> > <http://www.nouvelobs.com/articles/p2142/a288559.html>Go to Original > > An Innocent Man in the Hell of Guantánamo > By Sara Daniel > Le Nouvel Observateur > > Week of Thursday 24 November 2005 Edition > > He's forgotten nothing of the pain, the humiliation, the solitude. > American investigators took a year to clear him. And another year to free > him. Beyond the revolting injustice to which he was victim, former > journalist Bader Zaman denounces the arbitrariness of American detention > centers. > > He suffers from hypermnesia. It's twelve months since Bader Zaman was > released from Guantánamo prison, but he remembers every detail of his > detention. Not only the pain, the humiliation, the solitude, but also > little things: dogs' breath, the scrape of the razor against his > eyebrows, the accent of the creep who cried out over the megaphone to the > other soldiers: "Don't show any sympathy for the terrorists!" He can't > forget anything. Today he is free. The Americans have cleared him of all > accusations against him. Yet, in Peshawar, this former journalist's > liberty still remains under tight surveillance. A few weeks ago, ISI > (Pakistani Secret Service) agents came back to see him again. He received > them calmly: "What do I have to fear from you now? Have you found a worse > hell on the earth than the one you've already thrown me into?" > > To meet Bader Zaman, one must dive into the alleys of Old Peshawar. > The 35-year-old journalist, who looks ten years older, has transformed > himself into a trader in precious stones since his liberation. In a dark > little room in the middle of the rubber tire souk, he holds his stock of > lapis-lazuli from Afghanistan. Meeting a foreign woman is just not done > in this city controlled by Islamists, but Bader Zaman insists on bearing > witness. He doesn't really resent the Americans. According to him, the > party responsible for his Calvary is the Pakistani Secret Service, which > he intends to sue. "I spent two months and twenty-two days in Peshawar > prison, fourteen days at Bagram, two months and eight days in Kandahar > and two years and four months in Guantánamo, solely because I denounced > their practices." > > When he was a very young man, Bader and his brother belonged to an > Afghan religious organization close to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda that fought > the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. He resigned from it in 1987 to > protest that organization's links with the Pakistani Secret Services. > Later, he who had never touched a weapon denounced the Taliban's > obscurantism in his newspaper and described them as puppets of the > Pakistani Secret Services. "So they sold me to the Americans. A current > practice right after the American offensive in Afghanistan," he explains. > "For them, it was just a question of keeping the Americans busy with > false suspects. They never stopped playing the international community." > > The journalist knows the stories of all the detainees who occupied > neighboring cells in Guantánamo. He mentions the taxi driver sold for > $5000: "The Pakistanis had just made a raid to find Arabs close to > al-Qaeda and hadn't found anybody, so they arrested him. The officer who > sold him to the Americans told him: 'Look here, it's worth it to sell > people like you to keep the Americans from coming to make war on > Pakistan...'" He says the taxi driver is still at Guantánamo. > > According to Bader, less than 20% of the detainees presently in the > American prison in Cuba are real "bad guys" or Taliban officials like > Mullah Fazel. But it was the Kandahar and Bagram detention centers in > Afghanistan that left him with the worst memories. For twenty-four days, > he was shut up in a container. Then he was forbidden to wash for three > months. With a light on at all times, too tight ligatures that cut into > his arms and legs, tortures. At Bagram, he saw prisoners being kicked > across the ground, others hung by their hands. He also saw offenses to > the Koran, which he says was the normal practice in the Kandahar > detention center. It was there, by the way, that he saw the guards throw > the sacred book into a bucket that was used to empty toilets. > > When he arrived at Guantánamo in May 2002, Bader was placed in > solitary for over a year. In the prison in Cuba, there were no physical > tortures. "The prisoners frequently attacked the guards. I saw them bite > Americans!" But they tried to crack the detainees morally. Like when one > of the female guards touched one of them on the face, her hand smudged > with what she claimed was menstrual blood - testimony corroborated by one > of the Guantánamo investigators, Sergeant Erik Saar, who included that > episode in a book. > > For Bader, after long months of despair in which he kept repeating > the same story about the Pakistani Secret Services to people who didn't > want to hear any of it, the climax came. "At the end of the > interrogations, Federal agents finished by telling me they didn't have > anything on me. That I was cleared. But after that, I had to wait another > year before leaving Guantánamo. Such a long year! > > After that, the conditions of Bader's detention loosened up. He was > transferred to Camp 4, a camp for prisoners who "collaborate." He traded > his orange overall for a white tunic, and picnics were even organized so > the prisoners could see the sea. "We were transported in a closed > ambulance, chained to one another. Then we were placed between rows of > barbed wire near the water. I remember seeing a ship on the sea." > > Bader Zaman has only one good memory from Guantánamo: that's the > arrival of his mortal enemy, the one who acted as intermediary for the > Pakistani Secret Services to sell him to the Americans - who was himself, > in fact, close to al-Qaeda - in the neighboring cell. All the prisoners > who knew the truth booed the man. He lowered his head. "That day, I knew > that I had been believed, that I could hope to leave that hell. The one > who handed me over, he's still there, in the Guantánamo jail... > > Who are the Guantánamo Detainees? > > The Guantánamo detention center numbers 500 detainees who, for the > most part, were captured in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001. Among the > prisoners, one may find, for example, Mullah Fazel, former Taliban > Defense minister, but also people who had the misfortune of finding > themselves in the wrong place, like Wazir Mohamed, a taxi driver whose > case Amnesty International is defending. The seven French citizens > detained in the American prison have all been freed and five of them are > now in prison in France. Washington continues to liberate dozens of > detainees to - as Pierre Prosper, the diplomat in charge of negotiating > these transfers, puts it - "share the burden" with their home countries. > > The "gulag of our era," according to the shock formula used by > Amnesty in its report on Guantánamo, continues to be the object of much > indignation and controversy embarrassing to the American government. > Washington is engaged in an arm-wrestling contest with the UN, > representatives of which want to meet with all the detainees to > investigate accusations of torture. The Pentagon has been forced to > adjourn the trial of "Australian Taliban" David Hicks to conform to a > judge's decision that the Supreme Court pronounce beforehand on the > legality of exceptional military tribunals. > > The CIA's Secret Prisons > > Has the CIA established a network of clandestine detention centers > spread across more than ten countries so they may interrogate supposed > terrorists without legal or moral constraints? The "Washington Post" > revealed the existence of several secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Since > then, the list of countries that supposedly collaborate with the American > authorities has continued to grow: Thailand, Morocco, Norway, Sweden, > Italy, and Spain have been accused of harboring these centers or > tolerating prisoners' transit through their territory. But up until now, > only the Czech Republic has admitted rejecting an American request to > implant a prison for detainees coming out of the Guantánamo base. > > This network of detention centers would have been created in the > months following September 11, when the idea of "prison ships" was > abandoned by the CIA for "security and logistical" reasons. Then a "black > site" with the code name "Salt Mine" was put in place in Afghanistan. And > the CIA supposedly also closed a secret dungeon at Guantánamo. > > According to the "Washington Post," there are a hundred ghost > prisoners. The organization Human Rights Watch - which called them the > "desaparecidos" (the disappeared), in reference to the victims of Latin > American dictatorships - mentions 40 people detained in secret in its > October 2004 report. For several months, voices have been raised within > the CIA itself to contest the legality, and above all, the effectiveness > of such prisons. > >
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