In Raleigh, 32 human rights supporters gathered on January 11 outside the Federal Building to mark the 21st anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo prison, and call on President Biden to close it immediately.
“From the beginning,” said MC Christina Cowger of NC Stop Torture Now, “Guantanamo meant 3 things:
- Islamophobia – only Muslim prisoners were taken there
- Overturning the rule of law – offshoring lawless detention and torture to evade the courts
- Experimentation with torture – DOD reverse-engineered their own torture survival program at Ft. Bragg, and applied it first at Guantanamo, then Abu Ghraib and Bagram.”
Of the over 780 who have been imprisoned there, the vast majority were released without due process. Only 9 are facing trial before military commissions; their torture prior to Guantanamo is a huge impediment to completing these trials. Three are either serving a life sentence or have accepted plea deals. Three are being held as “forever prisoners.”
One of the “forever prisoners,” Abu Zubaydah, arrived in 2006 after extensive torture by the CIA at its black sites, including prolonged sleep deprivation, forced nudity, confinement to a coffin-size box, rectal rehydration, and water tortures.
From Joe Margulies, Zubaydah’s attorney, NY Review of Books, 9/28/18: “His captors hurled him into walls and crammed him into boxes and suspended him from hooks and twisted him into shapes that no human body can occupy. They kept him awake for seven consecutive days and nights. They locked him, for months, in a freezing room. They left him in a pool of his own urine. They strapped his hands, feet, arms, legs, torso, and head tightly to an inclined board, with his head lower than his feet. They covered his face and poured water up his nose and down his throat until he began to breathe the water, so that he choked and gagged as it filled his lungs. His torturers then left him to strain against the straps as he began to drown. Repeatedly. Until, just when he believed he was about to die, they raised the board long enough for him to vomit the water and retch. Then they lowered the board and did it again. The torturers subjected him to this treatment at least eighty-three times in August 2002 alone. On at least one such occasion, they waited too long and Abu Zubaydah nearly died on the board.”
Zubaydah was the first person held at a CIA black site, first to undergo all the “enhanced interrogation” techniques. And he was one of 49 Muslim people known to have been secretly transported – kidnapped — by Aero Contractors. Zubaydah was hauled on Aero’s Boeing business jet that was stationed at the Global TransPark in Kinston. The US government first accused him of being a lieutenant to Osama bin Laden, but now concedes that he was never even part of al-Qaeda. Even though the war in Afghanistan is over, it appears Zubaydah is being held without charge until he dies because to release him would expose to the world the appalling acts of torture committed on him.
Unlike Zubaydah, 20 of the 35 Guantanamo prisoners have been approved for transfer or release. Some of them were approved for transfer in 2010. So today, we call on the Biden Administration to prioritize transfer and repatriation, and to end this shameful symbol of U.S. torture and racism.
The Raleigh program began with Joe Burton. Joe for years has been a leader for peace, against nuclear weapons, and against the gigantic military budget. If you see a great letter to the editor in the News & Observer, it may well be by Joe. Joe is on the board of NC Peace Action, and spoke about the obscenely bloated military budget, how U.S. militarism endangers the world, and the fact that Congress has once again obstructed closing Guantanamo by preventing detainees from being brought to the U.S. for trial or imprisonment.
The so-called “war on terror” could not be waged without years of conditioning the American people to believe all Muslims are probably terrorists. This kind of “dehumanization” is also applied to other groups of people. For example, anti-semitism has a long history in the U.S. Anti-semitic acts and attacks have sadly been on the rise in the U.S. recently, thanks to the promotion of hate by powerful people and institutions.
Rabbi Salem Pearce gave a Jewish perspective on the human rights outrage that is Guantanamo. She was executive director of Carolina Jews for Justice in 2020 and 2021, and is a proud CJJ member. She has worked with T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, and with Rabbis Without Borders, and the American Jewish World Service.
One of the things that led some CIA prisoners in the black sites to try to commit suicide was prolonged solitary confinement. It is recognized to be torture. We have many people in solitary confinement here at home. Another thread that links NC to Guantanamo and the CIA black sites is that solitary confinement and other kinds of inhumane imprisonment are carried out disproportionately against people of color. People of color are about 30% of NC’s total population, 50% of NC’s incarcerated population, 62% of those in solitary confinement and 70-80% of those in the worst solitary conditions.
Dr. Craig Waleed is Project Manager for the End Solitary NC campaign, which is part of the national Unlock the Box Campaign. He is an educator, author, counselor, and certified Restorative Practices group facilitator. Other states have made progress on reducing and ending solitary confinement, so it’s NC’s turn now!
Guantanamo represents a “lock ‘em up” response to national security. We see the failure of that approach – over 780 men were imprisoned there, and it did nothing to prevent the loss of over 240,000 civilians and over 6,000 U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, for example.
What really keeps our communities safe? It’s not mass incarceration. More people per capita are incarcerated in North Carolina than in any country on earth (besides the U.S.). This is destroying families, and it’s not keeping us safe.
There’s an exciting movement in NC to tackle over-incarceration. Helping lead it is Daniel Bowes, Director of Policy & Advocacy for the ACLU of NC. Previously, Daniel directed the Fair Chance Criminal Justice Project at the NC Justice Center. He is a long-time member of the NC Second Chance Alliance, which got the Second Chance Act passed. Now he and others are organizing DecarcerateNowNC. Daniel spoke about the 30,000 mostly Black North Carolinians in state prisons – not even counting those in federal prisons and jails – and the growing movement for clemency in North Carolina.
