to me.
Deghayes also describes meeting a British interrogator
when he met the CIA section head for the second time.
I was facing the British man, who introduced
himself as Andrew. He spoke in an obvious British accent.
According to Deghayes, Andrew said he was from the
intelligence services and wanted to question him.
I was really annoyed and said, You
shouldnt do this, youre helping these people
Im kidnapped, abducted against my will. Your
job is to get me out of here. Im British and if I
go back to England, I will take you to court for what you
are doing now. Andrew was a little bit scared, but
he looked at me and said, What case would you bring
against me? I had nothing in my mind. He said,
Listen, if you answer my questions and co-operate
with me, I will do my best. I will get you out of there.
Deghayes was shown an album of 100 photographs of
supposed terrorists. He says he did not recognize anyone.
One morning, he was tied, bound and blindfolded and taken
to an airport. The thin black bag was removed
from his head: he was standing in front of a mirror,
guarded by two US soldiers. They tied another bag over
his head, which felt worse than the first bag
it suffocated me. It smelt like socks
or cheese, he says. This was an indication
of the new regime there were even harder times
coming up.
Inside the plane, it was mayhem: his feet and hands bound
together and covered in bags, Deghayes was bundled on top
of others in the hold. People were crying. People
were throwing up. Some people were suffocating, and there
was a kick here and a kick there: Get your head
down, you bastard! Things like that. Then the plane
took off and you could smell [the guards] drinking
spirits.
They landed in what he later realized was Bagram
military air base. Here, Deghayes clothes were
taken away and he was given two pieces of blue uniform.
He was not allowed to speak to fellow inmates, and was
bound to barbed wire before, he says, being beaten and
made to suffer all sorts of humiliation. He
spent several months there. There were no rules in
Bagram; people just went in and kicked people if they
didnt like them.
He says he did not eat for more than 50 days. I was
really sick; I became a skeleton. I couldnt walk
any more. I lost my mind I was really scared for
my mental safety. I tried to eat but I threw up. I
started to hear voices in my head because of the hunger.
People would say something and I could not understand
what they were saying. You hear shouts and youre
speaking to yourself inside your head. I started to
become really scared because I thought I was losing my
brains and going crazy.
While he was in Bagram, he was again interrogated several
times by officials he believes were from Britain.
They felt I was lying to them. I said to them I
studied in Holborn, London. They said, Which
train did you take to get there? They didnt
believe anything, he says. They werent
free to do what they liked; the Americans were running
the show. When he said he was too sick to speak,
they called him a bandit.
His British interrogators came up with lots of
stupid things suggesting the scubadiving
lessons he had taken in the shabby lido in Saltdean,
within yards of his family home, were terrorist training.
The Americans took that up in Guantánamo. It was a
big headache. They showed me books of military
scubadiving and ships and mines and they said,
Which ones did you see? The British
also accused him of teaching people to fight in terrorist
training camps in Chechnya, and claimed they had secret
video evidence.
Deghayes had never been to Chechnya, and thought all
these allegations laughable. Only later did he discover
through Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human
rights charity Reprieve, that his apparent appearance in
an Islamic terrorist training video in Chechnya was the
crucial evidence in a flimsy case against him. The
authorities refused to give Stafford Smith, who
campaigned for Guantánamo detainees, a copy of this
videotape, but he eventually obtained one through the BBC.
It was, says the Reprieve director, an obvious case of
mistaken identity: the person depicted lacked
Deghayes small childhood scar on his face.
Stafford Smith was able to show that the videotape was
of a completely different person, actually a Chechnyan
rebel called Abu Walid, who was dead. This was
typical of the whole Guantánamo experience, says
Stafford Smith. They said they had evidence and
they wouldnt let you see it. Then when you did, it
was incorrect.
After two months in Bagram, Deghayes was flown to
Guantánamo in autumn 2002. There, prisoners were treated
brutally. According to Deghayes, when guards physically
subdued them by tying them down, they would do
actions to pretend as if they are raping you. They put
you down on your stomach. It was really horrible, all
sexual and psychological stuff. On other occasions,
he says, guards would hold a prisoners head and
bang it on the floor.
Deghayes developed a personal policy of resistance.
Guards would typically arrive at a prisoners cell
and spray pepper and other chemicals through the
bean-hole, the hatch in the door. While most
prisoners cowered at the back of their cell, Deghayes
says he would grab the guards hands and attack them.
He fought back, as viciously as he could, trying to take
the fights with guards out of the privacy of his cell and
into the corridors.
It was chaos; they would fall on top of each other
and it was embarrassing [for them]. They were wearing all
this heavy stuff [body armor] which didnt help
either, he says. Some guards became afraid of
going into his cell. Most, he says, were Puerto Rican and
were not driven by the patriotism of the war on
terror. They did not want to get hurt for their
meager wages.
Deghayes did not realize how badly his eye had been
beaten until a year after the incident, when he looked
in a mirror for the first time in four years. He accepts
his resistance caused him more physical pain, but
believes it subsequently helped him. In the camp, he
was less fearful.
I was targeted more, but I was also relaxed
compared with others who didnt do that. It was
really scary for [the guards] to come into my cell,
he says. Being humiliated by getting beaten up is
better than giving your own trousers out. If Id
done those things, I wouldve been really bitter now.
Im probably less bitter than anyone else because
I know I gave them a really hard time. [Note: Omar
did not agree that he had said the last line of this
paragraph, as printed in the Guardian, and I have deleted
it as a result].
Deghayes says his suffering made his faith stronger; it
helped him survive. We knew theres a Muslim
[God] behind things, theres a hereafter, our
patience and hardships will be rewarded and the pain
has to end sometime. Our religion teaches these things
the good always prevails and the bad is only
temporary; the patience of Job, the patience of Moses.
All these teachings make a difference. Praying five
times a day delivered transcendence, removing him from
the material world of bodily suffering. My body and
physical being can be chained, can be tarnished, can be
beaten, can be raped, he says now, but not
the spiritual: that is something that nobody can bind
down. The spirit is what makes us who we are.
As a campaign to free him gained momentum back in
Brighton, Deghayes languished in Guantánamo for nearly
six years. He was never charged or convicted of anything,
by any authority. And never been apologized to
either, he adds. Finally, in August 2007, the
British government requested the release of Deghayes
and four other detainees who were legal British residents.
In the month before his release in December 2007, he
says, he was deliberately fed well so he would not emerge
looking gaunt and half-starved. For one month we
were fattened up with milk shakes, chocolates and
really good cakes.
When he returned to his family in Saltdean, he was
happy but also disorientated. You know if you are
in a forest or walking on the moon, you cant tell
what is what. I was like this when I came out,
Deghayes says. He was stunned by some of the changes in
Britain. To my shock, when I came out from prison
the whole country had changed the surveillance,
the Islamophobia, the control orders, secret evidence,
and people being under curfews not being able to leave
the house. His neighborhood also appeared to have
altered: We never had thugs and mobs in the street
before, and kids didnt go binge-drinking or
stealing. When I came back, these were some of the
changes that I had to adjust to, he says.
While he is very appreciative of the support he had in
Brighton, after he was freed his family was targeted by
racist teenagers who bullied his nephews and threw
stones and bottles at their house for months. This
stopped, abruptly, after a community meeting and media
coverage led the police, rather belatedly, to install a
video camera in the window of their home.
His imprisonment also caused his marriage to break down.
His wife wrote to him in prison but her letters were
never delivered; nor were his to her. Its
cruel, isnt it? These were just normal letters
between husband and wife. Both believed they had
abandoned each other, and they divorced. She now lives
with her family in Afghanistan. His son, Sulaiman, who is
now eight, is staying with Deghayes mother in the
Emirates. They hope eventually to bring him to Britain
and give him a western education.
Two years after he was released, Deghayes remarried in
December and is now busy buying furniture for a new
place in Brighton. Brighton is such a nice city.
You can just walk by the sea, and the fresh air comes
across. It reminds me of Tripoli. Before, I used to
long for Tripoli; now, only recently, I have started to
prefer Brighton. Maybe when you are younger you want to
go back to dreams, and when you get to 40 you start to
think, this is nicer, this is really what I like.
Deghayes now works with Reprieve and other survivors of
Guantánamo on legal challenges, including a civil case
being brought against the Home Office with help from
Gareth Peirce, the human rights lawyer. Deghayes hopes
there will be a public inquiry into Guantánamo to bring
those to account who were involved in his interrogation.
Financial damages are not, he says, his motivation.
Even if I get damages, I will give them to
charity. The court is an opportunity to embarrass and
expose those who committed these crimes.
While Reprieve campaigned to get Deghayes released,
Stafford Smith explains how Deghayes was a
tremendously helpful ally in Guantánamo because he was
fluent in English and he had a bit of legal training.
Stafford Smith brought him legal textbooks but they were
censored as a threat to national security,
and he says he worried for Deghayes safety during
his incarceration. If it had been me, I would have
taken the course of quieter resistance. I was always
afraid for Omar, that he would get himself beaten up. I
was concerned for him because he was constantly being
beaten up by the guards, but theres nothing you can
do to stop Omar loudly saying what is just and right.
Stafford Smith believes Deghayes has fared better than
many veterans of Guantánamo since his release because he
had the support of his family, an education and
because he has taken a very positive approach to his
experiences. Hes not just sat back and taken
it; hes tried to do something positive. Omar works
a lot with us to try to help other prisoners who are
still in Guantánamo. Hes also always been up for a
good argument or a good debate.
Deghayes appears remarkably calm; but his brother,
Abubaker, says he has noticed signs of trauma. His
memory is not as good as it was. He forgets to switch off
lights. If he opens a window, it stays open. He stays up
at night a lot, thinking. Abubaker is not surprised
his brother struggles to sleep. Imagine the lights
are on for six years. Has Deghayes changed as a
person? A lot of the things Omar had in his
character seem to have deepened, like rebellion and
resistance and not accepting oppression. I think they
became more rooted in him rather than being beaten out of
him.
But isnt he ever tempted to retreat to a quiet
place, start his own business, and renounce the hassles
of political campaigning? I dont want that
life, Deghayes says firmly. I never
intended to live like that before imprisonment, and nor
do I intend that after imprisonment. I would not be true
to myself if I did.
Life is worth more. Its good to be a number
in society rather than a zero. There are many zeros
around but every human is worthy of being a number,
and I hope I will be something of a change for the good,
rather than for harm and wars. I hope so. I really hope
so.
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