Amnesty report on Guantánamo Bay

"I have written the story of my suffering and sorrows, this story which has not ended and which I am still living through. I have written these lines from behind the walls of the dreadful detention camps. I have written about my pain and my sadness. I do not know what will happen in the future and what fate has hidden for me, when the end will come or how it will be."

These are the words of Jumah al-Dossari, a Guantánamo detainee who has been illegally held prisoner, without being charged for any crime, for more than four years by US forces. Amnesty International released a report today entitled, "Guantánamo: Lives torn apart – The impact of indefinite detention on detainees and their families". It reports on the ongoing hunger strike and force-feeding of the prisoners, the physical and psychological abuse which they suffer at the hands of their guards and the devastating effect which indefinate detention has had on their families. Jumah al-Dossari's story is just one of several accounts of abuse mentioned in the report.

"Throughout his detention in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, he claims to have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including beatings, rape and death threats, prolonged isolation, exposure to extreme cold, sexual assaults and having his body smeared with menstrual blood during the course of an interrogation. He is believed to have attempted suicide at least nine times. On 15 October 2005, he attempted to hang himself after going into the toilet during an interview with his lawyer. In declassified notes from a meeting with the lawyer in November, Jumah al-Dossari talked about this suicide attempt, explaining that he had wanted to kill himself so that he could send a message to the world that the conditions at Guantánamo are intolerable. He added that he tried to do it in a public way so that the military could not cover it up and his death would not be anonymous. This suicide attempt left him with a broken vertebra and fourteen stitches in his right arm."

His harrowing account of torture and abuse at the hands of the American military can be read in full HERE.