Former Guantanamo Detainees Recall Despair

Former Guantanamo Detainees Recall Despair

Former Guantanamo Detainees Recall Despair

by Paisley Dodds

Dispirited and desperate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay look to suicide as a way out of a hopeless situation, and not because they seek martyrdom, say three British Muslims once held there. "There is no hope in Guantanamo. The only thing that goes through your mind day after day is how to get justice or how to kill yourself," said Shafiq Rasul, 29, who waged a hunger strike while at the camp to protest alleged beatings. "It is the despair — not the thought of martyrdom — that consumes you there." In an interview late Saturday with The Associated Press, Rasul and two boyhood friends, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, disputed the charge by U.S. officials that the three suicides by Guantanamo detainees this weekend were political acts. "Killing yourself is not something that is looked at lightly in Islam, but if you're told day after day by the Americans that you're never going to go home or you're put into isolation, these acts are committed simply out of desperation and loss of hope," Rasul said. "This was not done as an act of martyrdom, warfare or anything else." The three Britons are the subject of a movie, "The Road to Guantanamo," that traces their steps from a trip to Pakistan for a wedding to the desolate U.S. outpost in Cuba, where they were held for more than two years without charge. The film, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February, opens in New York on June 23. Many of the some 460 Guantanamo detainees accused of links to Afghanistan's Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network have been held for more than four years without charge, including the two Saudis and one Yemeni who hanged themselves early Saturday. There are no scenes of attempted suicides in "The Road to Guantanamo," but the British friends said they saw several at the camp. "A Saudi detainee in the cell in front of us had had enough," said Ahmed. "We could hear him rip up his sheets and tie it to the wire mesh roof of the cell. He jumped off his sink and tried to hang himself. We shouted to the military police and they came and saved him." The men said they suffered beatings, saw guards throw Qurans in the toilet, were forced to watch videotapes of prisoners who had allegedly been ordered to sodomize each other and were chained to a hook in the floor while strobe lights flashed and heavy metal music blared. The allegations, some of which are dramatized in the film, are part of a lawsuit against the United States seeking $10 million each in damages. The three men, who were released without charge in March 2004, said their lives are still far from easy. Since they started promoting their film across Europe, they say they are questioned or searched when they land in Britain. After they returned from Spain recently, armed police in Birmingham boarded the plane and searched their seats. Even two actors who play the men in the film were stopped in February and held for questioning under the anti-terror laws. "It's embarrassing. We feel like outsiders in our own country," Ahmed said.