American History Hit - Guantanamo Bay Detention Center: A History From The Inside

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Very few people know what it is like to be in the infamous US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, but our 3 guests for this episode have all had first hand experience.For one of them, it was as a detainee. Mansoor Adayfi was held, interrogated and tortured at Guantanamo for over 14 years. For Pardiss Kebriaei, it was as an attorney. Pardiss is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and has worked with Guantanamo detainees since 2007. Finally, for Karen Greenberg, it was as an historian. Karen is Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, and author of a number of books, including 'The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days'.So how did Guantanamo Bay become the locus of a detention centre? How did nearly 800 people come to be detained there? And how has it changed over time? Don finds out.Mansoor's books include 'Don't Forget Us Here' and the audiobook 'Letters from Guantanamo', available on audible.Produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Artwork by Kyle Hoekstra.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Habah, haba, hibhila, bilija, bylhah, and again and again, this is a song.

We used to sing at Guantanamo for each other, welcoming each other, welcoming the new group who would arrive at Guantanamo. It would mean welcome, welcome, and more welcome by the one who come. So I would like to welcome our audience to this episode. My name is Manor D'Ifi. I am former Guantanamo prisoner. 4-4-1. It's American History Hit, and I'm Don Wildman.

Glad you're listening. Down in the distant Caribbean is a place fabled for a peculiar mystique. This is not an island paradise of beaches and sun. It is no getaway. To the contrary, it is a place of confinement and desolation. It is a prison. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp located at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo, often called, established in 1903,

the oldest functioning overseas base in the U.S. Navy. In 2002, Guantanamo Bay became suddenly very famous, notorious, might be the word, as it became the location of a prison used to house those captured in the war against terror. In the wake of 9-11 and subsequent actions, this facility was deemed urgently necessary, right and proper, in most newspaper headlines 20 years ago, but nowadays it rarely occasions your feed. To discuss the history of Guantanamo today,

I'm joined by two experts, Pardis Cabriye and Karen Greenberg. Karen, Pardis, welcome to American History Hit. Thanks for joining us. Very nice to be here. It's great to be here. Karen is an historian, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, and author of The Least Worst Place, Guantanamo's First 100 Days. Partis is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, also known as CCR.

I've been working on Guantanamo continuously since 2007. trip was in 2008, and I still represent someone who was in. Shekelia Hajj is being held without charge still, cleared for release. It's been in Guantanamo for 20 years and was held in CIA sites for two years before that. You've also already met Mansour at the opening of this episode. He is a former Guantanamo detainee held there for 14 years. Captured at the age of 18 by warlords in Afghanistan, Mansour, from Yemen, was accused of being an Egyptian al-Qaeda leader.

We spoke to him from his current home in Serbia, and we'll be hearing his story throughout the show. But first, a question. Why Guantanamo? Let's begin at the beginning. I mentioned this odd dichotomy. This is an established base in the southeast part of Cuba back in 1903, basically the result of the Spanish-American War. Why is Guantanamo Bay detention camp at Gitmo? So it's a good question. Why does it become the Gitmo that we know it to be today? So the George W. Bush administration realized early on after they launched the war on terror in the fall of 2001 in response to the attacks of September 11th of that year that they were going to need a place to hold the prisoners that they were gathering up in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world, it turned out. And they didn't want to keep them in Afghanistan and decided they were going to move them somewhere to a military base. So they sort of convened to talk about their options, and their options included everything from Germany, which was close enough to where Afghanistan was, that it seemed viable to the island of Guam,

where we also had a military base. And Germany had problems because there was a sense that if they established this camp sort of outside the rules of law, international, domestic, and military, the Germans might have something to say about it. Guam was extremely far away, and for logistic reasons and other reasons, it wasn't a great idea. There are a number of other places mentioned, but then someone at a meeting said, what about Cuba? And almost immediately when it was said there was, you know, buy-in to it, Cuba was nearby. They got indications very early on that the government of Cuba would not interfere.

In fact, that if anybody escaped, they would send them back. Relationship between Cuba and the United States on the base of Guantanamo at the time were way more friendly than they'd been in the past. and the security conditions had been relaxed. Many of the guard towers that you see in the pictures weren't even manned at the time. There was a back and forth between people who worked at the base and who lived in Cuba. And so they decided on Cuba for a lot of logistical

and what I would call geopolitical reasons. Yes. That's what's interesting is the fact that this is outside the normal U.S. jurisdiction in terms of the legal qualities of this. Yeah, I'll add on to that. I mean, I think Guantanamo was at its inception primarily an intelligence gathering operation.

I mean, it was a detention site, but the purpose was to hold and interrogate detainees. And I think the Bush administrations, or we know the Bush administration's legal position was that Guantanamo was a place where U.S. law would not reach and that they would be able to hold detainees and hold them indefinitely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. federal courts and interrogate them without legal troubles or habeas cases.

And that was the administration's position continuously for the first several years and for the first six years of Guantanamo detainees there had no established right to challenge the legality of their detention. Right. So the administration was able to hold and treat and interrogate them without any kind of outside check other than those that those of us, including Karen and myself and CCR and reporters were trying to assert through reporting. and advocacy and all that we know. Can I just add a couple of things there? One, which is that it's very unusual to take people from a battlefield and transport them for interrogation purposes, which is what parties just said, which is exactly right,

to someplace that far away, because intelligence, presumably within a war situation, is tactical. Where are these people, you know, what can we learn on the ground? And so the very premise of it to just move them, just told you so much about the interrogations and what they needed to know about this, which were not pertinent to the conflict itself. And the final thing I just want to add is that to Partiz's point about holding them outside the legal contracts that we understood, one of those legal constructs was international law. And when they took to the Guantanamo,

one of the first directives the military on the ground got was, whatever you do, do not call them prisoners. Because if you call them prisoners, you will invoke the Geneva Convention, the laws of war, and you will be putting us before all these legal thresholds that we don't intend to abide by. And so they were called detainees. That's sort of a central point here in terms of what happened in Guantanamo and why it's still around and why it's taken so long. I mean, the legal position of the administration was starting in January, February of 2002, that the law did not apply, international law did not apply, the Geneva Convention did not apply. And then because of pressure, ultimately, they landed on, well, the Geneva

conventions apply to people they asserted were part of the Taliban, but not to Al-Qaeda, not to anybody else. And nobody was a prisoner of war. And that humane treatment, which is required by international humanitarian law, would be afforded as a matter of policy, but not law. That's right. I mean, that's just really central to understanding why what happened in wantonimo happened and why the legal battle has continued for so long. Because from the very beginning, those were the positions the administration was taking. The added dilemma, and I guess the logic behind so much of this, was that we were fighting a completely different kind of war. Therefore, the rules were wiggly. And, you know, putting ourselves back historically, we're talking

about Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and this crowd of the Bush administration, who are basically trying to outline a completely different approach to prisoners of war. We're not fighting a nation. We're fighting groups of people who have somehow pulled off a Pearl Harbor level attack on us. So how are we now going to deal with housing prisoners when you're not dealing with the nation they come from? That sits central to the argument, doesn't it? The decision to decide they were non-state actors only was a momentous decision that the Bush administration launched very early on. And it was what led to the reasoning behind many of the acts that were approved, you know, in the name of interrogation and detention as well as other things.

So the fact that they decided at the beginning to separate the culpability of countries for who these people held passports, such as Saudi Arabia and other countries and just focus on non-state actors was one of the pivotal dimensions of the war on terror as it played out. and something to just note in terms of how you think about the legal parameters of what they did. How much was the perceived need to operate outside of lines, and I'm talking about torture, how much did that necessitate this kind of remote location that was in no other country? I grew up in southern New Jersey, and we used to go to a state park there called Parvin State Park, and it had a bunch of cabins there.

And legend had it that this is where German POWs were kept during World War II. So the idea of bringing POWs to the United States had happened before, but that was within the United States and within the Geneva Convention, etc., etc. World War II, 500,000 versus 700. We could manage this problem more locally, but you didn't want to do what we needed to do within other domains, right? Well, it gets to the point of how almost immediately the reaction to 9-11 was we can't trust the law. And you can see repercussions of this still today. I mean, I guess, get reports all the time about how we can't trust the law to protect us against a variety of threats. And that happened very early on. In terms of torture, remember that the memos that were written for torture were written for CIA black sites all around the world. They weren't written necessarily for Guantanamo, although there were brutal interrogation sites set up at Guantanamo later. But in that first period, it was more like they wanted all the options that they could have before them. And they

thought that this category that they created non-state after could therefore be outside the law. And they didn't want anything to restrain them from what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. And keeping them in cages that were completely exposed to the elements without toilets and much more was a sign of how they were not going to treat these people within any parameters of the legal systems that existed. I think certainly the location outside of the mainland of the United States enabled the U.S.'s position, the government's position that federal law didn't reach there. So I think that was certainly part of it. I think the sort of national security context and the climate at the time and sort of the national security justifications that the

government invoked in court and the deference that courts and others give to the administration when it comes to national security decisions also had equally to do with it. Mansoor Adaifi is just one of almost 800 men who have been held in Guantanamo Bay over the years since 2002. He joins our call at 6 p.m. his time. He is bright, smiley and has a thick beard. And, as you'll hear, a sense of humor. He frequently drops jokes into the conversation. His story starts in Yemen.

I grew up in a tiny village in Raima, Mountain. then after finishing my secondary school I had to move to finish my high school in the city for the first time traveling to Yemen capital Sana it's one of the biggest moments in my life you know because if you live in that tiny village no electricity no running water no services absolutely nothing like a tribal community then all of the sudden you travel to the city where the last buildings a lot of people cars lighting and so on it's just like traveling to a new world and the first time I encountered TV set was in the capital yeah that

magical box so watching this kind of like cartoons and Tommy Jerry woodpecker and so on so like I would go to see behind the TV who's the people who do they go and I start playing with with electricity on of my aunt she was screaming sit down stop so I wanted to study in computer science and in 2000 it was one college private college started computer science but it was so expensive I tried to work I tried to save money also my family couldn't support me so I got a deal to work as a researcher assistant and to travel to Afghanistan in exchange for scholarship where when I come back I would go and study when

of the Gulf countries, computer science. This was huge for me, and I had been following this scholarship for over a year. And subhallah, sometimes, you know, you didn't know your fate. And, you know, I travel, I think, in June to Afghanistan to do research and so on. Of course, we had permission from our Yemeni government. Everything was coordinating with the Yemeni government, Yemen embassy, and so on. arriving in Afghanistan was like traveling in time to the middle centuries you know we had war in Yemen in the 1994 but I was far away but I could see the atmosphere the

how people feel the the problem was struggled with financially economically emotionally and so on and I remember one of my teachers was killed during the war. So that was, you know, like stuck in my mind. He was one of the best teachers. Mahmah Tallah, his name was Rashid. So kind and they took him to the war and he was killed. And that was really sad because I was in the village. We just heard there was a war and people get killed and people listened to the radios. So then when I got traveled to Afghanistan, I could see now the damage the war had left on the people's life you can see the severity strangle on the people's face you can see the war machinery tanks

trucks all kind of stuff we started doing our research in Afghanistan collecting some materials the research was one of the Yemenis scholars went to write a book about you know the new groups at that time Al-Qaeda Taliban so He was asked actually by the Saudi government, but the Yemeni government, to counter this kind of new groups and so on. For me, I was 18 years old. I wanted to travel, to see the world. When I get back, I was like preparing everything to my mom.

This is my dream. It was a gift for me. Mansour was still in Afghanistan on September 11th when four commercial airliners were hijacked by members of al-Qaeda. One of the planes was flown into the Pentagon. Two others hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. The fourth crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day.

The footage repeated on television sets across the world. But for Mansour in Afghanistan, it didn't have an immediate impact. Not having happened. And we didn't know because, as you know, Afghanistan also was isolated almost from the rest of the world. also the Soviet invasion and the civil war totally destroyed the country so after three days we heard that there was an attack on the United States they said maybe Chinese the Japanese I don't know what else then our contact point in Afghanistan was a Saudi charity organization who actually contacted by the Saudi government and he was asked to leave like immediately and

And he told us, guys, you have to leave. They said al-Qaeda did it. So, okay, and they had to liquid everything. They had a lot of logistics stuff. They asked us to help. It's okay. So our mission was to take some of the medicine, the blanket, the stuff they have, one of the hospitals, and after they take the car and leave.

It wouldn't be as simple as that for Mansour. In the wake of the attack on 9-11, George W. Bush declared the war on terror And the U.S. offered bounties for people who may pose a threat to U.S. interests or may have intelligence value. Before the invasion, the Americans airplanes would throw a leaflets offering a large bounty for anyone who would bring Al-Qaeda or Taliban or terrorists. And many people took that as opportunity. Money, you could change your life. So the higher the drink you told them the money is, the more money you got. So the American intelligence, American government, American CIA, whatever, they get throwing just money around.

The Pakistani prime minister, he announced that he said we sold Arabs also in his book on the line of fire. We asked Bardez to shed more light on this process and its impact. People in the administration knew early on that most of the people they were holding were not involved. in terrorism were not part of al-Qaeda. They were, I mean, phrases like wrong place, wrong time, you know, they were swept up. There were mass sweeps of people that were happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan in response to bounties, awards of cash that local people were receiving to turn over anyone who fit a certain profile. There are flyers of this that exist. I mean, all of this is documented in detail. There's so much documentation about those early desicquent handle.

and what the administration knew. Many hundreds of people actually were released within the first several years as the administration started sorting through who it had. But I think the problem is that, you know, many hundreds also remained. And it became a political imperative for them to stay. This was not about security

and this was not about legality. It was about politics, which is ultimately, you know, what Guantanamo became and continues to be. So, I mean, I think that's where I look back can I check myself. I mean, I'm an advocate at CCR. I'm a lawyer at CCR. I had a side.

We had a position. But now with time and distance and some reflection, even understanding those instincts at the very beginning and assuming some good faith by people involved, there was knowledge early on that most of those held should not have been there. And yet they remained. And you have people like the first commander who set up Camp X. those cages, writing op-eds years later saying that was a mistake.

Guantanamo was a mistake and should be closed. And yet we are in 2024 and the prison is still open. So that's where I have trouble. Yeah. We looked into this last comment about the first commander. His name is Major General Michael Leonard. And he was commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo in 2002. His first assignment to Guantanamo was 60 days in length, but he wrote in a 2015 Politico op-ed that, quote,

during the first few days after the first detainees arrive, I became concerned that the detention facility was not going to be a short-term operation. He goes on to write that, quote, history continues to judge our decisions, decisions made when we were angry and frightened. Who we are as a nation cannot be separated. from what we do. It is hard to overstate how damaging the continued existence of the detention facility at Guantanamo has been. I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email at ah-h at history hit.com. We'd love to hear from you. Back in Afghanistan, 2001, Mansoor is caught up in one of these sweeps for suspects, while helping to liquidate the organization

he was researching for, he was ambushed by Afghan warlords. Initial negotiations for his release by the organization failed, and he was passed on to another warlord, who handed him to the CIA, who took him to one of the infamous so-called black sites. He remembers his first encounter with the Americans and his time in the black site. And one day they came, I could see in their faces, you know, I could feel it, I could see it. you know because they were a large group of guys and they were also like cover their faces and holding their guns like what's going on you know what the hood of my dad I fought with them a little

but you cannot defeat tenor I wasn't jim spawn at that time so they put the huddle for my head and the first time I put shackles and I fought with them basically and they like kicking them hitting screaming them shouting at them as a boy like why are doing they whatever it is then all of the son I could hear a dog barking so loud then strong hands grab me throw me to the floor shouting yelling and beating you in English you know at that situation even your mother tongue you will lose it and imagine people like you are hooded and we'll grab you to the floor shouting yelling getting your clothes you know doing our kind of searches and

beating like I tried to make sense at that time I just fighting screaming shouting at them what's going on what happened and they had to gag my mouth and I tried to bite someone I think I bite his trowers wherever because he was putting his knee over my eye travel like so they gag me and I was bleeding and you know they were shouting stop resist don't resist whatever and the dog was parking like tomb we can hear close to my face put me in the truck helicopter turned into a basement where i spent around three months it's one of the cia basement trust me like this one of the poorest time in my life you know interrogations sleep deprivation beating hanging all kind of style you know

it accuse me that i was a qaeda general and a middle-aged egyptians name adil all kind of sorts and imagine it's not there is different group of people group after group interrogation beating you know hand naked they pour water in my mouth but some kind of fries and I can't pray I can do nothing everything was happening so fast so you know it was the first time when they said they're going to excuse me you know whatever they said I I tried to explain to them I am from Yemen and so on was going on are you here and when we all are when we knew what you did and under the circumstances you will admit to

everything my problem was giving the details and they told me they knew that I was highly trained to counter interrogation techniques so the situation will get worse and it's one of the first time I counter death a few times where they said oh we're going to exclude you using the electricity was one of the worse sessions you know I thought I'm going to die like I lost a lot of weight I had broken ribs you know after three months around three months an old guy came and they dragged me to him naked he sat in the chair take the cover look at me paper look at my examine my body the exam in my face my mouth you know after the day I was transferred to

under her detention also under the control of the United States it was Kandahar airport and also now a new cycle of interrogation and torture abuses and so on and the way they did it makes you feel that's execution because when I arrived at Kandahar the detention there you know I was as usual like who did stress strain beating bleeding they couldn't stand I was so skinny I was between life and death and the first time you know they took my hood of my head I could see a large group of soldiers wearing this white protective gear a lot of blood and there was a lot of clothing there I was like this is it I faced death many times I

like you know at that point I could die at any moment so what they finished with me they took me at a tent under her detention called people shouting there's like helicopters hovering all night long and no sleep they took me naked then they brought some uniform throat at me and I could see someone whispering say salam a l'aikum like I see the soldiers they open the door come shut up shut up I'm like what's me shut up like they didn't shut up like Shut up, shut up. So like, okay.

It's like, don't talk, don't talk. Like the man who was there, he was Egyptian. He said, just try to relax, wear your clothes. Everything's going to be fine. It was cold, so cold. It was wintertime. And I hadn't eaten for days. I was like, no, for that way it was really between life and that.

While in Kandahar, the guards tried to force Mansour to sign a waiver to his life, that if he tried to escape, they would have. have the right to shoot him. He refused. And the problem was the barrier. I didn't understand what they were saying? And the interpreters broke in Arabic. So then you got a lot of beating. Such beatings were, Mansour says, often indiscriminate. So if sometimes the guards like you, they will take you and just hang you all day on the fence all day long.

They were restrained you to a pool like that all day long. they would like duct tape around your head, your mouth. You know, sometimes they will take your pants down. The worst situations. But in the black side, it was even worse because in the black side it was interrogation. I don't want to go in details, but there was no limits. And people died in the blood sites, as you know, the torture report and so on. At the start of 2002, after around a month at Kandahar,

Mansoor and his fellow detainees start being moved to Cuba, though they didn't know where they were going. So one day they would come at the end of the day, like in the round four, five o'clock, shout our names. Special team would come. The cargo plane arrived. And when there is like small plane would arrive at the Har Airport, we knew they would bring new people.

When there is something we call it the beast, the cargo plane, dark, U.S. Air Force, huge when they're going to take some people and we will never see them again from the moment they call you they you have to lay in the floor entire team would come with the dog and just drag you then they would cost to a tent they caught the process station so again they will hang us by your hands cutting our clothing and shaving like putting some powders and a lot of humiliation and company that you know I just they make a lot of fun of you then they would start putting us in orange suits so I one of the reason I spits on the

guards because there was a young boy they were making fun of his genitals and humiliating him I I spat on the guard so I get a lot of punches then they put me in the orange suit restraints duct tape muffs cover our ears then you know our eyes you see the goggles, the hood, and they put sign around my neck, beat me. So we waited for hours for the, we could hear the engine, like, it's too cold, and they started dragging us to the airplane from there to the unknown. 20 people arrived at the very beginning on the first flight on January 11, 2002. Eventually, the first, you know, sort of big sense of what they were were 300.

the most they had at Guantanamo over all a period of time was about, they always say about 780. Just to add on, you know, some color for those first days, they, there are images that I think many people are familiar with from, you know, how detainees arrived. They were transported on flights, you know, in military planes, shackled, bound, unable to get up, hooded with goggles. And there's total sensory deprivation for, what, 17 hours or more on flights from Afghanistan and elsewhere, arrived at Guantanamo sort of stumbled off the planes, totally blindfolded and chained together. And then for the first several months of their detention, they were held in outdoor wire mesh cages. I mean, they were outside in Cuba for four months before more permanent prisons that resemble Supermax. prisons that we have, the United States were constructed. So those were the first days.

Who was in charge of this? Who was calling the shots on how Guantanamo Bay would operate? Well, I think, I mean, I think Donald Rumsfeld was calling the shots in many ways. Others in the Justice Department that laid out the parameters that they could follow in terms of or not follow in terms of legal rights and the lack thereof. And many others throughout the Bush administration who were, who thought this was a good thing. You have to put this in context, not that it excuses any of it, but it does explain how they were able to get away with this. But after 9-11 was such a shock to the country. And the idea that the United States was caught without defenses, what the only way that they knew how to deal with this was to say, we're going to

do whatever we can. We're not going to let the laws get in the way because we're going to protect the country. And they didn't. And so this became a way of responding that they thought, was appropriate. But one important thing to point out is that after 100 days, which is why I call my book the first 100 days, Donald Rumsfeld and others decided to pull out the military contingent that was in charge of Guantanamo during those days because they weren't reporting directly to Donald Rumsfeld. They altered the chain of command. They put in people who would do their bidding rather than mention every here and there like, what about courts, what about the trials you promised us, what about the treatment of the detainees? And they just pulled them out whole.

and put in people that would be responsive directly to the Secretary of Defense and taking out the chain of command as it currently stood. Mansour remembers his arrival in Guantanamo and these first 100 days. We were received by the Marines, American Marines, basically, and they were again shouting, yelling, beating, taken to the ferry, to Abbas. I could hear, I could see the field of weather and the sea beneath the ferry. Okay, this is the first clue to see here. And we waited for hours and hours and hours.

Just on our knees. Who did? You see the photos of Quentin. Shouting, yelling, beating. And the process station when they took us, they start cutting your clothes in a way makes you feel naked. What's going on? And of the sudden, only your head covered gags.

And they started like, using the holes to shower us with brooms sobs almost drowned so during these searches from the moment every time they get their hand on you they will do a lot of searches including the anosurge in the most stimulating ways and they do it over and over again and they ask a question during that tradition we are kaidae al-qaidae al-qaidae and taliban were there and so on like do you want more do you like it to break your dignity to take that so welcome to Guantanamo so around 800 men were brought to Guantanamo 15 nationalities more than 20 languages spoken you have doctors nurses journalists lawyers psychologists you have some of the

people some Taliban but according to their research published by American Civil Liberty Union ACLU and other universities and around 90% of the prisoners of Guantanam were either mistaken identity or sold for bounties. And they said only five person linked to Al-Qaeda or Taliban was suspected. So when you arrived there, we didn't know we were where or what happened to us. So when we arrived, it was bright light, tired, exhausted, we had no idea where we were and nobody told us anything. And we's speculation.

We were Bahrain, Uman, India. All I can see This makeshift fences come back straight An orange ocean of orange figures And the guards shouting yelling dog barking Shut up, don't talk, don't look at me Look down, don't talk What I see

I remember the way kind of stuff, moments. I thought like, this guy's crazy. As a detainee of Guantanamo, Mansoor is now known not by his own name, but as the worst of the worst, as a number. They give us different numbers in different prisons. So in the black sides, I don't know what they were calling me.

We were just ghosts. No names, no numbers, nothing. And you can see anyone. You cannot see any face. In Kandahar, they give me a number, started with 4-2-1, and in Guantanamo, you become just a number now. You arrive at Guantanamo, just become 4-4-1. That's now my middle name.

Mansour remembers the temporary facilities of Camp X-ray, the roughly eight square foot wire and concrete cages that the detainees were initially put into, but with his customary glint of humor. Camp X-ray was just cemented. and cages that's it you know toilet you have only two buckets one for use it as a toilet the second one is for drinking water there is nothing protective from the heat from the sun from the rain from the wind absolutely nothing and I met

really a lovely beautiful friend there it was my iguana the first time as a small dinosaur. It was so beautiful. Like, you know, like, oh! Come to my cell, to my cage. And we shared the first meal. We become friends. He left his iguana, princess, when he moved to Camp Delta, the more permanent facilities that parties mentioned, that replaced X-ray as the camp's process became more organized. Now we had the toilet, was hole in the floor, and there was a window, and we had also the ceilings. Also, there was loud fans, ventilators. Of course, it was really hot.

And then the intense interrogation started, and it got worse at the end of 2002, the one who started developing the, or creating the torture program. The detainees were regularly interrogated, but still had no idea what was going to happen to them. You cannot pray, you cannot stand, you cannot look at the guard, you can't, you can't. So I wasn't, you know, the strongest or the oldest, but I came from different background. The tribal society, you know, a little hyperactive. So they thought this is the leader. Then I became his troublemaker.

You have been living your life for the last, for example, my 18 years, living every single day like that. So someone wants to change you, change you like a number, and they expect you just to follow orders and everything. And, you know, you are human being. You have your values, your faith, your morals, your ethic, your way of life. And in the prison, you become just a number. And there was also no rules. Nobody told you what was, what is, that's it.

Very little food, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and anything can be taken as a crime. So many of the prisoners, they don't want to cause any trouble because even leading the like Muslims we pray in a collective prayers. If you leave the prayers, imagine. That means you are a leader. That means you are al-Qaeda. That means, so even your faith was turned against you. If you show that you are practicing your religion, that's indication that you are al-Qaeda, that you are a terrorist. And that was scary. This is who I am. I am Muslim. I cover Muslim family, Muslim background. That doesn't mean I hate you or I want to kill you. No. The problem

what, they were so ignorant about us, about our religion, our culture, about us all. All they see in you as a monster, as a terrorist, as a killer. Looking back, Mansour empathizes with many of the American staff sent to work at Guantanamo. Imagine if they sent you to a place where they told you are going to meet the worst of the worst, vicious killers, they will kill you. How would you behave? What do you expect? and also there was language barriers between us and the guards the guards were allowed to talk to us and they don't want us to talk to us later on that would become problematic for the government administration because they would bring all their guards who would question you know they were told

these guys these prisoners are the worst of the worst the one who did 9-11 when the guards would live with us few months six months or a year what they had being told actually contradict when they saw what they leave what they understand because they talk to us they watch us they could understand they also read they question things and some of them start actually refusing to follow the order some of them actually start something with us so the demonstration sympathizing or show sympathy or smile with the prisoners will be in trouble you be demoted you will be punished

or you get kicked out of the camp. So Guantanamo target us as a human being, target us in our humanity. And we were not the only victims of Guantanamo and the idea behind Guantanamo. There was also a lot of good people who, whether guards, camp staff, or animals or workers, contractors, translators, lawyers.

So all of these were somehow affected by Guantanamo. Many of the detainees of Guantanamo went on hunger strike. Strikers who suffered chronic weight loss were then typically force-fed twice a day. Mansoor explained his motivations to strike. We call the Dark Age from 2002, until 2010, you know, dark age where torture, abuses,

of course, we have to resist. One of the things we did to resist, the oppression, that injustice, the torture, the abuses, in Guantanamo was hunger strike. You know, it was a way to preserve our humanity. But at the same time, hunger strike was also destroying our bodies, our health, and everything. So we tried to get our voice to the world. We were demanding justice.

So the US government viewed our hunger strike as a form of terrorism. They told us, you are committing jihad by doing hunger strike. So we told them, do you think Gandhi or the Irish guys were also doing jihad? So hunger strike, we spent years and years in hunger strike and force feeding. Some of the prisoners spent almost like 10 years in force feeding. At least nine men died while in Guantanamo. The first three deaths was in 2006. And the situation in the camp started changing in 2009.

In the mid-2000s, a series of events led to increased scrutiny of the treatment of detainees by the U.S. Army and the CIA. I asked Karen and parties how the situation in Guantanamo developed over these years. Karen answers first. First of all, you have the exposures of torture that come out in 2004 at Abu Ghraib. It was a game changer in terms of shedding a light on the entire detention authority that the United States was asserting and sort of uncovered a lot that the American public didn't know, way beyond Abu Ghrave in terms of the torture program.

CIA Black Sites, what was going on in Guantanamo, and the rest. But the attempt to use law to oversee what was going on in Guantanamo happened in a series of stages. In 2005, you get the Detainee Treatment Act. 2006, you actually have a law setting up the military commissions, which, even though they had military commissions, were not set up by law. And so the Supreme Court said they needed that, and they did it. 2009, the new Military Commissions Act that comes out under Obama that ostensibly puts what they called Article III court or federal court-like conditions on how these cases would play out in court. The Bumetian decision in 2008 with the right to habeas. But, you know, that's a long period of time over which it happened. And it wasn't necessarily

successful in getting courts stateside to comply and to comply with the spirit of what these laws meant. So on paper, there was some progress, and in some individual cases, there was progress. But for the most part, Guantanamo has remained a place of indefinite detention. Yes, there's now a right to a lawyer, but is there a right to a trial? That's another question. We don't seem to be able to have trials. Guantanamo Bay Detention Center costs the U.S. $13 million a year per prisoner. Was there ever any value really proven of this place? I mean, has that story ever been told? told and believably so. I mean, I think the numbers in part speak for themselves.

You know, nearly 800 people ever held. 30 there now. Seven charged in the commission system. Everyone else held for 22 years, whether Guantanamo or elsewhere without charge. The changes in the 2000s did mean access to lawyers. My first lawyer, I get my first lawyer in 2009. He was an Irish, American Irish man. He was a little scared and afraid of me because he was first time in Guantanamo,

and they told him, you know, they gave him a lot of crab, you know. Be careful this guy. He's one of the worst of the worst. You know, those guys' killers. And this guy, he's a troublemaker. When he came to see me, I was in first feeding hunger strikes since 2007. I was in the orange suit in the meeting room waiting. And I could see a huge guy behind from the window in the night. the door looking at me, talking to the guard,

then he opened the door. Excuse me, sir. Are you, I hate to call you with number. Are you 4-4-1? I said, yes. And he went to the back, to the guard. Are you sure this is 4-4-1? When he came back in, I stood up,

and al-a-a-a-com, I welcome him. He's tall, almost like six feet, huge, strong, and later he told me, he said, I was expecting to meet a monster. He told me he's a federal lawyer and he worked with prisoners in the United States. It's a criminalist, killers. And when I met you, you were like, tiny, skinny guy

who was like, Salamu alaikum, peace be on you, welcome. I would like to come you. He said, I was confused. So this is kind of the image, you know, the U.S. government makes you like, you know, we are doing a great job here. We are protecting the United States from this kind of danger. Mansour's first lawyer, sadly, did not survive.

to see him released. Andy Hart, he died in 2013, but I got a new lawyer in 2015. I have been older since then, yeah. As she mentioned at the top of the episode, Pardis is a lawyer for detainees in Guantanamo. She represents men much like Mansour. We asked her about the journey down to the base in Cuba.

In 2004, lawyers were able to start going down, and I think those first flights and accommodations and the feel was people who had been held at Guantano had not seen anyone from the outside other than the military members of the Red Cross for two years at least. So lawyers arriving just a handful of them in those early days, I think, had a particular feel. CCR had a dedicated project at the time, representing people at Guantanamo and coordinating their defense with hundreds of other lawyers around the country who had joined. in this mass defense effort.

So the first time I went down, I joined CCR in 2007, the first time I went down with 2008. I think, and I've written about this, I think what I was struck with, actually, in those first days, was how bizarrely kind of normal and nice, it seemed. I mean, Guantanamo was a military base, and the prison is so infamous, and there had been a lot of reporting and knowledge

about what was happening there by the time I traveled down. But I, you know, I stayed in a motel 8 type quarters. There were framed pictures of beach scenes on my wall. There was a mint on my pillow. And it was kind of strange juxtaposition, I guess, between the normalcy of my accommodations and how I was there versus then entering this prison. But literally, in terms of getting there, we typically would take flights from New York or wherever lawyers were based in the United States to Fort Lauderdale.

Florida, and then get on a smaller authorized, not a military plane, there were commercial planes, but that were authorized cleared by the military to arrive at Guantanamo. We take those planes down to the base. Get there, land on the runway, on a short tarmac, and get processed, get driven to our quarters on a school bus or some small bus, and then take a ferry over to the prison side of the base the next day for meetings. We asked Mansour about how the experiences of detainees altered on the ground after these changes to the running of Guantanamo Bay. So after eight years in solitary confinement, abuses, torture, hunger strike, you know, they changed the living condition that come.

They negotiated with us about stop the hunger strike and they will change the living condition. So life become better. and we started having, you know, a human living, family communication, better health care, butter food, butter clothing, you know, and they stopped the interrogation. But yet again, there was no insight about your problem when we would leave and to wear.

In 2013, the situation even gone worse. They reset Guantanamo and they went to send it back to the previous time. And we had to go back on hunger strike again and try to demand the change the situation. So when Obama found out in his next term, he's not he won't be able to close Guantanamo. He tried to release those who have been cleared to release. So the process of clearing prisoners of Guantanamo, there was something called PRP, Prieta Review Board with like multiple agencies from Department of Justice or Department of Defense and Homeland Security,

the intelligence agencies was safer. They were assessed every case. And if you get clear for release, now you have to wait maybe for one month, two months, maybe 10 years. There are some prisoners in Guantanamo who have been cleared for release since 2009 and 10.

Yeah, they still in Guantanamo. So basically, nothing applies in Guantanamo. Absolutely nothing. The government keeps improvising just new rules, new regulations, because Guantanamo is a blockhole. As he speaks, Mansoor is not in Guantanamo.

He was released on July 11, 2016. Before we hear about his release, I asked Parties about one of the cases she worked on. I want to note an article you wrote, really moving article called Life After Guantanamo in Harper's magazine a few years ago, and it involves a father-and-son case that if I can ask you to maybe synopsize very shortly

a really, really detailed and beautifully written article. I think it's a very good illustration of what we're talking about. Yeah, and that was a really formative case for me. The person I represented was Muhammad Kuntumani. He was a Syrian young man who was captured and detained with his father when he was in high school. Held at Guantanamo until 2009 without charge, ultimately cleared for release and transferred during the beginning of the first Obama.

administration when there was just a lot of energy and momentum to close the prison and European countries and other countries coming forward to offer resettlement to people who couldn't return home for fear of persecution because of having been called Guantanamo detainees and the stigma and risk that all of that carries and also because their home countries were in conflict. So Muhammad was resettled ultimately in Portugal and his father a year later went to Cape Verde and the peace, the life after Guantanamo piece, is in part about the heartbreak of their story. They were father and son,

but were resettled apart and had remained apart, in part because the government didn't believe that they were father and son and didn't treat them as such. And so resettled them separately. So the piece is in part about their detention, but more the point was to show the experience that happens after release.

And for them, I'm just sort of, it's a very hopeful version of Guantanamo. I mean, what happens. Muhammad is now, you know, he's still in Portugal. He has a family of his own. He's working. He's thriving, I think. And Guantanamo is really past tense for him.

It's a part of his past and a part of the picture, but it is not the present at all. I mean, it's been a decade. I contrast that to the person I still represent, Shakawe al-Haj, who's still in Guantanamo, who's also cleared, cleared like Muhammad, but still there. When you say cleared, you may be able to be. mean cleared of the charges he was originally arrested for or captured for? There were never any charges. There were never any charges for most of the people there. Cleared means a government administrative board, a government task force, and there are different

versions of this throughout the history of Guantanamo, but a government board looked at all the information and evidence the government had on everyone at Guantanamo and for the people clear determined that they no longer needed to be detained, that they did not pose a continuing security threat to the U.S. and could be released, and their release has been a matter of finding countries for them to go to. Some have been able to be repatriated. Others have not been able to go home, either because of individual risks or in some cases, as in the Yemenis, like Sharkawi, because of a ban, a U.S. ban on repatriations to Yemen. So I guess what I look at Muhammad and that story and their experience, and I see where we are now, I just sort of, there's a

blitz screen between him and Shikawi and who remains at Guantanamo, you know, 20, 22 years later, who's nearing 50 and never had, you know, didn't have the decade that Mohammed has had to rebuild. And yet is not someone the U.S. government itself believes it needs to detain as a matter of security. I mean, it is totally senseless. I just want to build on something Partiz was saying, because it's not unimportant and does intersect with why the 16 who have been cleared for release have not been released. Fiona Ni Aolian did a report for the UN. She was a special rapporteur for human rights in the context of counterterrorism. And it was a groundbreaking report

that focused on Guantanamo. She got access that no one had had in her position, access to people at Guantanamo to families of 9-11 families to families of those who had been let out. And one of the things she focused on in her report was the human rights violations of those who were transferred out, those who were released, and how horrible their life after being released and transferred, often to third countries that were not their home countries, as Perdice was saying about Portugal, and how they couldn't get jobs because they were considered Guantanamo detainees and therefore sort of hands off, how the restrictions on their travel, on their lack of access to their families, et cetera, et cetera. And she focuses a third of her report on this. Now we find out what? I think Spencer

Ackerman reported in Forever Wars that Oman, which had been one of the places that took many of the detainees, had transferred them to Yemen, which is a country that considerations for release have by the U.S. government has banned as a place to send detainees because of the instability if they are and what it can mean in terms of protections for them and also security protections for the United States. And so it's getting worse for the idea of closing Guantanamo, both in terms of what's happening with transfers, which aren't happening,

and what's happening with the plea deals that were originally agreed to and then revoked. Mansour himself, sitting in the light of a table lamp by the end of our call, has his own tale post-Gwantanamo. I live in Serbia since 2016. I cannot talk much about my situation, but I think it's better than many countries. Imagine we spent 15 years behind us, not just any prison. We cannot call it a prison because every prison, there is a prison system with regulations, rules, human rights.

Guantanamo, you have no right. Prisons was established to serve justice. but Guantanamo does not serve that purpose. So when I got out, I didn't want to leave because I didn't want to come to Serbia, the country I know nothing about. I was forcibly released to Serbia. And there is a huge gap in your life. I was 18 years old now. I am in my 30s, early 30s.

The world has changed in a country you have no family, no friends, no language, absolutely nothing. So also at the same time, you are mentally and psychologically damaged, also physically. There is no rehabilitation or reintegration program that would help you to establish your life. You are being sent to a country. The country asked to monitor you, to surveil you. They told that you are a terrorist or someone who is bad. It's kind of like, as I told you, in many cases, many of us, we live in Guantanamo, through Guantanamo, 2.0. And the United States just turns up.

It's not our problem anymore. You are not in Guantanamo, but you're not free at the same time. And what about his family, the ones he left in Yemen, for what was supposed to be a short-term research project. Mansour's sister and brother both died while he was detained in Guantanamo. As for the rest? We haven't met yet, but we are talking and, you know, communicating through WhatsApp, Skype, Skype,

But, you know, the situation, they couldn't travel. I couldn't go back to Yemen. So, 22 years after the detainment camp first opened, what are the lessons of Guantanamo? The lessons are myriad. One of them has to do with torture. The ultimate reason the military commissions have not gone forward, particularly with the central case at the military commissions,

the accused co-conspirators in the 9-11 attacks, is torture. They can't get evidence introduced into court. And yes, there are pretrial hearings about this. That case just went through its 51st pretrial hearing over many years. They can't introduce this evidence into court under the Military Commissions Act in a way that's been viable. And it's not going to happen in that way. And so when you talk about closing it down, the only way forward is a plea deal. And when Pardee says everybody wants it closed, it's just too hard and there's not enough political cachet in it.

It's just like, why bother? It's over. They accomplished what they wanted to in the beginning, out of sight, at a mind, let's not think about it. Who cares? And which is really a heartbreaking thing. In terms of going forward, it's more than $13 million per prisoner per year.

That's a lesson going forward as well. But the biggest lesson is, if you ask me and I'd look, is how much it is undercut our trust in the American system of justice. We could have tried these people in the United States. We tried one of them and convicted them. in the United States in the trial, even though he was at a black sight and tortured. And they just basically gave up, is how I see it. The chess game continues, sadly, I think in this case,

where it's being played by politics as much as anything else, if not more. Thank you. Karen Pardis, so grateful for you to be on the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you. Huge thanks to Mansour for telling us his story. If you want to hear more, Mansoor authored a book, Letters from Guantanamo,

which we will link in the bio. So, al-a-a-a-a-lis learning English in 2010. I wrote my book. They confiscated the first drop in 2013, and I had to write it again in 2015 as legal letters to my lawyer. Then we managed to publish it. And in May, this year, we published second audiobook called Letters from Guantanamo. It's about the letters I used to write to my family,

to alien space, to the white, White House, even to Trump, we all see justice regardless. Thanks all for listening. The history of Guantanamo Bay detention camp, though so recent, is complex and is obviously ongoing. If you found this episode interesting, I encourage you to read more around the subject. There is no end to the opinions you'll find on it. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to like and follow for more from American History Hit. We'll see you next time.

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