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The Chilling Horrors of the Notorious Guantanamo Bay

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Introduction

The Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay cover an area of 45 square miles on the eastern coast of Cuba. It is under the United States’ occupation as its first overseas naval base, established at the end of the 19th century. With the initial aim of strengthening the US Navy, Guantanamo Bay has always been the talk of the town.

Clash of Ownership

At first due to the clash of ownership over the Bay between Cuba and the United States and then after the formation of a notorious detention facility, set up by the Bush administration after 9/11 as a policy measure of its “War on Terror” to interrogate and imprison Al-Qaeda members beyond the jurisdictional and constitutional limits.

Cuba And USA Claim Of Ownership of Bay

Even after twenty years since its inception, the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp still stands out for its notoriety, abuses, and torture of the inmates. 

Historical Background

The Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay date back to Theodore Roosevelt’s era of civil service in the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, Roosevelt and the political leadership (Republicans and Democrats) of America wanted to strengthen and expand the US Navy by establishing naval bases at strategic locations in the Caribbean Sea to thrive in the newly emerging trade markets.

Guantanamo Bay Old Picture

In this respect, Roosevelt advocated the presence of a Naval base at Guantanamo, which according to him, would ensure “the creation of a modern and more well-rounded military with an enduring presence in the Caribbean”.

Spanish-American War

The opportunity came when the Cubans fought for their independence against the Spanish colonisation in 1898, and America intervened, instigating the Spanish-American War. The war ended after six months of military confrontations when the Spanish surrendered Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to America due to the Paris Agreement of 1898.

With the war’s end, the Cubans came under the imperialist control of the Americans, and for Cubans to attain complete independence, they needed the withdrawal of American troops.

Spanish-American War

The United States demanded they amend their constitution to accommodate the seven conditions put forth by the US, which included allowing the lease of any piece of Cuba’s land for an indefinite period to an American Naval Base as a goodwill gesture to reciprocate America’s help during their independence struggle.

The Platt Amendment

The Platt Amendment allowed the US to intervene to protect Cuban sovereignty and the right to create up to 4 naval bases on the island, but the United States only managed to build one. The Amendment was signed in 1901, after which American forces withdrew and Cuba was declared a Republic.

The Platt Amendment

In 1903, another treaty was bilaterally signed certifying America’s complete jurisdiction and control over 45 sq. miles of the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay, which can only be eliminated through a mutual agreement (Rothman, 2015).

Good Neighbour Policy

However, in 1934, the Platt Amendment was repealed, and most of its conditions were abrogated mutually under President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbour Policy” towards Latin America. Still, the right to maintain a naval base was retained.

The base’s history was highlighted in the 1960s when Fidel Castro threatened to push the American Navy out of the base if it continued to interfere in Cuban domestic issues, particularly its economy.

Fidel Castro

He never took to hardliner policy to exterminate the US Navy because of the repercussions that could be triggered by a US attack on Cuba and impeach him.

Worldwide Sensation

It was not until 2002 that The Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo became a worldwide sensation. Post 9/11, the security environment surrounding the White House was comprised of fear of imminent terrorist activities that could escalate within the coming period as reports regarding Osama bin Laden’s attempt to get his hands on biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons gained global coverage.

9/11

With this security landscape, the Bush administration sought a site for detaining the high-profile Al-Qaeda members so as to keep them away from American soil and to ensure their full-proof security. Many sites were considered for this purpose, but Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay ticked all the parameters set by the officials.

The second task was to prevent the Geneva Conventions or the United States Constitution from being applied to the prisoners. Since the prison was on foreign land, the United States laws were not applicable there, as far as the Geneva Conventions were concerned.

Legal Black Hole

The Bush administration labelled the captives as “unlawful combatants” instead of “Prisoners of War”, which cleared them of any obligations under the UN to treat the prisoners as humane and provide for basic requirements as the POWs were entitled to under the third Geneva Convention. Critics condemned this policy as a “legal black hole”.

Guantanamo Bay detainees

Unlawful Combatant

The term “unlawful combatant” is applied to those mercenaries and fighters who work for a leader who is not a representative of a recognised government by international law. To provide the excuse or rationale, the officials proclaimed that Al-Qaeda constituted a non-state actor and were not signatories to the Geneva Conventions. Therefore, they should not be authorised to use the protection designated for POWs as they do not fit the criteria.

Taliban Mujahids

Camp X-Ray

Initially called “Camp X-Ray”, the facility comprised of seven camps, namely Camp Echo, Camp Delta, Camp Iguana, Camp Five, Camp Six, and Camp Seven, where the perpetrators were kept under surveillance, constant observation, in rooms made of mesh, wires, and metals with zero privacy and persistent exposure. 

The ill-fated Interrogations and Torture

Since 2002, the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre, or Gitmo, has accommodated 780 Muslim prisoners from 48 countries, among whom 732 have been released either to their home country or any other country without charges and after being held for nearly two decades without any legal representation.

Jailed without charges

The Guantanamo Docket

As per the Human Rights Watch, nine died in custody, and only 16 of them were ever charged with criminal offences. According to New York Times’ article “The Guantanamo Docket,” the highest number of captives were taken from Afghanistan (203), Saudi Arabia (140), Pakistan (63), Oman (30) and the UAE (24)

Prisoned for being muslim

Despite torture being globally prohibited and considered illegal, in December 2002, the Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld allowed a list of 15 abuse techniques to be used upon the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay detainees, which included forceful silence, sleep and food deprivation, persistent exposure to light and noise, keeping blindfolded, solitary confinements, thrashing, subject to phobias, etc.

Donald Rumsfeld

Along with the permission to use the aforementioned techniques, the ground staff of the prison were given free hands during interrogation in terms of impunity, which led to extreme abuse. As per the 2008 Senate Report, Rumsfeld gave the green signal to many torture techniques, despite disapproval by the military lawyers and experts.

Donald Rumsfeld, architect of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Human Rights Violations

The globally infamous prison has witnessed all sorts of abuses, torture, and human rights violations in its span of 20 years, be they physical, sexual, mental, psychological, or even spiritual. According to reporters, “Abu-Gharib-style torture and sexual humiliation” was conducted there.

Abu Gharib Toture

Misusing and Exploiting their Authority

In a 2005 New York Times article, the reporter Anthony Lewis mentioned an FBI agent’s exact words, “I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a foetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most of the time, they had urinated or defecated on themselves  and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more.”

Torturing the Prisoners

Physical abuse at the centre was primarily carried out by the “Immediate Reactionary Force”, comprised of military police, with the purpose of ensuring discipline and law and order in the prison camps.

They often misused and exploited their authority and carried out brutal torture, including prolonged, vicious, and frequent beatings, smashing, grabbing, throwing, punching, stomping against walls, dragging across stony paths, handcuffing and tying in stressful positions for continuous time periods, short shackling (having one’s arms and legs shackled and bent forwards), using tear gas and pepper spray; and much more.

Beating Up Prisoners

As per the statement of an inmate, one day a prisoner named Al Dossari returned to his cell and saw that a few of his usual items were missing. The MP on duty, Webster, pushed him to the ground in the cell and cursed at him. Dossari shouted back at him. The MP called for the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF).

Guantanamo Bay Inhumane Torture

When the IRF team arrived, one of the MPs named Smith burst into the cage and jumped on Al Dossari’s back, wearing full riot gear, and at that time, he weighed 240 pounds. At least two other men held al-Dossari by the legs. He began to choke him with his hands, while the other repeatedly hit his head on the floor. While being beaten, Al Dossari lost consciousness.

When the cage was hosed down later, the water ran red with blood. Mr. Al Dossari later asked Smith why he had beaten him. Smith replied, “because I’m Christian.”

Doctors Violating Medical Ethics

Medical abuse was also prevalent. The medications of the prisoners were withheld by the interrogators and allowed to be released on the basis of their cooperation. What is more deteriorating is that the medical staff were equally involved in these practices.

Medical Ethics Violation

The doctors and psychologists violated the medical ethics of patients’ right to privacy, which was in turn dissipated by the IRF forces to blackmail and threaten the prisoners.

As claimed by Usman Abdul Raheem, an inmate “He had a rash on his back and was told it would not be treated until he cooperated with the interrogators.”

Another prisoner, Ruhel Ahmed, stated, “I needed corrective lenses due to an eye problem and I was denied the lenses for 1 and a half years, after which I was granted the lenses but not the solution to wash them. It has all collectively added to the permanent damage to my eyes.”

Psychological Abuse

Psychological abuse includes persisted timeframes of solitary confinement, which has stretched up to years for some prisoners and resulted in severe mental health issues and traumas leading to bewilderment, severe anxiety, panic attacks, hallucinations, depression and obsession. 

An inmate, Asif Iqbal, reported that he was put in isolation for writing “have a nice day” on a polystyrene cup because it was deemed to be “malicious damage to U.S. government property.” 

Being exposed to extreme temperatures, along with noise and light, was another severe method of invoking the feeling of helplessness among the prisoners. Detainees were either kept under intense lights for 24 hours or kept in complete darkness for longer periods.

Physical Abuse at Guantonama

A prisoner, Belkalcem Bensayah, was exposed to fluorescent lights 24 hours a day for seventeen straight months, and as a result, he now cannot look at anything for longer periods of time as he sees black spots.

As stated by the FBI witnesses, another detainee, Murbati, was once short shackled with his hands tied underneath his legs, and for a continuous 12 hours, he was tormented by very loud music and white noise played on six speakers in close proximity to his head.

They were also exposed to extreme hot and cold temperatures in their cells for months. An inmate, Mustafa Ait Idir, was left shackled in a room with the air conditioning on very high for 5 or 6 hours, exacerbating a kidney ailment he was known to have.

Cold Torture

He was then placed in a solid steel isolation cell (“very cold”), and his sleeping pad was taken away because he refused to cooperate with interrogators.

Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation was another tactic used by the authorities to weaken and destabilise the captives. The IRF constantly disturbed the inmates and kept on waking them throughout the day and night through constant banging on doors, asking them to set their things in a specific manner after every hour, excessive light, loud noises, and rising or dropping temperatures.

Sleep Deprivation Torture

The crudest example of such torture was that of Mohammad Al-Qahtani who was deprived from sleeping for 50 days. This action was in accordance with the “special interrogation Plan” approved by the then State Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

Sexual Threats

The use of sexual threats, rapes, and sexual humiliation as an active interrogative tool was initiated at Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay. and then exported to Abu Ghraib (United States Detention Centre in Iraq) and other notorious detention centres. Male prisoners were frequently harassed by female MPs when they touched them for false checking purposes.

The prisoners were periodically seduced and bribed to be given sexual favours by the females, if they decided to cooperate, especially during Ramazan when Muslim males are highly prohibited from touching females. 

When one of the victims, Murat Kurnaz, forced a woman away from him who was trying to be intimate with him, he was brutally beaten by the IRF members and was shackled for a straight twenty hours.

Shackled for disobeying at Guantanamo Bay

Many juvenile prisoners were reported to have been taken to isolation rooms and then raped and sexually molested by the guards

As stated by a British prisoner, an Algerian man was “forced to watch a video supposedly showing two prisoners dressed in orange, one sodomizing the other, and was told that it would happen to him if he didn’t cooperate.”

Disrespect of the Holy Quran

Only when all of this was still not enough, did the American forces take up the most inhumane practice, religious abuse. They degraded the inmates’ religion, i.e., Islam, interfered with their religious rituals and customs, and humiliated and insulted them on religious grounds.

Disrespecting of Holy Quran at Guantanamo Bay

The desecration and disrespect of the Holy Quran was the most eminent of the methods which would fuel outrage and, in return, provide the IRF forces with an excuse to maltreat the prisoners.

Despite knowing the fact that the holy book is entitled to the utmost affection and esteem and that the Muslims were very diligent when it comes to the regard of the Holy Quran, the guards intentionally humiliated the Holy Quran by throwing it on the ground and putting their feet over it, shaking the Quran violently, tearing its pages and the bindings for searches, and mishandling the Holy Book periodically. 

Once, a female IRF member was asked to search for a detainee’s room. She took the Quran from the shelf of the prison and, with other prisoners watching, she threw it in the bag at her feet. This caused massive resentment, and she was drenched with water by them, and she later went on to confess that she did it to provoke them.

Additionally, they were refused to keep beards, which were regularly shaved as the US considered it “a symbol of terrorism”. Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were forced to give up their pants as they could not offer prayers until their legs and waists were covered with clothes.

The prisoners were denied food at the time of breaking the fast. They would make a mockery of the Azan by barking like dogs or hee-hawing like donkeys. Moazzam Begg, a victim of this abuse, asserted, “It is the faith of the detainees that is targeted: the religion of Islam.”

The High Number of Suicide Attempts

As a result of all these abuses, malpractices, and ill-treatments, people became suicidal and committed self-harm whenever they were given the chance. Within the initial year of the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay. 18 prisoners attempted suicide by engaging in 28 attempts. As per US official statements, in 2003 alone, there were 350 acts of “self-harm,” including 120 “hanging gestures.”

In August 2003, a mass suicide attempt took place in which 23 prisoners tried to take their lives due to the desecration and humiliation of the Holy Quran at the hands of the interrogators and IRF members. The first and the last actual suicides occurred in June 2006, when the 3 detainees turned out to be successful in taking their lives.

Suicide Attempts at Guantanamo Bay

Another captive, Moazzam Begg, once recalled his bitter and worse memories of the prison: “Two soldiers sat on top of me, one on my head, one on my back.” They took out a knife, and they slipped off my clothes with a knife, and I could feel the cold steel against my skin.

And then they dragged me in the mud, screaming and shouting, spitting in my face, spitting on my body, spitting on other prisoners, kicking me, punching me, bringing dogs, and then photographing me in this state, and then shaving my beard off, shaving my hair off, and then interrogating me naked, shivering in the cold.

The fact that the higher official authorities were completely aware of the plight of the prisoners is strengthened by the fact that the Pentagon “praised the Commanding Officer of the Chilling Horror of Guantanamo Detention Centre in 2002, Major General Geoffrey Miller for improving the flow of information from terrorist suspects and the use of notorious methods of inspection” Miller was quoted saying, “I think of Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay as the interrogation battle lab in the War against Terror”.

Why has the Detention Camp not closed yet?

The Camp came into the limelight within a short span after its inception after the released captives went vocal about the treatment of prisoners in the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay. Mass protests, movements, and international condemnations came about. From the general public to human rights advocates to Amnesty International to the United Nations, everyone criticised the Bush administration and demanded the closure of the facility as soon as possible.

Obama, Trump, Biden take on Guantanamo Bay

Obama Administration

However, nothing substantial was done. The Obama administration tried to close the detention and torture facility when a huge spike in criticism against the abuse and maltreatment of prisoners took place. However, the presidential order signed by Barack Obama proved inadequate as Congress opposed the decision and decided to continue running the facility.

The Pentagon did not seem active on the issue, along with the legal questions and chaos surrounding the executive order. Similarly, Trump’s pre-election stance on prison provided sufficient evidence to conclude that he should not put an end to this vice. His statement that “he would load up the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay facility with bad dudes” reflected his policy.

Trump Administration

By signing his executive order, Trump reversed Obama’s order to close the facility. Anyhow, his tenure still did not witness an increment in the number of detainees as the maintenance cost of it was crazy, approximately $13 million per prisoner. With the Biden administration in power, many people hope to witness the historical decision of clearing this huge blot on American honour.

Biden Administration

Wells Dixon, an attorney of Constitutional Rights, stated, “President Biden has stated his intention to close the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Bay as a matter of policy but has not taken substantial steps toward closure.” At the same time, according to a senior officer of the White House, “The administration is committed to closing the detention centre, an effort it “jump-started” after four years of inaction under Trump.”

With little hope to foresee and a lot on their plates at the moment, whether the Biden administration will be able to abandon the facility or not is yet to be seen.

Asserted by an Amnesty International human rights activist and the USA’s Director of Security with HR, “President Biden must uphold his commitment to close the chilling horrors of Guantanamo Bay once and for all.” The longer the prison remains in use, the longer it continues to undermine US credibility globally on human rights. “

Conclusion

Despite projecting themselves as the champions and protagonists of human rights, Americans have yet again failed to sync what they preach with what they practice. The camp advocates associate its existence with US national security and call the victims it caters to “the Worst of the Worst.” In contrast, the critics accuse the governments of violating the US Constitution.

The Torture Treaty, of which the United States was among the founding members, the United Nations Charter, and International Humanitarian Law. They maintain that, with poor regard for IHL, American detainees abroad are also at high risk of exposure to inhumane torture techniques.

The Torture Treaty

One of the founding members of the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo Detention Centre, Michael Lehnert, a Marine Corps General, has become an active detractor of the decision to keep the low-profile fighters and rebels in custody for a prolonged period without charges against the American spirit.

“To me, the existence of the Chilling Horrors of Guantanamo is anathema to everything that we represent, and it needs to be closed for that reason,” Lehnert said.

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My name is Lyba Mobeen. I'm currently pursuing degree of BS-International Relations at Islamic University Islamabad.

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