MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Over the past few years, there have been increasing calls for the U.S. to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hundreds of detainees have been held at the remote military base for more than four years.
NPR's Jackie Northam recently traveled to Bahrain to speak with two Guantanamo detainees who were recently released. They talked about their time at the prison camp and their life back home.
JACKIE NORTHAM reporting:
Guantanamo detainees are rarely able to tell their own stories about life at the remote prison camp. Usually their experiences are relayed through their lawyers, the military or from the occasional letter the prisoner is allowed to write home.
Now that the U.S. has started to release some of the detainees, they are finally able to speak out. Adel Hajee and Abdullah Al Noaimi were released from Guantanamo in November, after four years incarceration. Neither man was told why he was taken to Guantanamo, never charged with an offense and in the end never told why he was released.
Hajee and Noaimi's stories are personal and subjective and sometimes at odds with the U.S. military accounts. Both men say it's difficult to put precise dates on certain incidents. They were not allowed to take notes, had no diaries or calendars. But some incidents are firmly stamped on their memory.
In the first week of October 2001, Adel Hajee packed a small bag, his passport and several thousand dollars. The Ministry of Defense worker said goodbye to his wife, his 11-year-old daughter and left his home in a modest suburb of Bahrain. The U.S. military had just begun strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Hajee says he saw on TV Muslim refugees trying to flee the fighting and he wanted to help.
Mr. ADEL HAJEE (Guantanamo Bay detainee): To give them some money to continue them life and to protect themselves from the weather. And that time was closely to coming the winter. It's a part of our religion, like what we say, a charity.
NORTHAM: The now 41-year-old Hajee says he planned to be gone only three weeks. When the fighting intensified, he made his way to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where he says he turned himself in to the Pakistani authorities. They in turn handed him over to the American military.
Hajee, a short man with dark hooded eyes, says he was sent first to the U.S. air base at Kandahar, Afghanistan, and then in January 2002 was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr. HAJEE: Suddenly, like that, they took us in the night in a cargo airplane and they cover us and they tied us with the floors. And we don't know where we go.
NORTHAM: Around the same time, Abdullah Al Noaimi was also in Afghanistan. The now 24-year-old left Bahrain on September 13, 2001. He said he wanted to search for a cousin missing in Afghanistan. When he tried to leave that country, he too was turned over to the authorities, Noaimi says for a bounty, and sent to a Pakistani prison. Before long, he was handed over to the Americans. He says at first, he was grateful to be out of the Pakistani jail.
Mr. ABDULLAH AL NOAIMI, (Guantanamo Bay detainee): Well, when I know that I will go to the American custody, I felt happy. They're not going to harm us. They're going to use justice with us. And then when I got moved to the American custody, I was shocked. I was shocked. I've seen another face of America.
NORTHAM: Noaimi says he saw that face as soon as he arrived at the U.S. Military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in late December 2001.
Mr. NOAIMI: They start jumping on our backs with their boots, kicking our faces, walking over our backs. They were cursing and screaming at our heads. They threatened to kill me if I move.
NORTHAM: After nearly five months, Noaimi was also sent to Guantanamo. He and Hajee saw each other a couple of times at Guantanamo, but usually were held on separate blocks in separate areas of the detention camp. The U.S. says that Noaimi went to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban, against American and allied forces. Noaimi denies the allegations and says there is no solid evidence against him.
Mr. NOAIMI: Mostly I was interrogated normally, but the way of interrogation is to make you feel that you are already dead. There's no future for you and some interrogators, they were cursing and pushing, pushing you off the chair, screaming in your ears, keeping you awake.
NORTHAM: Adel Hajee says during his first year at Guantanamo, he wasn't questioned often, but that some of the interrogations were severe. The U.S. military says that Hajee fought against coalition forces in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, something he denies.
Hajee says several times during 2002, he was placed alternatingly in freezing, air conditioned rooms or in extraordinarily hot rooms during questioning. Sometimes he was shackled and left for up to 10 hours and that he was not allowed to pray during interrogations. Hajee says Islam is central to his life and that he and other detainees were upset when American soldiers were contemptuous of their devotion.
Mr. HAJEE: They step on my Koran or they say something bad for my Koran, my book. We tell them, why you do it like that?
NORTHAM: Hajee says in the spring of 2002, when the guards continued to manhandle the Koran, many of the detainees said they did not want to keep the Islamic holy book in their cells. Hajee says initially the military accepted that, but shortly after, the guards started forcing detainees to keep Korans in their cells.
Mr. HAJEE: They come into each person to beat them and to keep the Koran on them. They spray you that's gas. It's burning and like you can't breathe. They burn my legs and they kick me in my face.
NORTHAM: A year ago, the Pentagon launched an investigation after news reports said guards at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down the toilet. The investigation found that there were some incidents where guards had abused the Koran and that steps were taken to make sure it didn't happen again.
Hajee said he had very mixed feelings towards the guards. Noaimi says it took him a year and a half to realize the best way for him to deal with his jailers.
Mr. NOAIMI: When I first got in Guantanamo, everything put stress on me. But then, there was two pathways to choose. One, to lose control and start yelling, screaming. The other way is to be patient, not to lose faith, not to lose control, not to react by someone else's actions.
NORTHAM: Noaimi doesn't know the names of any of his guards, because all of their nametags were taped over. But often they got to know each other. He says occasionally, the guards told him how difficult it was for them and how they hated Guantanamo.
Hajee says relations with guards varied, depending on who was in charge of the base at the time. He says the worst time was when Army Major General Jeffery Miller ran the camp from November 2002 until March of 2004. Miller was then sent to Iraq and was later implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Hajee remembers an incident in late February or early March of 2003, when General Miller and some of his officers walked through the cell block he was on.
Mr. HAJEE: For bets and they spit in his face, on that day, and he's with his group of officers and colonels and they spit in his face, only he. With the other person, they don't spit in it. And the guards are being very, you do a good job, they say.
NORTHAM: Both Hajee and Noaimi say over the four years of detention, the hardest thing to deal with was the uncertainty of the future. Then one day last October, Hajee and Noaimi were each taken to a cell, in a different part of Guantanamo, called Camp Echo, and were met separately by a government lawyer. Noaimi says the lawyer handed him a document.
Mr. NOAIMI: I read that it was a release contract. It said I would not join any terrorist groups, like al-Qaida and Taliban or others. And if I do so, the American government has the right to pick me at any time. And I have no right to defend myself. So I told them, I prefer to stay here than signing this contract.
NORTHAM: Hajee also refused to sign the release contract. Nonetheless, the two men and another detainee were transferred back to Bahrain. The authorities there immediately set them free. The U.S. military insists they are still considered enemy combatants.
U.S. officials have declined to comment on their particular stories. Frank Swagger, the director of the Office for Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, says transferring a detainee doesn't mean he's innocent. But Swagger says the U.S. is not the world's jailer and there are long negotiations with home countries before any detainee is transferred from Guantanamo.
Mr. FRANK SWAGGER (Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants): There is this risk that we take, but once it's an acceptable risk and a country steps up to the plate, if you will, then we will return a detainee to a country, asking them under their laws and their responsibility to accept this risk.
NORTHAM: Five months after their release, Noaimi and Hajee are trying to rebuild their lives. Like in Guantanamo, their paths rarely cross in Bahrain.
Mr. NOAIMI: Yeah. This is my parent's house and here is where I live. This is my father's. He likes to keep birds, pigeon.
NORTHAM: Noaimi is back at his parents' home in an upscale neighborhood of Bahrain. He sits by a small pool wearing a long white traditional robe.
Mr. NOAIMI: (Speaking foreign language)
NORTHAM: Not long after his return, Noaimi went back to business school and in January got married. But remnants of the past four years continue to haunt him. He fears he's being followed and is suspicious about people watching his house.
Mr. NOAIMI: I'm still under danger maybe. Because actually they're losing justice. Everything could happen. They could pick me up at night.
NORTHAM: For Hajee, it's taken a while to absorb all the changes in Bahrain since he left.
Mr. HAJEE: This is my house. When I build it, it is 1999. It's quiet and beautiful.
NORTHAM: Two months after he returned, Hajee had to sell his home. The government refused to give him back his old job at the Ministry of Defense. He's unemployed and has no money.
Mr. HAJEE: Here it's very hard. No job, no work, no advice from the government or from any organizations. It's becoming like you spend all the time in Guantanamo and coming back, you're zero. Nothing in your hand. It's very difficult to continue the life.
NORTHAM: Hajee says he hopes, but doesn't expect any help from his government. He says it doesn't seem fair and that the U.S. government should at least say it's sorry. But he wants to put the past behind him. Noaimi is having a harder time processing the last four years.
Mr. NOAIMI: I don't think it's over because still half of me is still there, something that was a part torn from me. I want it back. And I feel there is no man on earth now that exists who stood up and said, I will bring justice back.
NORTHAM: Noaimi thinks about three other Bahraini detainees still held at Guantanamo. Tomorrow, we'll report on efforts to get them released.
Jackie Northam, NPR News.
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