By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan.
Ten years ago, Omar Deghayes and Morris Davis would have struck anyone as an odd pair. While they have never met, they now share a profound connection, cemented through their time at the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Deghayes was a prisoner there. Air Force Col. Morris Davis was chief prosecutor of the military commissions there from 2005 to 2007.
Deghayes was arrested in Pakistan and handed over to the U.S. military. He told me: “There was a payment made for every person who was handed to the Americans. … We were chained, head covered, then sent to Bagram [Afghanistan]—we were tortured in Bagram—and then from Bagram to Guantanamo.”
At Guantanamo, Deghayes, one of close to 800 men who have been sent there since January 2002, received the standard treatment: “People were subjected to beatings, daily fear … without being convicted of any crime.”
While Deghayes and his fellow inmates were suffering in their cages, the Bush administration was erecting a controversial legal framework to prosecute the Guantanamo prisoners. It labeled those rounded up “enemy combatants,” argued they had no protections under the U.S. Constitution, nor under the Geneva Conventions, no rights whatsoever. Guantanamo became a legal black hole.
When I asked Col. Davis if he felt that torture was used at Guantanamo, he said:
“I don’t think there’s any doubt. I would say that there was torture. Susan Crawford, a Dick Cheney protegee, said there was torture. John McCain has said waterboarding was torture, and we’ve admitted we’ve waterboarded. There have been at least five judges in federal court and military courts that have said detainees were tortured.”
Chained, kept in cages in orange jumpsuits, subjected to harsh interrogations and humiliations, with their Muslim faith vilified, the prisoners at Guantanamo began to fight back, through the time-honored tradition of nonviolent noncooperation. They began a hunger strike. In response, examples were made of Deghayes and the other protesters. He recalled: “After beating me in the cell, they dragged me outside, and then one of the guards, while another officer was standing, observing what was happening, [tried] to gouge my eyes out. … I lost sight in both of my eyes. Slowly, I regained my sight in one of the eyes. The other eye has completely gotten worse. And they went to do the same thing to the next cell and the next cell and next cell … to frighten everyone else from campaigning or from objecting to any policies.”
Deghayes now has sight in one eye. His right eye remains shut. After his release from Guantanamo, he was sent back to Britain. He is suing the British government for its collaboration in his imprisonment and torture.
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