Detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base were turned into “nomads” in order to keep them in a state of agitation and punish those who broke rules, a Sudanese journalist recently released from the US-run prison said on Friday.
Sami al-Haj said moving detainees between different camps and from cell to cell was part of an official policy to destabilize them.
“They were made into nomads,” the al-Jazeera journalist said, adding that detainees were moved around for three reasons.
PHOTO: AP
“There was a policy of the camp administration to stop the detainees from feeling they were in a stable state, and therefore they kept the detainees in movement all the time, moving them from one camp to the other every week, every two weeks,” al-Haj said.
By moving detainees around, variously isolating them and then putting them back within talking distance of other inmates, authorities also attempted to gather information from conversations between detainees, he said.
“The aim of this movement was to learn things about the detainees by listening to different prisoners speak to each other,” al-Haj said.
“In certain camps there was the possibility to speak to each other. It wasn’t allowed, but it was possible. It was very much a police tactic to listen to us,” he said. “They knew that when one is deprived of contact and then one has the possibility to speak to others, one might say things.”
Al-Haj claimed that a second reason for moving detainees was to prepare them for interrogation.
Inmates would be rotated between cells every two hours for up to a month, he said, depriving them of sleep ahead of interrogations.
Al-Haj said he himself was subjected to this so-called “frequent flyer” program by guards acting on orders from the interrogators.
Finally, detainees were moved to separate cells when they breached prison rules.
Al-Haj described a cellblock named Romeo where inmates were placed in a cold room and stripped of all clothes except a pair of shorts.
Guards would frequently check on the detainees, making them move their limbs “to know you are alive,” al-Haj said. “They have the right to check you all the time. So they use this to disturb you, because they need all the people to follow the rules.”
US officials in Geneva could not immediately respond to the claims. Requests for comment sent to the US Defense Department in Washington received no reply.
On Tuesday, the current commander of the prison, Navy Rear Admiral David Thomas, said, “there is no unnecessary movement in and out of cells by detainees,’’ but would not comment on allegations that detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation before he took command on May 27.
Also See: [ HARDCOVER: Uk ] Guantanamo: a bay that will live in infamy
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS