Voice of Russia
29 amggio 2013

Guantanamo is nothing more than way of appeasing Americans

US President Barack Obama vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison after he first took office in 2009. However, the detention center is still in full operation, despite numerous reports of grave human rights violations. According to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay what was created as a counter-terrorism measure under George W. Bush may now be turning into a breeding ground for terrorists. 

Speaking at the opening of the spring session of the UN Human Rights Council, Pillay stressed that the US is breaching international laws by having many of the 166 people detained at Guantanamo without charges. Army Specialist Terry Holdbrooks came to Cuba in 2003 to serve as a prison guard in Guantanamo Bay, only to leave the detention center a year later as a practicing Muslim.

Terry Holdbrooks tells the Voice of Russia about his experience.

Thanks very much for joining us! Before coming to Guantanamo, what did you expect of the prison and your work there?

You have to understand that heads from the army were giving us a bunch of inadequate and poor training, and preparation. They did go to great lengths to give us some cultural awareness training that consisted of telling us – the detainees in Guantanamo were the worst of the worst, were Al-Qaeda, were the Taliban, that they were the lowest of the lowest and that they would kill us at any instant of hesitation, they would use that to their advantage. That’s what I was expecting. And as you can imagine I was greatly disappointed.

So, it did not meet your expectations, am I getting you right?

No, not in a slightest. I was Charlton Heston and Anthony Quinn to be in every one of the cells. I was expecting men with prolific beards and they would on horsebacks, and they would have huge swords. It is nothing like that. Guantanamo is nothing like it’s been described.

What were your reasons for initially deciding to become a prison guard at that particular detention center? Was it just out of curiosity or probably the money was better? What was the main reason?

Nobody decides to be a guard at Guantanamo. You don’t choose. The army sends you and you go where the army sends you. I enlisted in the army but I didn’t enlist because I wanted to go to Guantanamo. I don’t think anybody was willing to be chosen to go there.

So, you actually had no option to refuse?

Right, there is no option with the military, you do what you are told. That’s how the military works, unfortunately.

It has been reported that Guantanamo inmates are subject to inhumane treatment, including sexual assault and even torture. What kind of human rights violations did you personally witness while working there?

I actually go to a great length discussing many of those practices in my book that I published about a week ago “Traitor.” Everything you’ve just said, yes, that happens there and plenty of worse things happen there. That was essentially the whole reason for writing a book because I believe that if all Americans were aware of the facts that are happening in Guantanamo and its surroundings, they would give a damn and they would want it closed. I don’t look at Guantanamo as being a proper reflection of the US or of the American society. There are plenty of good Americans and plenty of people with good hearts and good minds, but those individuals are not represented at Guantanamo.

And still, given your book and given the fact that actually you are not alone, still, it seems that public opinion is not forcing the US Government to speed up with closing the Guantanamo. Does that mean that you have sort of taboo in the media and it is not much spoken about?

We definitely have a taboo in the media in this country. People don’t bother reading a book because an interesting book comes along, they read a book because television tells them to. So, until somebody like us is able to secure a position on the daily show or the Colbert Report, or some type of a major news enterprise people are not going to be aware of this and they are not going to listen. It astounds me!

I took part in an interview for Saturday Evening in Alabama and the article was published yesterday morning. And there were 304 comments on that article quite quickly. And the majority of those comments, you could tell it just from the comment written that they obviously haven’t read the article.

And this is how the media works. It creates a line and then advertise that line and maybe there are a few clip notes that people will pick up on. But people don’t read the entire article, they don’t bother doing the research on their own. It is not something that Americans are known for. We are not very diligent when it comes to learning and gathering facts on our own.

You’ve described what you were actually prepared for before you went to Guantanamo. Could you tell us a little bit about people there? How do they look like? Who are they?

I think you’ve got men from 48 or 49 countries all around the world, so there is really no general look. There is no generality. The only thing that is unanimous amongst the men of Guantanamo is that they are all Muslims. I didn’t really bother about bickering of Shia or Sunni, or Salafi, or Wahhabi – they are just all Muslim men. When I got there I saw something that I’ve never seen before in America, I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen 778 men taking their faith so seriously. It was amazing to see this.

We grow up in the US with the concept that religion is essentially a cellar bar, we can take and chose the parts that we like and leave the parts that we don’t, we slap a label on it and we call it faith. That wasn’t the case in Guantanamo. I’ve never seen people following religion as it was written and the way it was meant to be practiced and it just blew my mind.

I have a degree in sociology and I’m driven by nature to ask questions why. And never seeing this before I wanted to know everything I could. I wanted to know where they came from, what countries they came from, what their education was like, what did they go through as a child, what was their society like – all these questions. And then, with each conversation that I was having, I was just essentially turning on more and more like them. It is my world, so to say.

You were talking to those people and you saw them, you communicated with them. I know you don’t have enough proof, you don’t have the facts. And still, what’s your impression? If you were to give some percentage of how many people, what percent of them are innocent and what percent of them are real terrorists?

There are only five guilty men in Guantanamo. It is a simple fact. These five men will be going on trial this year. Everybody else there is innocent. Guantanamo is honestly nothing more than a way of appeasing Americans. The American media and American war machine did such a great job at scaring America after 9/11 that the American economy came to a stop.

And when the oil profiteers and the war profiteers, and the media industry realized that people weren’t going on vacations, that people weren’t flying and people weren’t buying things – their pockets started getting a little thinner and they wanted that money. So, they purchased 778 men from all around the world, they stuck them in Guantanamo and they said – we have the bad guys America, it is safe to go out and spend your money again. Please, go spend your money, we need it!

Am I getting you right that those interrogation tactics that the American Government justifies for efficiency in extracting valuable information, that actually was all useless, they did not get any information from them using those tactics?

I can think of one article in the last 12 years of Guantanamo’s existence that ever once had the headline "Terrorist attack stopped by information from Guantanamo." I mean it is not a secret that the US media lies the US, but I don’t understand why that lie hasn’t been printed. If you wanted to justify Guantanamo’s existence, you should have just simply lied to the people saying that we gain information to stop the terrorist attacks. That hasn’t happened, it never happened. 778 men who were purchased don’t have information that’s going to help. So, all this is just one big charade. Guantanamo is nothing more than a way of appeasing the American public.