Statement by Musa'ab al Madhwani, March 28, 2013
STATEMENT OF MUSA' AB AL MADHWANI IN SUPPORT OF EMERGENCY MOTION FOR HUMANITARIAN AND LIFE-SAVING RELIEF
1. My name is Musa' ab al Madhwani.
2. I have been in prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for ten and a half years and I hereby request and authorize my lawyers to report the following circumstances to the court, and to sign this statement on my behalf.
3. Before I was sent to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, I was detained at the Dark Prison and at Bagram Air Base where I was tortured and deprived of food and water.
4. Both of my parents have died during the time that I have been in prison in Guantanamo Bay. They were waiting for me to come home and now they are gone. I am afraid that my entire family will be dead before I am released from this prison.
5. I, and other men here at the prison, feel utterly hopeless. We are being detained indefinitely, without any criminal charges against us, and even the 86 men who have been cleared for release remain here in the Guantanamo Bay prison.
6. I have not been informed whether the Review Task Force has conditionally approved me for release, or whether I have been designated for indefinite detention. Either way, I have no reason to believe that I will ever leave this prison alive. It feels like death would be a better fate than living in these conditions.
7. I am dying of grief and pain on a daily basis because of this indefinite detention.
8. Our efforts for justice through the American court system have failed, and President Obama has broken his promise to close this prison and end the torture.
9. Indefinite detention is the worst form of torture. I am an innocent man. I have never done anything against the United States, and I never would. But if anyone believes that I have done anything wrong, I beg them to charge me with a crime, try me, and sentence me. If not, release me. Even a death sentence is better than this. Instead of a swift execution, we are being subjected to a cruel, slow, and cold-blooded death.
10. I am especially disappointed because of America's claims that it protects the human rights of people around the world. America cannot break this pledge.
11. At the beginning of this year, for no apparent reason, the conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison became much worse than they have been for years. In many ways, the conditions have become almost as harsh as during the early years when I first arrived at Guantanamo.
12. This degradation of the conditions came as a total shock to us. We were very hopeful after the election that action would be taken to end the policy of indefinite detention, that justice would finally prevail, and that conditions would improve. We have been sorely disappointed.
13. As prisoners, we are totally powerless to improve our situation. Because all dignity has been taken away from us, the only the means that we have to express the utter hopelessness of our situation is by participating in a hunger strike.
14. I do not wish to die. But I have no other way to express my hopelessness.
15. I have been on a hunger strike for an extended period, to protest the disrespect shown to the Qur'an by Guantanamo guards and the return of the harsh conditions that existed in the early years of the prison.
16. I have been afraid to tell my even attorneys the details of guards' harsh treatment of me and other prisoners for fear of punishment. I am afraid that if I tell all of the details of the guards' conduct, I will be put in even worse conditions.
17. The degraded conditions at the prison have become so extreme that virtually all of the detainees are participating in the hunger strike as a protest to the treatment being inflicted upon us.
18. I am consuming only water, and no food.
19. I have lost approximately 30 pounds since the beginning of the hunger strike. Before the hunger strike, I was told that I weighed 163 pounds. I was most recently weighed last week and was told that my weight was 130-135 pounds.
20. My clothes fit me much more loosely than they did before the hunger strike. I now use a rubber band to keep my pants from falling down.
21. In order to punish us for participating in the hunger strike, the guards have made conditions even more horrible.
22. For approximately 3 days, guards totally denied me and others within Echo block access to drinkable water. It is my understanding that another cell block was also denied access to drinkable water.
23. I spoke with my lawyers on the morning of Monday, March 25, 20 13.
24. After I informed my lawyers that the guards have denied us drinkable water, some guards began to provide bottled water to me and the other detainees in my block. But whether or not we are given drinkable water depends entirely on the guard.
25. There is no reason that the guards should withhold water from us.
26. An official here at the camp told us that because of the hunger strike, we have now lost all privileges. They have told us that the drinkable bottled water is a privilege, but drinkable water is necessary to maintain life.
27. When we request drinking water, the guards tell us that we already have water, and point to the taps that are at the back of the toilets in our cells.
28. We have always been told that the tap water at the Guantanamo Bay prison is not drinkable. Not once in the past several years has anyone ever told me to drink tap water, until the past week.
29. I have never seen a guard or interrogator drink the tap water here.
30. I believe that the tap water is not drinkable and will make me sick.
31. I have observed that the lack of drinkable water has already caused some prisoners kidney, urinary, and stomach problems.
32. Because the tap water is not suitable to drink, I now drink only the bare minimum amount of water, when bottled water is denied to me.
33. After drinking water from the tap, I felt nauseated.
34. I experience constant stomach cramps and pain.
35. Because I now drink almost no water, I urinate only 2-3 times per day and it is painful when I urinate.
36. I now only defecate approximately one time per week and it is very painful. I believe that because of the hunger strike I now have the beginnings of a hemorrhoid condition. I have never suffered this condition before.
37. I have experienced headaches throughout my time in Guantanamo Bay, but the frequency and severity of my headaches has increased since the beginning of the hunger strike. I now suffer headaches almost daily. While the headaches used to improve after a few hours, they now last the entire day. I cannot take any medication for these headaches because my stomach is empty.
38. My vision has become blurry and I am having difficulty hearing.
39. I am experiencing chest pain. I am afraid that I will have a heart attack.
40. My bones ache.
41. I am constantly exhausted but afraid to sleep. I force myself to sleep.
42. When I sleep, I experience nightmares on a daily basis. I am petrified. My anxiety and fear have become increasingly debilitating since the beginning of the year when the conditions here became so bad.
43. In addition to denying us drinking water, the guards have punished us and tried to end the hunger strike by forcing us to live in frigid temperatures.
44. For the past approximately 12 days, prison authorities have maintained the air conditioning at extremely frigid temperatures, much colder than ever before.
45. We have informed the guards that we are freezing. They admit that it is very cold, but they have done nothing to increase the temperature.
46. The air conditioning is on so high that it causes a freezing draft in the area where we are allowed to congregate and to pray.
47. Since we are only provided with thin cotton clothing, and the shirt is short sleeved, we cannot tolerate this cold temperature. The cotton clothing provided to us is insufficient to keep me warm under these super-cooled conditions.
48. I, and the other men, are constantly cold and shivering.
49. I am aware that a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross knows about the guards' denial of drinking water to me and other men. The International Committee of the Red Cross has no power to do anything to improve conditions here, and they will not even disclose publicly what they know about the terrible conditions we suffer.
50. We have been abandoned by President Obama and by the entire world. I believe that President Obama must be unaware of the unbelievably inhumane conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison, for otherwise he would surely do something to stop this torture.
Respectfully submitted this 28th day of March, 2013.
Musa'ab al Madhwani
Dictated to and signed on my behalf by my attorney:
Mari Newman (signature),
on behalf of Musa'ab al Madhwani
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