[Ppnews] Horror at Guantánamo

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington01312008.html



January 31, 2008


Libyan Detainee Infected with AIDS


Horror at Guantánamo

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

It really doesn't get any worse than this.

Candace Gorman, lawyer for Abdul Hamid 
al-Ghizzawi, a Libyan detainee at Guantánamo, 
reports that her client has been infected with 
AIDS. Mr. al-Ghizzawi explained to his lawyer in 
a letter that he was told about his infection by 
a doctor at Guantánamo, adding that he believes 
that the infection took place in 2004, when he 
was given a blood test, which "resulted in alarm 
amongst the hospital staff," although he was not 
given any explanation for the alarm at the time.

On January 28, Candace Gorman filed an emergency 
motion with the US Supreme Court, asking for the 
US military to provide urgent medical treatment 
to Mr. al-Ghizzawi, and also asking for access to 
her client's medical records. Yesterday morning, 
however, Chief Justice John Roberts denied the motion.

While this news is so alarming that it almost 
defies description, Mr. al-Ghizzawi's plight is 
compounded by the fact that he already suffers 
from tuberculosis, which he also contracted in 
Guantánamo, and hepatitis B, which was dormant 
before his arrival at the prison.

In an affidavit filed with the US District Court 
in September 2006, Dr. Ronald Sollock, the Chief 
Medical Doctor at Guantánamo, confirmed that Mr. 
al-Ghizzawi "was subjected to complete medical 
tests by the military upon his arrival in 
Guantánamo in 2002," and that he "entered [the 
prison] in good health," although he admitted 
that "a history of hepatitis B was identified in 
tests performed in August 2002" (even though Mr. 
al-Ghizzawi was never informed of this fact), and 
that he "was exposed to tuberculosis while at the base."

Dr. Sollock also claimed that Mr. al-Ghizzawi 
"does not want to be treated for his life 
threatening illness[es]," although this is 
strenuously denied by Mr. al-Ghizzawi himself, 
who insists that he has never been informed about 
his health problems, and has never been offered 
any kind of medical treatment whatsoever.

Despite the gravity of Mr. al-Ghizzawi's 
condition, the authorities at Guantánamo have 
refused to either confirm or deny his claim that 
he has been infected with AIDS. When Candace 
Gorman approached Andrew Warden, the Department 
of Justice attorney assigned to the case, Warden 
also refused to be drawn, stating only, "We are 
not privy to the particulars of what your client 
may have been told by his doctor, if anything, 
but Guantánamo provides high-quality medical care to all detainees."

Even before this latest awful revelation, Candace 
Gorman had documented the suffering of her client 
in painful detail, explaining, in a habeas corpus 
submission to the District Court last August, 
that during her first visit with him, in July 
2006, it was apparent that he was seriously ill. 
She described him as "very noticeably jaundiced," 
adding that he was "constantly rubbing his back, 
his leg and his abdomen," and that he appeared to be "in constant pain."

Mr. al-Ghizzawi confirmed that his health had 
begun to deteriorate during his first year at 
Guantánamo, and had "progressively worsened" each 
year. He explained that he had lost 10-15 kilos 
since his arrest, that he had "severe pain in his 
abdomen, left side and back that travels down his 
legs," that the pain was "constant when walking 
or standing," that his stomach area was "bloated 
with two black lines appearing horizontal across 
his stomach," and that he had "digestive problems 
including vomiting and diarrhea." In this first 
meeting, Mr. al-Ghizzawi also explained that "the 
increased intensity of the pain in the previous 
months" had been "so severe that he had been 
unable to get up from a lying down position."

During further visits, in September and November 
2006, and in February, May and July 2007, Mr. 
al-Ghizzawi's health evidently deteriorated 
further, prompted, in part, by the conditions in 
which he was held. On one occasion, he was 
dressed in orange (reserved, in recent years, for 
"non-compliant" detainees), and had been stripped 
of all "comfort items," including a thermal shirt 
that provided a meager defense against the cold, 
because he inadvertently had some toilet paper in 
his pocket when he went for a shower, and in 
December 2006 he was moved to Camp 6, a new 
supermax facility designed to hold the "general 
population" at Guantánamo (including those who have been cleared for release).

The conditions in Camp 6 are, bluntly, barbaric. 
Held in severe isolation, the detainees, in 
contrast to convicted criminals on the US 
mainland, are only allowed one book a week, are 
prevented from reading newspapers, watching TV or 
listening to the radio, and are, of course, 
completely cut off from their families. Mr. 
al-Ghizzawi explained that he was "compelled to 
complain to get so much as clean clothes," and 
his health problems are compounded by the fact 
that, despite Guantánamo's tropical heat, the 
solid metal cells, which "admit no natural 
light," are air-conditioned and freezing cold. In 
addition, "the men are not provided blankets but 
instead are given plastic sheets that are cold and smelly."

Just as severe is the men's physical and mental 
isolation. As Candace Gorman explains, they 
"cannot converse with anyone unless they kneel on 
the floor and attempt to shout greetings through 
the tiny gap where the food is pushed in." As a 
result, Mr. al-Ghizzawi, like all the other 
detainees, "passes his days in tedium and 
loneliness." During the July 2007 visit, he told 
Gorman that, "in his total isolation he had begun 
talking to himself." He added that he "recognized 
that this was a sign of a fraying mental state" 
and was "very distraught" about it.

Even if Mr. al-Ghizzawi were one of the "worst of 
the worst" -- say, a committed terrorist with 
blood on his hands -- this state of affairs would 
be deplorable, but as it is, the "evidence" 
against Mr. al-Ghizzawi, who, like all the other 
Guantánamo detainees, has been held for years 
without charge or trial, is so weak that, in his 
Combatant Status Review Tribunal in 2004 -- those 
pale substitutes for justice, in which the 
detainees were denied representation by lawyers, 
and prohibited from seeing or hearing the 
"classified evidence" against them -- his 
military-appointed panel declared that there was 
insufficient evidence to declare him an "enemy 
combatant," and that he should therefore be released.

We know this because one of the members of this 
particular tribunal, Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, 
spoke out last year about the systematic failings 
of the tribunals, deriding them as severely 
flawed, relying on intelligence "of a generalized 
nature -- often outdated, often 'generic,' rarely 
specifically relating to the individual subjects 
of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to 
those individuals' status," and concluding that 
they were designed merely to rubberstamp the 
detainees' prior designation as "enemy combatants."

Writing of Mr. al-Ghizzawi's tribunal, Lt. Col. 
Abraham stated, "On one occasion, I was assigned 
to a CSRT panel with two other officers, an Air 
Force Colonel and an Air Force Major, the latter 
understood by me to be a judge advocate. We 
reviewed the evidence presented to us regarding 
the recommended status of [Mr. al-Ghizzawi]. All 
of us found the information presented to lack 
substance." He added, "On the basis of the 
paucity and weakness of the information provided 
both during and after the CSRT hearing, we 
determined that there was no factual basis for 
concluding that the individual should be classified as an enemy combatant."

Lt. Col. Abraham also explained -- as was backed 
up in October by a second whistleblower, an Army 
Major who had taken part in 49 tribunals -- that 
unfavorable decisions were overruled by those in 
overall charge of the operation, who then 
convened a second tribunal to produce the desired 
result, and added that this is what had happened 
in the case of Mr. al-Ghizzawi.

Confirming that all he said was true, Lt. Col. 
Abraham and his fellow tribunal members were 
prohibited from taking part in any more 
tribunals, and a second, secret tribunal was held 
in Washington D.C., at which it was duly decided 
that Mr. al-Ghizzawi was an "enemy combatant" 
after all. As mentioned above, this was not the 
only case in which an unpopular decision was 
reversed by the authorities, but in Mr. 
al-Ghizzawi's case the implications could be 
fatal, perhaps fulfilling a fear that Lt. Col. 
Abraham expressed to me in October, when he 
wrote, "I am saddened by the fact that more 
detainees, about whom there is no evidence of 
involvement in terrorism, will likely die before something is done."

That Mr. al-Ghizzawi is one of these men "about 
whom there is no evidence of involvement with 
terrorism" seems abundantly clear from a 
comparison of his story with the allegations compiled by the administration.

A former meteorologist, Mr. al-Ghizzawi, who was 
born in 1962, had been living in Afghanistan 
since the collapse of the last remnants of the 
Soviet-backed Communist regime in the early 
1990s. Married to an Afghan woman, and with a 
daughter who was only a few months old when he 
was captured, he and his wife ran a shop in the 
eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where they 
"sold honey and spices and later expanded to include a bakery."

In October 2001, when US forces began bombing the 
Jalalabad area, the family fled to the 
countryside, where his wife's family lived, 
thinking that they would be safer there. In 
December, however, as news spread that the US 
authorities were paying handsome bounties for 
suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members, "armed 
men came to the home and told the family to turn 
over 'the Arab.'" Fearing that his family would 
be harmed, Mr. al-Ghizzawi complied, and was then 
sold to soldiers of the anti-Taliban Northern 
Alliance, who in turn sold him to the US military.

Against Mr. al-Ghizzawi's story, the 
administration has struggled to establish a 
coherent narrative. In his CSRT, in November 
2004, all the authorities managed to come up with 
were claims that he was part of the Libyan 
Islamic Fighting Group, an organization opposed 
to the rule of Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi 
(the former terror-backing pariah, who now, of 
course, is a great friend of the West), and that 
he had received military training at camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

By the time of his review board in September 
2006, this tissue-thin Summary of Evidence had 
been augmented with additional material, most of 
which was evidently made by other detainees, 
either in Guantánamo or in other secret prisons. 
It was alleged that he had met members of 
al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and had stayed at an LIFG 
house in Jalalabad in 1997. Additional 
allegations included a claim by a "noted 
jihadist" that he "was a security leader for 
Osama bin Laden during a trip to a guest house in 
Jalalabad," that "an al-Qaeda operative stated he 
saw the detainee several times between 2000 and 
2001 in Jalalabad," and that he "believed the 
detainee was in charge of a guest house for the 
Libyans," and that a member of the LIFG "stated 
the detainee took part in the fighting in Afghanistan."

Mr. al-Ghizzawi countered all the allegations, 
insisting that he was not a member of either 
al-Qaeda or the LIFG, denying "receiving any 
terrorist training or being a fighter," and 
explaining that he "had gone to Pakistan 
originally to find work, not to fight as a 
jihadist." He added that "he did not fight at all 
in Afghanistan and that he did not have the will 
to fight, stated that he "was pressured to train 
as a fighter, but he refused," and also stated 
that "the only support he gave the jihad was to 
teach the children of the mujahideen." The most 
glaring contradiction in the allegations against 
him, however, was provided by another "al-Qaeda 
operative," who stated, unambiguously, "the 
detainee is not a member of al-Qaeda or of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group."

After a detailed study of the statements of Lt. 
Col. Abraham and the other Guantánamo 
whistleblowers, and armed with the copious 
evidence I uncovered, during my research for The 
Guantánamo Files, of false allegations made under 
duress, or through bribery, by detainees against 
their fellow detainees, I know whose story I am inclined to believe.

What matters more, however, is that the correct 
venue for these allegations and 
counter-allegations to be tested is in a 
recognized court of law, not in military 
tribunals whose integrity has been critically 
undermined by former officers who served on them. 
Given that Chris Mackey, a former interrogator at 
the US prisons in Afghanistan, stated in his book 
The Interrogators that there was, effectively, no 
screening process in Afghanistan, because every 
Arab who ended up in US custody was automatically 
transferred to Guantánamo, it's clear that the 
allegations not only against Mr. al-Ghizzawi, but 
also against the majority of other detainees 
still held in Guantánamo, have never been tested 
in any meaningful way whatsoever.

As I noted at the start of this article, however, 
compounding six years of lawless brutality with 
this latest evidence of severe medical 
malpractice almost beggars belief. As the Supreme 
Court ponders whether or not to rule that the 
detainees have a constitutional right to habeas 
corpus (after their statutory right, granted by 
the Supreme Court in June 2004, was taken away in 
2006's Military Commissions Act), I can only hope 
that this analysis of the administration's 
disdain for the law and for human suffering will 
help the justices to rule for the detainees, and 
that in the meantime Mr. al-Ghizzawi does not die 
in Guantánamo, scorned by a corrupt 
administration, and neglected and abandoned by the medical profession.

Andy Worthington 
(<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/>www.andyworthington.co.uk) 
is a British historian, and the author of 
'<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga>The 
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 
Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (to be 
published by Pluto Press in October 2007).
He can be reached at: 
<mailto:andy at andyworthington.co.uk>andy at andyworthington.co.uk




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