For the four British prisoners still being held at Camp Delta, life could hardly be more arduous. As a reporter, I have visited many maximum security prisons in Britain and the US; in Georgia and Louisiana, I have talked to inmates in the worst place of all -- death row.
Some journalists have suggested that, compared with the regular American correction system, Guantanamo Bay is nothing out of the ordinary. After four days there last autumn, my impression is that, both physically and psychologically, conditions are significantly worse.
The five who are to be repatriated, like others no longer judged a security risk, are spending their last weeks at Guantanamo in the relatively humane surroundings of "Camp Four," where they are allowed to associate freely, wash when they feel dirty and play football or volleyball. But the fact that the Pentagon is refusing to release Moazzem Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar means they are still being held in the main part of the camp, which houses all but 100 of the 660 detainees.
Almost all the time they are confined to a metal box with mesh walls in a prefabricated cellblock built by Kellogg, Brown and Root, the construction arm of US Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton. Each box is a little larger than a king-size bed. Next to the hard steel wall-mounted bed is a toilet, a hole in the floor, facing the open grille of the door.
The guards are supposed to pass by the cell every 30 seconds. Next to the toilet is a small sink and a tap, so low that the only way to use it is to kneel. It produces tepid, yellow water from a desalination plant. According to the Pentagon, the low tap -- together with the halal food -- is an example of cultural sensitivity: it has been designed "to accommodate Muslim foot-washing needs."
Depending on how cooperative they have been with their interrogators, the prisoners will leave their box between two and five times a week for 30 minutes, during which they will be led in cuffs and leg irons to exercise, shower and change. If they have not started to confess, the only items they are allowed in their cell are a toothbrush, soap and shampoo, and a prayer cap, mat and a copy of the Koran.
If they are talking, they may get other books or board games. There is no air conditioning. When the temperature inside reaches 30?C, the guards can switch on ceiling fans in the corridor outside. The metal construction of the cells and the lack of windows exacerbates their airlessness in a tropical heat which is relentless. The lights stay on all night.
On death row in Georgia, by contrast, prisoners spend several hours out of their cells each day. There is air conditioning. They can engage in a range of activities, see their lawyers whenever they want and receive visits from friends and family for six hours at a time every Saturday, Sunday and public holiday.
All these factors, according to Daryl Matthews, a forensic psychiatrist who spent a week examining the Guantanamo detainees at the Pentagon's behest, alleviate the stress of imprisonment, even under sentence of death -- and all of them have been denied to the detainees.
"It is hard to imagine a more highly stressed group," he said. "The stresses are incredible: never knowing if, or when, you'll get out; being sealed off from the community; not having access to legal counsel. In prison, relationships between inmates and guards are pretty affirming. Here, they come from two universes, separated by an unbelievable gulf."
The Pentagon makes much of the fact that the call to prayer is broadcast over a public address system five times a day, while the cells contain an arrow pointing towards Mecca. It is difficult to see that this does much to alleviate the pressure of indefinite incarceration in such conditions, with no access to any kind of due process, or to the evidence which supposedly justifies detention.
The Red Cross has been given access to Guantanamo, and has commented on the high rate of depression and mental ill-health.
The rate of suicide attempts has declined recently. This, however, has been achieved only because most of the detainees' attempts to hang themselves have been reclassified as "manipulative self-injurious behavior," or SIB. Many SIBs would previously have been recorded as would-be suicides. They are running at two a week -- about the same as the old rate for suicide attempts.
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