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Article by "Prisoner
73" on his experience
Total deprivation of sleep, food
and water, exposure to extreme heat and cold, up to 20 minutes
in stress positions, up to 2 hours listening to white noise...
plus any other interrogation technique deemed acceptable by the
interrogation team' By any standards the waiver I signed for "Guantanamo
Guidebook" was special, and two weeks later when I was lying
naked, shaved, shackled in a ball on the floor, alone with a
hood over my head, listening to white noise with a cold fan at
my back, I realized just how superficial the term 'informed
consent' can be.
Two weeks earlier I had received an e-mail looking for students
who would be willing to participate in a Channel Four
documentary investigating US interrogation practices for Terror
detainees held in Cuba. I was to be one of seven male volunteers
from various backgrounds – three Muslims: a father of two, a
youth worker, and a recent graduate; plus Britain's fittest
Fireman, a triathlete, Britain's Thai Kickboxing Champion and
me, a plucky Oxford undergraduate finalist in philosophy and
politics. The test was to see how we fared in a simulation of up
to 60 hours under a team of retired US army interrogators, led
by a founding member of Delta Force, who used the techniques
officially sanctioned for Guantanamo detainees to extract
information about us and make us confess to the scenarios we had
acted out with the production company the week before. We were
to withhold information and endure.
Why on earth would I, being of sound body and mind, sign that
waiver and participate? The simple answer is that people should
understand what interrogation really can entail – this show
needed to be made, someone had to be in it and it might as well
be me. That reasoning hardly swayed my mother when I explained
the project to her, and the deeper motivation was that as a
concerned citizen and international relations student I needed
to see what our democratically elected government does under our
auspices to keep us safe. Too often politicians tell us that
certain actions are for our safety and we simply accept it – I
wanted a deeper understanding of the real cost of such
decisions. On some level it was also a challenge: I realised
that the show would be gruelling and that l would most likely
break at some point, but as a competitive and driven person I
thought I stood a decent chance of lasting through the 60 hours
of imprisonment without divulging anything too significant. This
was not bravado: I was a little scared when I agreed to do the
show, anyone should be, but I had to know what it was like.
Before the shoot I had mixed feelings about the War on Terror; I
was, and remain, more hawkish than most of my friends, am
considering joining the services when I graduate and thought
that Camp X-Ray was a place were a select few were interrogated
on matters crucial to safeguarding our way of life. Yet I
believed then, as now, that as the 'good guys' we should not
merely be fulfilling the requirements of international law, but
exceeding them, setting an example in upholding human rights; I
worried that Guantanamo undermined our standing in the wider
world and thus made us more enemies than we could defeat with
the information obtained there. In short, I could see the pros
and cons but was content to trust in the expert opinion of our
leaders that the right balance had been found.
In spite of all the preparation and expectation my capture was a
total shock. A limo had delivered me to a warehouse in Hackney,
I did a medical and was suddenly jumped from behind by two men
who hooded me. Gripping my arms they forced me to the ground and
my body went pure white with shock. 10 minutes after leaving the
warmth of that Jaguar I was being dragged to an adjoining room,
told to strip and issued with an orange jumpsuit; those who
hesitated in obeying simply had their clothes cut off. I was
immediately rehooded, shackled and made to wear ear-covers and
elbow length gloves to shut out my senses. I was numbered – from
that point on I was '73’ – shoved into another room and told to
march in a ring, periodically shoulder barged by a guard so that
I would revert to a quick but hunched shuffle. I had so much
adrenaline running through me I thought 40 minutes had passed,
but later found that I marched for 4 hours, by which time the
plastic sandals had cut my feet raw. We were powerless and from
the outset our captivity seemed real and immediate, due, in no
small part, to those first few disorienting hours.
Throughout the show the captors watched our health carefully,
but it was still a weapon to be used. Staying hydrated was
crucial and we found that it helped offset hunger, but during
the march we inevitably had to urinate. The guards simply told
us they weren’t stopping us and we had to urinate while walking.
It was initially embarrassing “what are you doing to my floor?!
You dog!” – but because it was forced, it made me more angry and
resolute than humiliated. Rooms were never heated – at first we
protested to the guards, but they pointed out that the room
wasn’t cold, merely ‘chilly’ and within the rules. No doubt,
‘torture-lite’, as some refer to the practices in Cuba, involves
some burden of care, but it can be pursued with unmistakable
aggression.
Still hooded and shackled, we were eventually loaded like cattle
into a truck and driven to the 'detention centre'. For the next
two days we were kept in 6 by 4 by 6 foot cages that stood in an
unheated warehouse; where the constant shivering made you look
and feel weak while cramp and fatigue slowly built up. We each
had a plank for a bed and a bucket for a bathroom. Pure white
lights always lit the room and by moving prayer times and
playing bird song in the mid afternoon, the guards ensured we
rapidly lost all sense of time. Knowing our experience would end
within a certain amount of time was central to our morale, and
to lose grasp of time was a blow. At one stage we were convinced
that we had passed the half way mark, before realising – from
our lack of hunger – that we could only have been in for 12
hours. It was crushing.
It wasn’t until then that the guards really stepped up the
frequency of our exercises and stress positions. Try lying on
your back, lifting your heels two inches off the ground and hold
them there for 40 seconds. Then do 100 sit-ups, 25 press-ups
before kneeling with your arms above your head until they start
shaking. At first this seemed impossible – not least when the
two fittest people I have ever met are in cages either side
(thanks guys) – but I was fit and started to relish the
challenge. I imagined my friends from the College rowing or
University water polo team were with me, and that it was all
just a regular training set. They’ll never know how, but they
got me through, as did the support from the other prisoners.
The triathlete had had to leave within the first few hours due
to hypothermia, and in the fifty or so hours the rest of us were
in the exercise we had 4 hours sleep. For food we had one cold
army ration on the first day, though I missed mine because I was
being questioned at the time. The next day I was given my meal
and, when told it would be my last, wolfed down the cold,
congealed beef macaroni. Even now I remember the knot in my
throat as I tried to swallow the revoltingly sweet applesauce.
When I slowed the guards threatened to force-feed me so I kept
working away until I had finished it all, including a dry
vegetable cracker that took a litre of water to wash down.
Fifteen minutes later another guard entered and made us do
squats and press-ups until I vomited. It was a deliberate ploy
and it was draining because it was, I think, the first time I'd
shown real weakness, and it came with the realization that my
body simply needed the fuel: none of us were fed again.
However the endless exercise and stress positions were more
about mental intimidation. At first I started to believe that
some guards were more demanding than others, but after a day I
came to the realization that I simply detested them all; yet on
some level there was still a part of me that wanted to 'measure
up', to show I could do their exercises as if I could somehow
earn their respect. It's a crazy thought, but one of the things
I found so dispiriting was to finish a set of exercises, believe
I had proved myself, only for the next guard to walk in and ask
why I was resting on the floor and set more exercises. I could
not accumulate the mutual respect that on some fundamental level
we, as humans, seek in each other every day.
It was striking how a team spirit developed amongst the
prisoners. If we refused to cooperate the others were made to do
exercise, and though in the real Camp X-Ray that would be an
empty threat, it is compelling when you are with fellow
volunteers. We learned to fake being worn out, but as we started
to bond as a group so the interrogators continued to play us off
against each other. Each time someone didn't co-operate others
suffered, our stories were used against each other and false
contradictions suggested in the interrogations to generate
mistrust. The guards would ask us our opinions on the other
inmates and structure the questions so that we had to disparage
each other, and even though it was forced, it still cut deep.
Ultimately we, the prisoners, needed each other to persevere and
I was grateful they were there, but the way the guards could
pervert that relationship was profoundly unsettling, because it
was our only source of support within the exercise.
My 'story' was that I was Middle East politics student who had
collected money for a Palestinian Aid charity that I knew to
have fundamentalist links, and had left the money with a contact
I met in London. The interrogators had only me, the bag I had
arrived with, some still photos from the weekend before to go
on, which had supposedly been taken by the police. They had to
learn about who we really were and as much of our adopted
persona and story as possible. Some of the volunteers had
researched techniques for withstanding interrogation, but in
arriving late to the project I had virtually no time to prepare
and made up my 'plan' largely as I went along, not ideal given
the physical strain we were under. Because my scenario was
really a very simple extension of my real life I thought it best
to stall for time before the two questions crucial to the story
line ("were you on this river taxi" and "did you give this man
£200") could be asked and my guilt established.
I also believed that I was relatively innocent: I imagine it is
easy for an aid organization operating in the Middle East to
occasionally give money to the 'wrong' forces given the range of
groups and shifting alliances there. In short, I felt my
'persona' was simply a little naïve, misguided and the amount of
money insignificant, and not worthy of such scrutiny or blame.
What I came to realise was that I was really quite guilty: I was
supposedly giving money to an organisation I knew to have
extremist links, and thus was effectively an accomplice,
shielding myself from the reality of my contribution, however
small. That realisation, that something apparently minor and
well intentioned was in fact very serious and wrong, underlined
how realistic my scenario was; I’m confident I wouldn’t be so
naïve, but I could see it might happen to others.
My tactics seemed to work at first: questioning the camp's
authority and digressing into discussions over my rights as a US
citizen effectively wasted the first three or so interrogations.
However the cost was high - I had marked myself out as an
uncooperative smart-alec. I later learned that while training
varies, most armed forces and organisations advocate the 'grey
man', someone who just gets along and avoids trouble by being
unmemorable. Many combine this ‘controlled release’, telling
captors one insignificant piece of information in each
interview, to make them think you are slowly crumbling.
The precision of the interrogation was phenomenal. Every remark
and gesture was remembered and shared by the interrogators.
Questioning could be long and relaxed or short and abrupt, where
questions were repeated until a misplaced answer yielded more
information. By changing interrogators you had to repeat your
story and discrepancies would leak out. Most effective was to
pause interviews for several hours, before resuming at full pace
from the same place: I ended one session acknowledging the
existence of “ARP” but began the next by acknowledging the
existence of “Aid for Refugees in Palestine” – a substantial
gain on their part. They even played good cop/bad cop: two of
the interrogators would complement me on my grit and wit, as if
we had some higher understanding the brutish guards did not and
offered to protect me if I helped them. They later explained
that the art as an interrogator, is to be the person you want
them to be, the person you can confide in, whether they are
friendly and understanding, or a hard case so that the subject
feels they have fulfilled their duty to resist, reached the
limits of human tolerance, and then co-operated.
I study philosophy: I resent simple yes/no questions, and would
never answer them for fear that my answers be used against me
later, but was accused of trying to be too clever. I was
providing ammunition for the constant hazing: guards took turns
taunting me, my youth, my ego and my 'stupidity'. In spite of
great self-confidence it started to affect me, particularly when
the guards' slurs were then turned to my parents, responsible
for the 'idiot' before them. At one point I subconsciously
started to push my cuffs up off my wrists for comfort, so the
guards accused me of trying to cut off my circulation to hurt
myself and in turn of being 'deranged', unable to look after
myself, a disgrace.
Even then my self-belief carried me through, and it was the
hazing of another prisoner that caused me to lose my
self-control. The interrogators were having real trouble getting
to Gary, the Kick-Boxer, or ’91’ as I knew him, and out of
desperation planted gay pornography in his cell in the hope that
accusing him of being gay would unsettle him. Gary was
completely unflustered by this and as we knelt on the hard
floor, knees burning with pain I listened to the homophobic
ranting and willed the guard to pick on me so that I might argue
with him and somehow prove him wrong. Of course this was asking
for trouble, and though I kept quiet, I was much less controlled
in my next interrogation. I knew it had been a device to
unsettle us but I still thought of the guards as working for a
liberal government and that on some level their values should
reflect this - bizarrely I could put up with abuse, but not
their backwards intolerance.
What was most remarkable about that line of attack was how the
guard had developed his hazing. In response to Gary's denial
that he might be gay the guard asked how it was that Gary not be
gay and yet believe it to be an acceptable lifestyle choice for
others. Underneath vicious abuse he developed a remarkably
elegant argument that ran from accepting the homosexual
preferences of others, to double standards, to systems of
morality, to the conclusion that Gary was morally incoherent and
therein capable of evil and a possible terrorist. “So it’s okay
for others to be gay… what if your son was gay, what would you
advise him?… So when you find something you disagree with do you
deal with it or shy away?… Ahhh, so your moral beliefs do not
compel you to act… So do you have no morals or do you act
without them?” I have debated competitively at a high level for
years, and while superficially crude and repugnant, it remains
the most elegant and impressive chain of argument I have ever
witnessed.
At this point I was in trouble. I thought I had found a story
that mixed concessions while withholding the ultimate fact that
I had given the money, but the person I had given the money to
was a 'cooperative suspect' who told the guards everything about
us and left the exercise after about twelve hours. When combined
with minor discrepancies in my story, I became the obvious next
target, and the guards started to warn me that they had
something special for me. It was actually a relief when they
dragged me from the cell because the wait was over; in front of
the others they stripped me, shackled me to a chair and shaved
my head. When I didn't react to their taunts they then carried
me out, still in the chair, to an unheated room, put the white
noise earphones on and left me with a fan to chill me.
Their white noise sounded like a woman screaming, played
backwards and repeated on a short cycle so that the drone
becomes repetitive and inescapable, particularly because a
single word - 'inhuman' - is said forwards repeatedly on top of
the track. Still, in some ways it was a relief: no one could
haze me, I didn't have to do any exercise, I just had to shut
out the noise. Half way through humming the Beach Boys back
catalogue I became borderline hypothermic and was moved to a
heated room, but the fan was kept so that I wouldn't become too
comfortable.
Eventually, and 51 hours into the exercise, I asked to leave the
simulation. Though it is easy to say now, I had actually not
reached the end of my tether but come to a rational decision
that I had made a stand, that they knew everything I knew, and
that to remain there with 12 or so hours to go would be simple
masochism. I have no idea how long I could have lasted had the
stakes been higher, but the notion of spending any longer than a
week inside terrifies me. The detainees of Cuba have been there
over three years. I am still acutely embarrassed not to have
gone the distance and left the four to complete the exercise;
yet while I felt guilty about going, I never really regretted
the decision, not least when I later found out the list of
innovatively degrading acts they would make me perform and
endure had I stayed, a forced full ‘body grooming’ being the
first and mildest. Given the nicks the razor had left in my head
it was just as well they didn’t touch the rest of my body. In
feeling guilty but not regretful I had perhaps found not my
physical or mental limit, but that of my moral fibre, and that
is a grim realisation.
The period after the programme was surreal. It is amazing how
the mind protects itself: on leaving I saw the medic and
psychologist, gave a cogent piece to camera, slept for four more
hours and then watched the others leave the exercise. I made a
point of returning to my cell and sitting in exactly the same
place I had been for hours before and it simply did not feel
real. There was no emotion at all as I watched the crew
disassemble the set; I was worn out and had stopped feeling.
That night the volunteers and interrogators all had dinner
together and it was a cathartic experience. The interrogation
team were charming, intelligent, informed and engaging, it was
as if we had met for the first time. I have since read much
about how people cope with torture but even now don't understand
how those guards could be so normal, so human and yet retain
that capacity to drive someone to their limits. I wonder how the
guards of Guantanamo live with what they do, and how they
balance that with pressure from above for information. The
interrogators are not gung-ho Rambo types, but ‘switch on’ when
they need to work, and came across as professionals, mindful of
the importance of their mission but sensitive and embarrassed by
lapses like Abu Gharib.
The interrogation team were amazing: within the first twelve
hours they had deduced the essence of all our stories, without
recourse to actually beating us and without the most potent
threat of all, that of indefinite captivity. In that sense it
was a remarkably positive experience: they got the information
out of us without permanently hurting us, so we in society must
in turn must ensure that those skills are used at the right time
in the right way. I still think, a priori, that there is a need
for a interrogation of the type we faced, and that while there
are reasons why some people deserve certain rights and
protection there are good reasons why others are not. The first
thing that should happen is that all detainees be given an
independent hearing on their status as an illegal combatant and
then that process followed through. For that reason alone the
Bush Administration's ad hoc creation and implementation of the
law is simply disgusting and unacceptable. Of the 550 or so
people who have been held for over three years now, only four
have been charged. How good or current is the information we are
receiving now? How many of those people could still be sane?
Moreover Camp X-Ray has been such a disaster that while there
may have been an a priori justification for such a place, its
benefit and the utility of any such centre in the future has now
been overshadowed by the damage to our standing in the
international community. I fear for the treatment of our
servicemen should they be captured in the future.
I don't regret participating in the show, hard as it was. My
beliefs on the subject have crystallised and I think I have a
better understanding of myself under pressure - if nothing else
I've learnt what sleep deprivation can do and my academic
studies may be saved as a consequence - but if anything comes
out of this programme, I hope it is that people stop and
genuinely think about what we are willing to do to protect
ourselves. I, for one, would rather we missed some intelligence
sources and even took casualties than put innocents through what
I went through; if we loose our humanity then we have lost the
War on Terror. |
