Last week I took the same route as hundreds of terrorists/enemy combatants en route to Guantanamo Bay detention centre, what used to be called Camp X-Ray and is now renamed Camp Delta - flight into Guantanamo Bay US Naval Station, bus to the ferry, onto the ferry and a 25-minute ride across the water to the windward side of Guantanamo and voila, there it is, the most famous/infamous detention centre in the universe. No orange jumpsuit for me fortunately (orange just doesn't suit me my dears) but a warm welcome from Rear Admiral David Woods, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the Big Cheese boss of the camp. When I say warm, I doubt he's naturally a warm soul. You don't get to run a prison camp for the most dangerous human beings on the planet by being a nice soul. He was a fairly typical toothbrush-haired American commander with a smile but absolutely no intention of telling us anything.
But first of all, just to put The Guardian's headline story last week into some perspective. The headline said "Guantanamo Torture Centre". Well, between you and me and all the readers of The Guardian, the paper did not have a representative on the small party of journalists who went to Guantanamo this week, and I can tell you that the torture days - under President GW - are over. I went into Camp 6 where 80 per cent of the detainees are held and although every moment of their lives is watched over by guards they live a weird communal, albeit twilight, world where they can wander around, unshackled, unfettered, read books, watch endless television, paint etc etc. It's not Alexandria or East Sheen but it ain't waterboarding for breakfast, Mr and Mrs Guardian readers. They look pretty healthy, too. Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, the mastermind (alleged) of the suicide boat bomb attack on USS Cole in 2000 which killed 17 sailors, and numerous other al-Qaeda operations - and the reason I was in Guantanamo, to witness his first appearance before a Military Commission tribunal -swaggered into court looking positively bursting with health, almost pudgy. The only previous photo of him, used by every newspaper since his arrest in 2002 was of a thin-faced very Saudi-looking Saudi with a neat beard and turban. The guy in court looked nothing like him. He was round of face, unbearded, with a layer of stubble and oiled hair. Apparently he had a moustache but I couldn't see that from where I was sitting - at the back of the hugely secure courtroom behind a glass screen. Normally it's the dangerous defendant who sits behind a screen or in a cage. In this case it was us lot!!!
There was much questioning of his civilian lawyer afterwards about whether Nashiri was fat, sturdy, stocky or muscular. The lawyer, quite rotund of stomach, replied: "I'm fat, he's muscly." The fact is, muscly or fat, this gentleman is never going to leave Guantanamo or at least he's never going to be released because even if he's acquitted - he's facing a death penalty if convicted - no US Government of whatever persuasion is going to free a terrorist (alleged) who was reputed to have been the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (a grand title for such a horrendous terrorist network). Tricky one for Obama! By the way Nashiri is kept in Camp 7 which is so secret that no one, except those in charge of that particular facility, knows anything about it. There are 15 inhabitants, the most dangerous of the most dangerous, including Sheikh Mohammad Khaled, the 9/11 architect, Certainly we weren't allowed anywhere near it. There are six centres within Camp Delta: Camp 5 for Camp 6 detainees who have breached discipline where the regime is much less congenial and they wear the Guantanamo orange designer uniform to let everyone know they are "non-compliant", Camp 6 for the vast majority, Camp 7 for Nashiri and co, Camp Iguana, Camp Echo and the hospital. Allegedly Camp Echo is for the snitches, the detainees who have spilled the beans. I'm not sure about Camp Iguana. Everything is so hush hush at Guantanamo Bay, you don't often get a straight answer to a straight question. Except for : "Do you torture the detainees?" "NO."
Nashiri's main lawyer who has been involved in 35 US federal death sentence trials, was upset when we said his client had swaggered into court. He said he didn't swagger,he just walked like he normally does. Then, whoops, he revealed he had never actually seen him walk before and he had been coming to Guantanamo Bay to see him for three years!!! Wow. how about that? At Camp 6, the easygo of sorts camp where the detainees don't wear shackles of any kind, they can make requests which are often granted. "Can I get off this island and go home please?" NO, sorry. "Can I have some sweets for trick and treat for Halloween night?" Of course you can, provided you share them around. "It's coming up for the Muslim Eid festival, we normally sacrifice a sheep, any chance....?" Does that involve using a knife to cut the throat? "Eh, yes." Then , no way, we might think about the sheep, but no knife. Actually, that was one of the questions posed by the woman reporter from the Miami Herald when Eid came up as an issue. The Camp 6 commander showing us around said just that, although I assume he was kidding. "No they couldn't sacrifice a sheep with a knife, but we might have considered giving them a sheep."
Now,don't get me wrong, I am not saying, after one visit to Guantanamo, that the detainees are living a jolly life by the sea, although technically they are by the sea, or at least the bay. They are cooped up in a heavily barbed wire encampment with no family visits, and most of them will never get to visit Disneyland. But remember who these people are? The problem for Obama is that at some stage they should be presented to a court, either federal or military, and charged. But it's going to be a long business. I am reliably informed - actually by the US military's chief prosecutor himself, a tall incredibly intelligent general and total dude extraordinaire who was first in his class at West Point, a Rhodes scholar and a Harvard lawyer - that just for the Nashiri case alone there are likely to be half a million pages of documents, none of which have yet been handed over to the defence team because they are so steeped in top secret stuff that the authorities want to make sure that nothing smelling of CIA could ever get out into the hands of the public (via WikiLeaks!!). The defence lawyers have been security cleared to above top secret but even they have got to wait before they can see anything of the prosecution's case. I asked the defence lawyers what Nashiri had told them about his incarceration and the reply was: "I'm afraid I'm not allowed to tell you. Everything that comes out of his mouth has to remain top secret. Why? Because he was in the hands of the CIA for four years, so whatever he says is top secret."
Anyway, a great experience. I came away with a mass of notes, two stories in the paper and a statue of a nodding Castro! I said to the woman from some television station in Chicago. "Well that was three days of 16 hours on the trot." "Oh, I love that, on the trot, I don't know what it means but it sounds so English. I'm going to tweet that." And she did.
On an even lighter note, I was sitting having breakfast in one of the American cafeterias, along with two American journalists and the National Guard female driver who had taken us there. I was tucking into bacon and sausages - no ration packs at Guantanamo (but no hotels either, we all slept in tents) - when the National Guardswoman asked: "You gart any jokes?" Sorry? "Jokes, you gart any jokes?" It was 7am!! She then said: "What jou get if you throw a piaaano down a mineshaft?" I don't know, what do you get? "A flat minor". Ho ho ho. But then, wait for it, one of my distinguished American colleagues, intervened with: "Or you could get two flat miners." Er no Mr American, that's not a joke, you see on a piano you can play a tune in A flat.......oh forget it.
Back to civilisation. Meanwhile 171 Guantanamo Bay detainees continue their life in the Caribbean. I expect Bush has forgotten all about them.
