[Mb-civic] OP-ED COLUMNIST Stories From the Inside By BOB HERBERT

[Michael Butler]

 The New York Times
February 7, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Stories From the Inside
By BOB HERBERT

"During the whole time we were at Guantánamo," said Shafiq Rasul, "we were
at a high level of fear. When we first got there the level was sky-high. At
the beginning we were terrified that we might be killed at any minute. The
guards would say to us, 'We could kill you at any time.' They would say,
'The world doesn't know you're here. Nobody knows you're here. All they know
is that you're missing, and we could kill you and no one would know.' "

The horror stories from the scandalous interrogation camp that the United
States is operating at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are coming to light with
increased frequency. At some point the whole shameful tale of this exercise
in extreme human degradation will be told. For the time being we have to
piece together what we can from a variety of accounts that have escaped the
government's obsessively reinforced barriers of secrecy.

We know that people were kept in cells that in some cases were the
equivalent of animal cages, and that some detainees, disoriented and
despairing, have been shackled like slaves and left to soil themselves with
their own urine and feces. Detainees are frequently kicked, punched, beaten
and sexually humiliated. Extremely long periods of psychologically damaging
isolation are routine.

This is all being done in the name of fighting terror. But the best evidence
seems to show that many of the people rounded up and dumped without formal
charges into Guantánamo had nothing to do with terror. They just happened to
be unfortunate enough to get caught in one of Uncle Sam's depressingly
indiscriminate sweeps. Which is what happened to Shafiq Rasul, who was
released from Guantánamo about a year ago. His story is instructive, and has
not been told widely enough.

Mr. Rasul was one of three young men, all friends, from the British town of
Tipton who were among thousands of people seized in Afghanistan in the
aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. They had been there, he said, to distribute
food and medical supplies to impoverished Afghans.

The three were interviewed soon after their release by Michael Ratner,
president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been in the
forefront of efforts to secure legal representation for Guantánamo
detainees.

Under extreme duress at Guantánamo, including hundreds of hours of
interrogation and long periods of isolation, the three men confessed to
having been in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. They also said they
were among a number of men who could be seen in a videotape of Osama bin
Laden. The tape had been made in August 2000.

For the better part of two years, Mr. Rasul and his friends, Asif Iqbal and
Rhuhel Ahmed, had denied involvement in any terror activity whatsoever. But
Mr. Rasul said they eventually succumbed to long months of physical and
psychological abuse. Mr. Rasul had been held in isolation for several weeks
(his second sustained period of isolation) when an interrogator showed him
the video of bin Laden. He said she told him: "I've put detainees here in
isolation for 12 months and eventually they've broken. You might as well
admit it now."

"I could not bear another day of isolation, let alone the prospect of
another year," said Mr. Rasul. He confessed.

The three men, all British citizens, were saved by British intelligence
officials, who proved that they had been in England when the video was shot,
and during the time they were supposed to have been in Al Qaeda training
camps. All three were returned to England, where they were released from
custody.

Mr. Rasul has said many times that he and his friends were freed only
because their alibis were corroborated. But they continue to worry about the
many other Guantánamo detainees who may be innocent but have no way of
proving it.

The Bush administration has turned Guantánamo into a place that is devoid of
due process and the rule of law. It's a place where human beings can be
imprisoned for life without being charged or tried, without ever seeing a
lawyer, and without having their cases reviewed by a court. Congress and the
courts should be uprooting this evil practice, but freedom and justice in
the United States are on a post-9/11 downhill slide.

So we are stuck for the time being with the disgrace of Guantánamo, which
will forever be a stain on the history of the United States, like the
internment of the Japanese in World War II.

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