Guantanamo Detainee - Testimony of Jumah Al-Dossari (Part 1)

“When it is said to them: "Make not mischief on the earth," they say: "Why, we only Want to make peace!" Of a surety, they are the ones who make mischief, but they realise (it) not.”
(Al-Qur'an, 2:11-12 - Al-Baqara [The Cow])
Days of Adverse Hardship in US detention Camps - Testimony of Guantánamo Detainee Jumah al-Dossari
http://web.amnesty. org/library/ Index/ENGAMR5110 72005

Below is the testimony of Jumah al-Dossari, which he wrote in July 2005 in the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay naval base, Cuba. The hand written testimony was given to Amnesty International by Jumah al-Dossari’s civilian lawyer. At the date of publication Jumah al-Dossari remains detained in Guantánamo Bay. This testimony is Jumah al-Dossari’s personal account of his experiences in Pakistani and US custody, and the views expressed in it are his own.
"When I took up a pen and decided to write about what I have suffered and my tragedy, I was unable to decide where and how I should start. What I have seen is a huge tragedy and a weighty matter, far weightier than I can put to paper. Indeed, the enormous horrors that my eyes have seen have and continue to see renew my anxiety and pain and my very being and feelings are shaken at the mere thought or flash of them in my memory. How can my heart forget them and how can my soul who bore these horrors continue with life? As I hold my pen, my hand is shaking. How will I write about these tragedies? Yes, tragedies, in all the possible meanings of the word. How will I write about these horrors and must I swallow the bitter lump that forms in my throat when I remember them? The revolting torture and those vile attacks which were a humiliation and will continue to be a vile stain on history, memories that whenever I look back on them, I wonder how my soft heart could bear them, how my body could bear the pain of the torture and how my mind could bear all that stress. How I wish my memories and my thoughts could be forgotten.
But for me, in forgetting it and its effects, there are still memories, lifelong evidence of what happened to me in my wounds, my afflictions, my pain and my sadness. From here, in the gloom of prisons and from the depths of the detention camp, I am writing about what I have suffered. I am writing about my pain and my suffering. I am writing a story that has no end. I am writing about the suffering I have sustained for months and years. From here, from behind the walls of these dreadful cells, I am writing these lines about the part of my life that has come to pass, and which is still continuing, in American detention camps; lines about humiliation, indignity, oppression, deprivation and attacks on my religion, my person, my dignity and my humanity. From here, from the depths of the degradation that debase a person’s dignity, attack his religion, his person, his honour, his dignity and his humanity, all in the name of fighting terror. I am writing for those who will read my words.
I am writing the story of what I have suffered from the day I was kidnapped on the Pakistani border and sold to American troops until now and my being in Guantánamo, Cuba. What I will write here is not a flight of fancy or a moment of madness; what I will write here are the established facts and events agreed upon by detainees who were eye witnesses to them, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as well as soldiers, investigators and interpreters. All of these incidents have been filmed on camera and the film is kept in a secret archive somewhere.

Arrest and Treatment by Pakistani Authorities
"My suffering and my tragedy started when I reached the Pakistani border on my way out of Afghanistan. There I met a unit from the Pakistani army who were there to kidnap people leaving Afghanistan. When I met them, I told them that I wanted to go to my country’s embassy; they welcomed me with all their treachery, cunning and wickedness and started transferring me from prison to prison along the border and even the Pakistani military base in the border town of Kohat. I passed through several small jails where there was a lot of abuse. I had previously met several people when I was on the border, they were of different nationalities. They had left Afghanistan and the Pakistani army abused us and gave us the worst and most nasty kind of food.
They put me in a cell which was 4m x 4m in which there were 59 prisoners without mattresses, blankets or a bathroom; there was only one bucket in the cell for everyone to relieve themselves in without a screen. Because there were so many of us in such a small place, we sat without moving and we were so close together that we almost felt suffocated. We remained in this situation for several days. They did not give us any food except for a few hard loaves of bread. The men started paying them to buy us food. They stole the money and only brought us a little food. In the Pakistani jails, they stole money from most of the prisoners and even our personal belongings, including clothes, shoes and watches. They stole many passports from the prisoners who were of many nationalities and we were abused. They abused me personally and beat me several times during investigations. The worst tribulation for us was when they transported us from one place to another: they would tie us up in the most savage way, so much so that some of us got gangrenous fingers and our hands and feet swelled and turned blue. They would tie us up for long periods of time in military trucks, sometimes from daybreak until night, in addition to the hours that they spent transporting us in trucks.
Often it took very long. All of this while we were still tied up in the same way and all of this time we were unable to use the toilet or perform our prayers. We would pray by gesticulating and pray without purifying ourselves. We had no food and drink. Some of the brothers were ill and had to relieve themselves while they were tied up. Their urine would spill onto some of us. When they put us in cells and we objected to the abuse, they frightened us by drawing their weapons at us. On one occasion, a soldier shot at us to frighten us and terrorise us; the bullet hit the ceiling of the cell. Our situation remained bad. Once when we were being transported, there was a fight between some prisoners and the Pakistani army. The bus that this happened in was in front of the bus I was in. The bus rolled over in front of us and the two sides started shooting at each other as some of the prisoners had taken weapons from the Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistani army started shooting everywhere. Bullets flew over our heads and wounded many of the prisoners and the Pakistani soldiers. They also killed a number of people on both sides.
Then the Pakistani army abused us all until things settled down at the Pakistani army base in the mountain town of Kohat. They gave us the worst kind of food: very, very awful beans. There were a few of them at the bottom of a dirty bucket half filled with water and half filled with oil, without any salt. Some of the brothers went on hunger strike and I was one of them. I wanted to go to my country’s embassy but I could not get up because I was so tired and hungry. If I stood up, I would fall down and faint. I almost died of hunger and I almost fell ill because the filth of the place. They put another kind of shackle on our feet, not chains but iron bars with a ring around our foot from which the 50cm bar protruded, then an iron joint from which a 50cm bar linked to the ring on the other leg. It was secured around the leg with a nail hammered in with an iron hammer instead of there being a lock and key. These shackles were always on our feet all the time so we could not sleep, walk, relieve ourselves, wash or remove our clothes. This is the state we were in the whole time we were in Kohat. It was very cold and the blankets they gave us were the worst thing I have ever seen: they all had insects, fleas and dust on them. They never kept us warm. Having them was the same as not having them, in fact not having them would have been better. They never gave us a mattress to sleep on. Then they told us that a human rights organisation wanted to meet us and would send us back to our countries.
"They really did hand us over – to American forces. They took us a special place in the same prison where we were met by American intelligence officers who interrogated us. We went one by one to several small rooms for interrogation; they took our pictures and fingerprints and questioned us. Some of these investigators insulted the prisoners and insulted Islam, Muslim scholars and many things happened that I do not need to mention. Then after two days, they took us to another room and gave us clothes they had been given by the American forces: they were jumpsuits made in Kuwait, as was written on the back in Arabic. They brought us American shackles and started to break the bar shackles, however the shackle on my foot would not break because the nails fixed into the shackle were very strong. My shackle did not break, nor did the shackles of two other prisoners. Then at exactly 11 o’clock – from that time on, the Americans only ever transported us at night, they took me with the prisoners to the Kohat military base airport after they had tied our hands behind our backs, tied our legs and blindfolded us. Then they put us in military trucks. When we reached the airport, an American military plane, American soldiers and an American interpreter who spoke Arabic were waiting for us. They took one by one and handed us over to the American soldiers. The deal was done and they sold us for a few dollars and they were not interested in us.