US Immoral Detentions and Torture – Witness Guantanamo

Guantanamo: Survivors Reminisce Ghost Lives
12 March, 2012 – aseerun

“My words are not enough to describe what happened to me. They have taken us completely naked across the tarmac, dogs have attacked us, incredible, such inhumanity. As a teacher, I taught English to the Afghans and told them about the American dream. The U.S. should have been grateful to me. ” Sami al-Laith, 3 years and 10 months of captivity

He must have been an impressive lecturer; tall, sharp-witted, and an air of natural authority. A sharp intellect is the only thing that remains of Sami al-Laithy. He sits slumped in a wheelchair, his back and neck acutely in pain with every movement.

For six years he has lived in this dark room in what remains of his grandfather’s former mansion in al-Gharbia, Egypt. The columns at the entrance are witnesses to a past fortune. Now rain falls through the ceiling and black mold spots spread on the old walls.

In addition to Sami, 56, his mother and younger brother with his wife and four children live in the house. The brother lost his job as a translator in the Ministry of Defence because Sami was trapped in Guantanamo. The family has hardly enough money to buy food.

In his rickety wheelchair, Sami al-Laithy cannot maneuver without help on the muddy path outside the house. Trapped in the room, he stares at the walls. “The Americans,” he says, “have destroyed me, my health, my soul, my future.”

When al-Laithi speaks, one hears his love of language, of Arabic poetry and English sonnets. He is one of 38 Guantanamo detainees which the U.S. formally declared to be “no longer” enemy combatants. Flatly, his files state that he “represents a low risk due to his medical situation.”

As they stormed into the cell with batons and pepper spray, beating him again and again, American soldiers broke al-Laithi’s back. Pressure applied liberally with military-issued boots, they kicked Prisoner Number 287 until he could no longer walk, ‘disciplining’ him for refusing to go into what he called the “humiliation yard.”

He refused treatment at the hospital; Torturers, he insisted, could not simultaneously be doctors. They pressed his head between his legs and pulled it back, hard. A vertebra at the neck broke. “I asked why they do these things. Why? No answer,” he says. “Only the walls have listened to me for years.“

Sami al-Laithi says what he thinks. “Wearing the heart on his sleeve,” he calls it.

Over 20 years ago, al-Laithi had to flee the authoritiarain regime of Egypt because of his constant complaints about corrupt officials. He went first to Pakistan where his sister lived and then, from there, to Afghanistan. …more