Former Guantánamo detainee speaks out

Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram & Kandahar, by Moazzam Begg, New Press, 352 pp., 2006

“Being in solitary confinement for such a long time gave more opportunity than I could have imagined to reflect on my life. … I knew about death. I was not scared of it, but I was afraid of my judgment in the ultimate court of the Hereafter. So I embarked on a journey that would help secure my fate in the afterlife, by helping the poor and oppres sed from amongst the people I related to most: Muslims. That is what I was doing when I traveled around Europe and Asia, learning about a world that had been alien to me. This was part of the reason I was here [in Guantanamo].”

Moazzam Begg was in U.S. custody from January 2002 to January 2005, mostly in solitary confinement in Guan tanamo and without legal recourse to challenge his imprisonment.

Begg’s harrowing journey is movingly told in this memoir. Born and raised in Britain, Begg has given a voice to the hundreds of men held by the United States and designated as “enemy combatants” in named prisons and unnamed rendition centers scattered around the world.

He was arrested in Pakistan and turned over to the U.S. military soon after the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, October 2001. Never formally charged with any crime, he was accused of having “terrorist sympathies.” Begg ran an Islamic bookstore and was under surveillance by the M15 (British Secret Service) since the mid-1990s.

The Bush administration chose Begg and five other men in Guantanamo to face military tribunals. He declined to participate and was told that the tribunal would continue without him. Before the process was finished, and during elections that endangered Tony Blair’s position as prime minister, Britain responded to public anti-war pressure and lobbied the U.S. to return some of its citizens held in the notorious prison camp.

When the U.S. finally released Begg to the British in January 2005, he had endured more than 300 interrogations, three long years of incarceration without formal charges, and daily humiliation. The British government questioned him once and released him without pursuing any legal action.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down the tribunal system as a violation of the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration had maintained that, as “enemy combatants,” the men held in Guantan amo had no rights under the Conventions. But the Supreme Court cited Common Article Three, which covers prisoners caught in conflicts that do not involve “High Contracting Parties” (or states).

Because the court also ruled that existing U.S. laws did not apply to pending cases, some members of Congress are beginning the process of drafting a new, more draconian law to replace the “Detainee Treatment Act” of 2005. That act was the basis for the continued detentions.

Whatever law is cobbled together, its goal won’t be fair trials for people who have been imprisoned for years without charges or much legal recourse. Begg’s experiences and subsequent book have proven that allowing present and former detainees a voice, in court or in public, will have a devastating effect on U.S. policy. His account reveals the inhumane conditions, torture, deprivation of human rights, and outright murders that have occurred in the brightly lit prisons run by the U.S. And his story is just one of thousands.

Begg brings his experiences to a British and U.S. audience that has seen only glimpses of the routine brutality of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. “Enemy Combatant” opens a small window into several high-security facilities and invites readers to experience life somewhere between limbo and hell.

Begg’s book is so dangerous that the New York Times took the unusual step of printing a front-page story challenging the veracity of his statements on June 15, in an article entitled “Jihadist or Victim: Ex-Detainee Makes a Case.” Despite media scrutiny, no solid evidence has emerged that shows Begg to be a “sympathizer, a recruiter and a financier” for terrorists, as the Defense Department has described him.

If all memoirs were as closely monitored for factual information, the U.S. publishing industry might collapse.

The strength of Begg’s account is his humanity. He details life inside Guan tanamo, including the horror of being transported for hours with a bag over his head and entombed in blacked-out goggles. He treats each of his jailers as individuals, some of whom oppose the U.S. war against Afghanistan and Iraq. He mourns the long separation from his family and describes the constant struggle that the imprisoned men endure to keep themselves sane, even though they have little hope of relief from their long detentions.

With fresh headlines of the suicides of three men from Guantanamo, and the dismantling of the so-called “legal basis” for the continuation of the prisons, Begg makes a compelling argument for tearing down the walls. Guantanamo has become synonymous with the Bush administration’s disregard for international law. Like the Bastille, the prison stormed by a revolutionary grouping of Parisians on July 14, 1789, its name will live on as a symbol of oppression long after it is dismantled.