The insanity of Guantánamo

The insanity of Guantánamo

Despite U.S. claims of humane treatment, a new report reveals that prisoners -- even some long ago cleared to leave -- are spiraling into hallucinations, despair and suicide.

Editor's note: In this article, Jennifer Daskal and Stacy Sullivan report -- in the greatest detail published to date -- on the deteriorating mental health of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The two staff members of the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch produced a new in-depth report published Tuesday by the organization, on which this article is based. They have also contributed to Salon's continuing coverage of U.S. judicial proceedings at Guantánamo Bay.

By Jennifer Daskal and Stacy Sullivan
Pages 1 2



A detainee peers out through the "bean hole" used to pass food and other items into his cell at Guantánamo Bay (Dec. 4, 2006).

June 10, 2008 | GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- "I feel like I'm being buried alive," said Ahmed Belbacha, a 39-year-old Algerian who has been in Guantánamo since March 2002. He has been cleared to leave the prison camp for over a year, but he can't.

Algeria isn't accepting detainees back home, but even it were, Belbacha is so fearful of being tortured there that he has asked the U.S. federal courts to block his return. But there is no other country willing to take him, and he remains stuck in Guantánamo -- locked in his windowless cell 22 hours a day, with little more than a Koran and single other book to occupy his time.

In December, Belbacha reportedly tried to commit suicide and was moved to the mental health facility. He was stripped naked, dressed in a green plastic rip-proof suicide smock, and placed in an individual cell under constant monitoring --Guantánamo's suicide watch. He says he was given absolutely nothing else in his cell -- no toothbrush, no soap, no books, nothing he could somehow use to injure himself.

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Each morning a member of the mental health staff reportedly came by and asked the same set of questions: Do you want to hurt yourself? Do you want to hurt anyone else? Are you sleeping well? Are you eating well?

Close to two months later, he apparently had answered all the questions correctly and was moved back to another windowless cell.

More than half of the 270 detainees currently at Guantánamo -- including many who are slated for release or transfer -- are housed in high-security facilities akin to U.S. "supermax" prisons. They spend all but two hours a day in small cells with no natural light or fresh air. Their meals are slipped through a slot in the door, and they are given little more than a single book and the Koran to occupy their time. Even their limited "recreation" time -- which is sometimes provided in the middle of the night -- generally takes place in single cell cages so that detainees can't physically interact with one another. None of these detainees have been allowed visits by family members, and very few have been able to make phone calls home.

As a result, many detainee lawyers say, their clients are suffering from serious and even dangerous mental health problems. Several have tried to commit suicide, some of them multiple times. Others have reported having visions and hearing voices. Some show strong signs of depression and anxiety disorder.

The Department of Defense does not allow any outsiders, including journalists and representatives of nongovernmental organizations, to speak with the detainees at Guantánamo, so it is difficult to get a full picture of the prison conditions and the toll they may be taking on detainee mental health. In addition, the DOD has generally prohibited attorneys from bringing in outside psychiatrists to evaluate the mental health of their clients, forcing attorneys to rely on "proxy" evaluations based on questionnaires the lawyers administer to their clients.

However, in a new report based on interviews with government officials and attorneys for detainees, as well as declassified notes attorneys took in meetings with detainees, Human Rights Watch has pieced together a physical description of the various "camps" at Guantánamo and the inhumane conditions that prevail within them. Titled "Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantánamo," the report also documents the increasingly frequent complaints of mental health deterioration among the more than one dozen detainees profiled in case studies.

Mohammad El Gharani, a young Chadian who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, was reportedly arrested at a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, when he was only 15 years old and brought to Guantánamo in early 2002. He was wrongly classified as 25 and held as an adult. (He is now 21.) For the past two years, he has been held in two of Guantánamo's most restrictive high-security camps.

Gharani's lawyers say he has tried to commit suicide at least seven times. He has slit his wrist, run repeatedly headfirst into the sides of his cell, and tried to hang himself. On several occasions, he has been put on suicide watch in the mental health unit, given the green suicide smock, and placed in a single cell with no other items other than toilet paper. Each time, he has been moved out of the suicide unit and back into high-security detention.

Often subject to punishment for reported disciplinary problems, El Gharani says he is often left with nothing in his cell other than a mat for sleeping, a Koran and toilet paper. He says that at times even some of the basic items that all detainees are reportedly allowed at all times -- including a finger toothbrush and small bar of soap -- have been taken away.

He has never been provided any educational or additional recreation opportunities in accordance with his juvenile status at the time of capture. He has never been allowed to speak with -- let alone see -- any of his family members during his more than six years in U.S. custody. Like the majority of detainees at Guantánamo, he has not been charged with any crime.

A Guantánamo detainee named Walid, a 28-year-old Palestinian (whose lawyers requested that we withhold his last name), was reportedly sold to the United States by the Pakistani security forces, after the U.S. began offering bounties for suspected terrorists. He was among the first arrivals to Guantánamo Bay in early 2002. As of February 2008, he was "approved to leave" by U.S. officials -- yet since 2007, he has been held in one of the high-security camps.

Since his arrest, Walid has had very little contact with his family, who thought he was dead until, several years after his initial detention, he was able to send them a postcard. He has not, to his attorney's knowledge, been able to speak with any of his family members. Since learning of his whereabouts in 2005, his family has been writing to him and has sent him photos, including pictures of nieces and nephews he has never met.

Around 2003 or 2004 he went on a hunger strike for 20 months and was force-fed through intubation. At one point Walid, who is approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed only 96 pounds.

His attorneys report that they have long been worried about Walid's mental health, which they believe has been deteriorating over time. They describe him as lethargic, listless and distracted, and took the following notes of his speech:

I love cowboys. I love Indians. I feel like they're my family ... I knew an Indian woman in Gaza -- she talked a witch language. I won't tell you her name because she might send me a witch curse ... Tarzan is a lovely person -- very polite -- he's my friend, though he doesn't [know] it. I don't watch for entertainment but for another reason -- a secret -- I won't tell you ... I live in heaven, heaven is in my chest. I love Jesus, I want to see him, and all the mermaids around them.

After the U.S. denied Walid's attorneys' requests to release Walid's medical records, and knowing that they would not be allowed to bring in an independent psychiatrist to evaluate him in person, Walid's attorneys retained Dr. Daryl Matthews, a psychiatrist once hired by the Department of Defense to evaluate the mental health facilities at Guantánamo. They asked Matthews to prepare a questionnaire by which he could do a proxy psychological assessment. From the results of this questionnaire, Matthews concluded that Walid appears to have developed schizophrenia and suffers from delusions, significant anxiety and depression.