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Were Detainees Guinea Pigs at Guantánamo?
7 Questions for Jacques Debray
By Benjamin Cherrière
Le Nouvel Observateur
Friday 10 December 2004
Jacques Debray is the lawyer for Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, two of the four French citizens released from Guantánamo in July 2004 and imprisoned in France since then. After the sworn declaration of an Australian detainee detailing abuses, he goes back over the conditions of detention on the American base in Cuba and asserts that his clients, who were forced to take suspicious medicines, wonder whether they were not the victims of experimentation.
Have your clients talked to you about bad treatment they underwent at Guantánamo?
They only want to talk about a part of what happened at Guantánamo, as long as there are still French people being held there, since they have told me that the DST [Direction de la surveillance du territoire - the French FBI - tn] has made them understand that their detention [in France] is linked to that of the French citizens still detained [at Guantánamo]. But yes, they have described scenes similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, and they cannot be suspected of having inspired themselves from what happened in Iraq to lie, since they found out that the United States had invaded Iraq only after their incarceration in France.
They were arrested in Pakistan, by Pakistanis, who handed them over to the Americans. Then they were transferred to Afghanistan, then Guantánamo. And it was in Afghanistan that the physical violence was most extreme. There they saw people massacred. In Afghanistan, they were humiliated, put out naked in public. They were subjected to body searches, anal cavity searches, that were violent and without privacy. Nizar also talks about an episode where, while he was chained and lying down, an American soldier crushed his head with his foot. He thought his head was going to explode, he told me.
And were they subjected to torture at Guantánamo?
Yes, both physical and psychological. In Guantánamo, they were welcomed by American soldiers who urinated on them as they got off the airplane.
At no time did they know why they were there. Once a woman told them they were there for intelligence reasons. They were completely isolated; the light was on day and night; and they were entitled to only fifteen minutes of walking a week.
They were interrogated about a hundred times, and several times before the interrogations they went by rooms where they heard shrieking.
Nizar told me that had also been locked into a room equipped with a one-way mirror where it was extremely cold.
He also told me there were rooms where ultra-violent music was broadcast and where some detainees were imprisoned. They didn't undergo that.
Nizar was also interrogated while a shotgun was aimed at him. They say themselves that they didn't get the worst treatment. So that, afterwards, the kicks and punches so common at Guantánamo, seem anodyne.
In one of the rare letters Nizar was able to get to his family through ICRC intervention, he evokes strange medicines; has he told you more about that?
That phrase did in fact escape the censor and Nizar has confirmed taking those medicines to me. Once, following taking one of them, he lost consciousness and had the impression he stayed unconscious for one or two days.
They also were given injections, especially at the beginning of their stay at Guantánamo.
They didn't know what kind of medicines they were being given, but both of them have asserted that one of their co-detainees was covered with pimples after he took one of the medicines, and, more broadly, they wonder whether they were not the victims of experimentation.
The phials that contained the drugs were numbered and a doctor went by to see them and ask them what effects the medicines had.
Apart from these question sessions, they could only see the doctor once or twice, because at Guantánamo everything functioned on a reward system. Nizar, for example, had to wait a year to see a dentist.
According to them, there were an impressive number of psychiatrists at Guantánamo and units reserved for those who became mad [while they were there.] They saw suicide attempts.
How did they manage to survive?
Both of them say they held up thanks to the Koran. Nizar was not practicing before he was imprisoned at Guantanamo. Mourad was a little more observant and it was through contact with other detainees and the Koran that the Americans gave them, that they developed their faith.
And it's their faith that allowed them to survive, they told me. Today, they are completely observant and speak Arabic.
What was the soldiers' attitude toward the detainees?
In the beginning, they told me, they were faced with soldiers who thought they were dealing with wild beasts. When the soldiers had to open a cage where a chained prisoner was locked in, they went in teams of five or six. At that time, American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asserted that the worst human beings in the world were at Guantánamo.
Have legal actions been conducted to condemn such acts?
In the United States, since the Supreme Court decision on June 30, 2004 that recognizes Guantánamo detainees' right to plead, many cases have been filed. Now, the second stage consists of filing appeals to have the illegality of the detention and inhuman treatment at Guantánamo certified. Finally, we hope that the United States will be condemned to indemnify the victims of these treatments.
In Great Britain, a complaint denouncing torture has been filed.
In Germany, a lawyers' collective has also just filed a claim, also denouncing the acts of torture. In Sweden, a case will be filed shortly
Among lawyers, we try to keep one another updated.
What is the present situation for Nizar and Mourad?
They are being held in two Paris prisons, Fleury and Fresnes. During the summer of 2004, their detention was extended and in ten days we will sue the detention judge once again.
They are under investigation for association with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise under the sole evidence of their own testimony and because they went to Afghanistan during the Taliban period.
We know that DST police agents heard them three times in Guantánamo: in January 2002, end March, beginning of April 2002, and in January 2004. It would be shocking if whatever they may have said during those three encounters were used against them. It would be as though they had been subject to a horrible 30 month police custody. However, I am anxious all the same, since a British court has ruled two confessions obtained by torture admissible as evidence.
That decision may still be reversed on appeal, but it remains shocking.
Nizar and Mourad are pessimistic with regard to their chances of being freed quickly, since one of them told me that the DST had given them to understand that their fate was tied to that of the three French citizens still detained at Guantánamo.
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
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