The other day I read a small article in Arab News with the headline "Guantanamo Detainees Attempt Suicide." It brought back to mind the months I spent in jail, in the custody of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service after overstaying my student visa, as written about in a previous edition of Arab News.
I walked into my bedroom and pulled out a box that held my journal and various writings from jail and started reading. One piece caught my attention. I wrote this a few days before I was transferred to solitary confinement.
"Six weeks. Forty-three days. One- and-a-half months. Whatever you call it, it weighs on you. How does one cope? It’s sickening what this place reduces a human being to. You learn about someone else’s case, more miserable than your own: It brings you comfort. How can one become so dejected that one draws strength from another’s misfortune?
"A 17-year-old, charged as an adult, here eight months. He’s living here everyday knowing he won’t be the master of his own life until he is 52, if ever. Thirty-five years to life. It might as well be the death penalty. He probably wishes it were. I think of him, then I think of myself, then I think of him and then I think of myself. Then I breathe a sigh of relief. That brings comfort? What kind of place is this that reduces a man to such lack of compassion? This is supposed to rehabilitate? Try debilitate.
"This is the place where our humanity escapes and leaves the body behind under lock and key. Still some compassion remains. It’s what separates us from the jail officers, our guards. "You ask yourself, did these people with badges choose this career because it was one where they didn’t have to care, show concern or even be cordial; a place where they can bring their problems and frustrations from home and take them out on us? "Then again, did these officers also become victims of this place?
Did their humanity escape them too? I see the effect this place has on them. After all, they have a life sentence here. That brings me comfort."
"As I read over my thoughts, I see contradictions. Humanity escapes? Compassion remains? How could that be? Both belong together. But not in this place. Poor guy. Poor me. Better him than me.
"No. I won’t let this place beat me. I won’t let myself become inhuman."
Just days after writing this, I was transferred to solitary confinement where I remained for five months. As the weeks went on, I became more and more dejected. One night I woke up, soaked in sweat like every other night because of the plastic mattress I was sleeping on. I was woken by the sound of sobbing coming through the air vent. I put my ear to it and heard Deshawn Campbell, 20, accused, but not yet convicted, of killing a police officer, sobbing and crying, repeating the words, "I can’t take this anymore, I can’t take this anymore." Deshawn had been in solitary confinement for nine months and was being harassed and having his life threatened by vengeful police officers and jail guards. Regardless of the crime he is accused of, I couldn’t help but feel pity for him. The following afternoon was my one hour out of my cell every two days. I walked over to Deshawn’s cell to speak to him through his door. "You alright? I heard you last night. You wanna talk ?", I asked him. "I ain’t never going home again, Essam. I ain’t never gonna hold my daughter again. I am going to prison for life. There’s gotta be a way to end all this. This is no way to live life", he told me.
After reading the above journal entry, I reminisced about those days and began to think about those held at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The article that appeared in Arab News about their suicide attempts didn’t really surprise me. Suicide did cross my mind at one point, especially when someone in the cell above mine was found dead. But my religious convictions and the pain I would subject my family to, quickly took the idea out of my head. Looking back now, four months out of jail, I remember the desperation and sense of hopelessness that I felt; my biggest comfort was that I knew I would be going home one day very soon. I remember when I used to complain to the jail officers, they would tell me, "Quit whining, you’re lucky you’re not in Guantanamo." They had a point. After all, the detainees of Camp X-ray have not been tried or convicted of any crimes. They were shipped to an island thousands of miles away from their homes and families. They have no contact with attorneys; have no news of what is happening in the world and with the war on terrorism still very much alive, no freedom in sight for them. The United States says they are Al-Qaeda and Taleban and terrorists, and I won’t argue with that; but again, were these prisoners tried and convicted? What happened to basic human rights and the famed but recently forgotten and ignored concept of "due process"?
I have been reading articles in Time and Newsweek and doing research on the web to try to gain some insight into the conditions the Guantanamo detainees are under. What I read shocked me. They are in a far worse place than I was. They are held in a 6 by 8 feet wire mesh cage with concrete floors and razor sharp wires overhead. They are allowed out of their cage for half an hour a week, to exercise in shackles. They are subjected to "caloric intake modification," to solicit confessions. In English, they are starved, whenever the authorities feel they are being "uncooperative".
The Pentagon has labeled the Taleban and Al-Qaeda prisoners, ‘detainees’, a legal term that exempts them from the protections and rights conferred by the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.
Because the fighters were not in official uniforms and carried concealed weapons, among other Geneva Convention violations, the United States was not required to recognize them as lawful combatants. According to Donald Rumsfeld, "unlawful combatants ... do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention."
Arab News Features 27 February 2003
