In a sniper's sights: life in Camp X-Ray Julian Borger in Guatanamo Bay
Friday January 25, 2002
The GuardianFrom 100 yards - the closest civilians are allowed to venture - Camp X-Ray looks like a particularly densely packed zoo, its 2.5 metre cages arranged in tight metal blocks and its inmates all but invisible except for the occasional flash of orange through the wire.
With the help of binoculars, some of the detainees could be seen slumped motionless in the corner of their pens. The only apparent sign of life was on the west side of the cell block where the prisoners were trying to fix their sheets to the chain-link walls of their cages to take the edge off the intense evening sun, and arguing with the guards, who wanted to keep them in sight, over how high they could hang their makeshift blinds.
In six plywood watchtowers positioned along the outer ring of two perimeter fences, snipers trained their rifles on these encounters, as if the detainees might at any moment break through the wire with their bare hands and mount a mutiny.
It may not amount to torture, but the cramped metal cages baking in tropical heat in the US base in Guantanamo Bay seemed to belong to another more brutal era. This is a sort of Caribbean gulag, and without doubt the scene before us would raise concern if it was being run by any other country.
The man in charge of the camp, Brigadier General Michael Lehnert, has said he will review procedures so as not to subject prisoners "to more unnecessary handling than we absolutely have to". The general made it clear how ever, that "security trumps everything".
Security. The word upon which the entire US penal system is built. The word which in American penal thinking stands far, far ahead of that other word - rights.
And so the general talked about security. Without blacked-out goggles, the prisoners would see the exposed hydraulics and electric cables in the military transport planes in which they are flown out of Afghanistan, and possibly try to cut them, he argued.
Colonel Carrico said the blindfolds were necessary on the way from the plane to Camp X-Ray so that detainees are not given the opportunity to "case" their surroundings.
Asked what he would do if ordered to remove the goggles he said: "If I thought it was going to jeopardise the security of my people, I'd speak out. But after that, I'd say: 'Yes Sir!' I'm a soldier." The guards at Camp X-Ray - who live in a corner of Cuba made American with a McDonald's and a bar and grill - are thinking constantly about security too.
They have been informed that with this particular group of prisoners, anything is possible. One inmate had already announced his intention, in accented but clear English, that he would kill an American before leaving Guantanamo Bay. A few days earlier a detainee being taken to the toilet in shackles had lunged head-first at one of his guards and taken a bite out of his forearm.
"It makes you think what can happen. It opens your mind," said Specialist FabianRivas, part of the Texas-based military police unit guarding the camp.
"Walking through, I'm kind of scared. These people have trained at one point in their lives to give up their lives to take yours." About 20 guards had been lined up outside the camp for interviews. Most were young and shy, flown in suddenly from Fort Hood in Texas, and were wary of publicity, especially in the presence of journalists from Britain, a country whose press they had been told had labelled them as torturers. Almost all of them insisted that conditions for the 158 inmates were better than their own.
"Honestly, they have it better than we do. Their chow is hot," said Staff Sergeant Monte Webster. "And it's much cooler down here than up in our tents." Between two of the cell blocks is a strip of open ground where the notorious picture was taken showing inmates kneeling in blindfolds and masks, causing outrage and allegations of torture that swept through Britain and much of the rest of Europe.
The guards at Camp X-Ray are incredulous at the furore. Through their security-tinted glasses, they cannot see any cause for concern. The prison ers were being processed on arrival from Afghanistan, they said, and were only there for a few minutes. They had been told to kneel or sit.
"I think it's partially for their own safety. When I fly I get really disoriented, and I have to sit down for a while normally," said Private Emily Monson. "I believe that they are treated better here than they were where they came from."
Camp X-Ray sits in a small valley scooped out from dusty brown hills in the dry south-eastern corner of Cuba. The sun beats down on the tin roofs of the cells, and throws dazzling reflections off the bright razor wire on the twin perimeter fences.
On one side of the main cell block is a cluster of olive-drab tents where the inmates are initially processed on arrival and where the Red Cross is now holding interviews with the prisoners. On the other side, a new block of 60 cells has been completed, and a few yards further on another is under construction.
Beyond the western perimeter fence a group of five windowless plywood huts have just been built for the interrogation of prisoners. The "interviews" as the camp authorities prefer to call them, have already begun. Inmates who have been questioned are separated from the others so that they cannot compare notes.
The others live cheek by jowl in their pens, and much of the day is spent, the guards said, in constant chatter, and railing against their fate.
According to the interpreters at the base, some have cried, and bewailed the fact that their fathers had no idea where they were.
"People are asking after their fathers. If they want someone to know where they're at its their father, not their mother," said Colonel Terry Carrico, the head of the camp's internal security force.
The guards say that a handful of the inmates speak fluent English, and try to engage them in conversation. "They'll say to us: "How are you doing? What's going on?," Staff Sergeant Webster said. "We try not to respond. We don't want them to think there's going to be any complacency." He could not say whether any of the detainees had British accents: the guards have been instructed not to disclose details of nationality.
Every prisoner has been given his own Koran in Arabic and English, and there is a green and white painted sign nailed to a telegraph pole above the camp pointing the way to Mecca.
General Lehnert has also agreed to paint green lines on the concrete floor showing the correct direction for prayer.
Yesterday, for the first time a US military cleric, Lieutenant Abuhena Saiful-Islam, attended dawn prayers with the prisoners and claimed they "were very appreciative of the efforts we are taking." Torture no. But it was hard to picture the disconsolate orange overalls hunched up in their cages as anything approaching "appreciative".
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002