Views » May 27, 2008

A Kinder, Gentler Torture

By H. Candace Gorman

While staying at his in-law’s village in Afghanistan in December 2001, Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi, my client at Guantánamo, knew little of Bush and Cheney.

Later, when vigilante thugs turned him over to the Northern Alliance for an American bounty, Al-Ghizzawi knew nothing of Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, John Yoo or Matthew Waxman — the man who would become Al-Ghizzawi’s personal war criminal and who is now a professor at Columbia Law School.

So, it was understandable that when Al-Ghizzawi heard American troops were coming, he tried to get himself turned over to them. As Al-Ghizzawi later told me, he thought he would be safe with the Americans “and have rights” and be treated “with respect.” Al-Ghizzawi convinced the Americans to take him when they learned he spoke English. That was all the troops knew about him. Ignorance of who he was or why he was there, however, proved no impediment to torture.

In the early years, “the Americans treated me very brutally and disrespectfully, worse than the Northern Alliance … and the Northern Alliance was very bad,” Al-Ghizzawi recounted to me. “But now the torture is much different. Now the torture is my life every day in this prison, alone without my family, dying, with no rights and no charges.”

His American jailers spared Al-Ghizzawi the very worst of the worst in the long list of torture techniques now in use. He was not murdered or waterboarded. He did not have a razor blade taken to his penis, nor was he hung from the ceiling by his arms. One might describe Al-Ghizzawi’s torture as a kinder, gentler torture.

In American custody, Al-Ghizzawi was only beaten with chains; bound to chairs in excruciating positions for endless hours; threatened with death and with rape; stripped and subjected to body-cavity searches by non-medical personnel while men — and women — laughed and took pictures.

Among many other brutalities and indignities, Al-Ghizzawi was also posed naked with other prisoners; terrorized with dogs; forced to kneel on stones in the searing heat; left to stand or crouch for extended periods; deprived of sleep; subjected to extreme cold without clothes or covering; denied medical attention; and kept in isolation for years.

Again, as I said: a kinder, gentler torture.

Now, of course, Al-Ghizzawi knows all about Bush and his enabling minions. He knows that lawyers invented legal theories to justify the inhumane and indefensible treatment he received. He knows the role that lawyers such as Bybee, Yoo and Matthew Waxman played.

At the end of 2004, Waxman, then assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, who is currently trying to reinvent himself as one of the good guys, learned that Al-Ghizzawi and others were found not to be “enemy combatants” (EC) or threats to the United States by the military’s own combatant status review tribunals (CSRTs). Waxman set into motion a “do-over” CSRT, to make sure that Al-Ghizzawi’s suffering continue, lest Waxman and the Bush administration suffer the embarrassment of being exposed for holding numerous innocent men for years for no reason.

Note this declassified portion of an e-mail chain between Waxman and others:

“Inconsistencies will not cast a favorable light on the CSRT process or the work done by [Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants]. This does not justify making a change in and or (sic) itself but is a filter by which to look … . By properly classifying them as EC, then there is an opportunity to (1) further exploit them here in [G]TMO and (2) when they are transferred to a third country, it will be controlled transfer in status.”

Every time I visit, Al-Ghizzawi asks me, “What happened to America?” I try to explain the unexplainable. I tell him that the American government now believes that torture is permissible; that we can hold people forever without charge; keep people in isolation for years; bar communications with family members; force-feed those who want to die and refuse to provide medical treatment for those who want to live. I explain that the American people, whose nation once stood as a beacon of human rights, neither care about this nor want to hear about it.

I also assure him that I am collecting the names of those responsible.

Attorney Seth Farber contributed to this article.

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• Reader Comments

  I am so sorry for what is happening in Guantanamo Bay and to the thousands of other prisoners on Navy Ships and so on.
  Thank you very much, Candice Gorman, for the important work you do. Please do not give up.

  How so called “civilized” people can torture and abuse people, I’ll never understand. But the history of the US shows that jstice or human rights were never granted to all of it’s citizens and residents. There was always one reason or another why some segment of the population was denied justice.

  We were all brainwashed to believe the US was the country that upheld human rights, no matter what.

  But we know better now.

  Thank you.

  Posted by mrbrch on May 28, 2008 at 1:15 PM

  I disagree slightly. I care. Others care. We, as a people have been demoralized, lied to, and betrayed to the point that we don’t know who to trust, who to turn to, and how to get back on track as far as trying to lead the way in human rights. I would feed someone in China all that I have, I would shield a child in Africa with my own body to protect them from violence, I would invite anyone in the Middle East to stay in my guest room, just so they would be safe. I would do all of these things if I could.
  HOW? How do I help? How do we help? I can’t afford to drive to work anymore. How do I stop the torture? How can I let Al-Ghizzawi know that I care, that I would help if I could?
  I do agree though that there has always been a group to deny rights to, currently women and gays suffer most.  How can women be 51% of the US population and have so little representation in our government? If you are waiting for men to change, it’ll never happen. Women have to band together and speak in one voice.

  Posted by MonkeyMan on May 28, 2008 at 3:31 PM

  Dear Candice Gorman,
  When this Administration is tried in the Hague for the war crimes it committed, and when world public opinion condemns its cruelty, venality and cowardrice, you and a handful of other brave lawyers defending Guantanomo prisoners will be honored by history just like German resisters to Hitler and Soviet dissidents now are.
  Your work redeems the sins of the apathetic sheeplike nation of WalMart shoppers and American Idol watchers. It also makes it impossible for us to say, at some future date: “What? Our government did this? How horrible. We had absolutely no idea.”
  We all bear the collective guilt, and because of we know it.
  Thank you.
  (A bit grandiloquent, isn’t it? But true.)

  Posted by abayer on May 29, 2008 at 1:44 PM

  Oh give me a freaking break.  They put the guy in GBay because he spoke English?  Whatever, I am sick of Americans who are quick to believe the worst of Americans and the best of our enemies.

  Whatever.

  And to whoever abayer might be, excuse me but what the heck do lying liberals have against WalMart.  Do you not understand that WalMart helps the poor of this country?  Do you not understand that the lower prices help the poor survive?  What an idiot, get a life.

  And yes it was a “bit grandiloquent”, not to mention stupid.

  Posted by rlcn7910 on May 29, 2008 at 9:23 PM

  How quickly and ironically “rcln7910” confirms the point that “abayer” makes about how easy it is to discount the worst behavior of one’s own clan or national leaders.  “We had absolutely no idea” usually means “We could not afford to believe such things because these people are our ‘protectors’.  If our ‘protectors’ commit evil deeds where in God’s name can we turn?”
      Only those with a strong ability to discern right from wrong and hold all sides accountable to the same standards can afford to face the unvarnished facts.  Others need to discount facts in a rigid way to maintain their illusion of safety—that is, that our clan are always the “good guys”.
      Note to “rcln7910” :  What if you investigate further and find that Candace Gorman’s information is factually correct. What then? Or is it more likely you will avoid such a shock to you fixed beliefs?  And a minor point: the reference to WalMart was only meant to indicate how much most Americans are fixated on consumerism and oblivious to the vital issues that affect the world.

  Posted by RomeroJ on May 29, 2008 at 11:02 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 7 posts.

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