Traitor?

Traitor?
By Terry C. Holdbrooks, Jr.
Charleston: Createspace, 2013

The testimonies of prisoner abuse found in the book cited above have been excerpted below. The author opens the book with the following disclaimer: "All names except the prisoners’ and Terry Holdbrooks’ have been changed to protect the safety and security of those soldiers still serving in the armed forces. Some individuals with names attributed to them are in fact combinations of different nameless soldiers who shared common characteristics." Mr. Holdbrooks served in Guantanamo from June 2003 to July 2004.

pp. 27-29. However, it was at this time [training for deployment to GTMO at Ft. Dix, New Jersey] that I began hearing things that would foreshadow the overall atmosphere there. Epithets like 'towel-head', 'camel-jockey', 'sand-nigger' and 'dirt-farmer' began to enter the casual conversation among those in my platoon. 'Taliban', 'Al-Qaeda', 'worst-of-the-worst' and 'extremist' started to get thrown around. I started noticing that more people were making asinine statements like, 'We should just turn that whole part of the world into a big parking lot', or 'We should just bomb all them towel-heads and get out of the Middle East'. This type of conversation started at about the same time that the indoctrination and reprogramming began. Its purpose was to lead us to feel and believe that we were at war with the Middle East, with Islam, and that these were both synonymous with terrorism. Although this type of talk didn't sit well with me, it wasn't enough of a problem for me to justify making a fuss. I thought to myself: this is a few bad apples. I was not aware at the time that these were reprogramming tactics, nor that I was being programmed to make me a mindless and non-questioning soldier. In the Army, soldiers who do not think and do not question are the most useful to accomplish a mission […] Unfortunately for me—and the few others who refused to be blinded by the hate programming—the hateful messages from superiors would not stop. The results of this would be seen and felt in very real ways, acted out in a dark hole in the world called Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

p. 32: The amount of attention the Army put into protecting the indigenous vermin there [banana rats and iguanas] was in stark contrast to the extreme lack of care given to the caged human beings who shared that desolate patch of earth.

p. 33: We were greeted by General Miller, dressed in civilian clothing (from whose command the use of stress positions and music torture were initiated at GTMO).

p. 36: Where someone might enter the camp as a prisoner of little interest, they could be tagged 'little general' by a soldier in sarcastic mockery. That would certainly arouse the interest of the interrogation force which would, for no other reason, interrogate and torture the prisoner incessantly.

p. 38: Camp Iguana is about a mile away from Camp Delta. I didn't see it right away. The young 'terrorists'—two 12-year-olds and one 13-year-old—were kept there.

p. 39: The AC [or air conditioning] units, as mentioned, were installed in the ISO cells, but were more for delivering extreme cold (as a punishment) than for comfort, or to give the illusion of mercy during more civilized interrogations […] On the floor [of the interrogation rooms] was a large hook to which the prisoners were shackled if physical abuse was in order.

pp. 39-40: However, as Islam was ugly to those who presided over GTMO, the adhan [Muslim call to prayer] was intentionally exaggerated and stretched out of proportion until it was mutilated beyond recognition. While it was played on the loudspeakers five times a day at the correct prayer times, the recording was distorted beyond belief by the sound system. The sound coming out of the speakers sounded more like a screech, indiscernible and very hard on the ears.

p. 59: I was not to work in Camp 4 my entire time at GTMO. I was sent to work in Camps 1, 2, and 3, which were an entirely different story. These were the maximum-security camps inside Camp Delta. The dispositions of both guards and prisoners were different here: Guards were on high alert and ERFs were deployed frequently, in which four or five men in riot gear with shields would run into the cell of a helpless man who was gasping and had been blinded by OC spray, the guards finding it necessary to throw in some punches or kicks from behind their armor […] I saw Ahmed Errachidi infrequently in these camps. I remember thinking it was because Errachidi was on the 'frequent flier program', a style of torture which included much interrupted sleep and constant movement from one camp to another. He had been moved between Camp Echo and Camp Delta regularly and had been subjected to a variety of other tortures.

pp. 62-63: [ERF p]rocedure dictates the method by which guards are to administer the [pepper] spray, which is in a swift 'z' motion across the face, just enough to debilitate the prisoner and render him docile. The camp officer went above and beyond as he proceeded to empty nearly half the can of OC spray on the prisoner's face, his clothes, his Quran, and his cell. Waiting the 30 seconds to allow the spray to take effect, the door swung open and the five of us in riot gear flooded into the cell in an effort to further subdue the prisoner. We hog-tied him with plastic zip-ties. In this position it was simple work for the other soldiers to twist his arms so far they might have dislocated them, put his face in the toilet, step on his hands and feet, and upon exiting the cell with him, use his head to open the door. This was accompanied by perfectly placed knees to his kidney. As if all of that weren't enough, jabs and punches to his abdomen completed the assault […] The purpose of the ERF was to de-escalate a situation where a prisoner became aggressive. However, the protocol was breached in several different areas, such as when they extracted the prisoner from his cell. They cleaned him and provided medical aid, but then shaved his beard and his head. Later it was explained to me that they shaved the beard and head because it was easier than the suggested washing and (of course), for a Muslim man, humiliating; it broke down his self-esteem […] it was this experience that convinced me to be a conscientious objector.

p. 67: When the prisoner fell to his knees in prayer on his prayer mat, Smitty exploded. "Get up! Damn it, get up right now." The prisoner's copy of the Quran was sitting close by and Smitty grabbed it and smacked the top of the prisoner's head while the man was in sujood. "Damn it, get up! I'm tired of hearing that damn noise every day. Doesn't it get boring for y'all? Same song or poem everyday makes a man insane, so get up or this book goes in the damn toilet where you squat every day, General. Do you hear me?" […]  Into the toilet went the Quran, and Smitty kicked the lever. Private Michael picked it out of the toilet with a disgusted look on his face, quickly shackling the prisoner who had now broken his prayer due to the distraction […] I saw Smitty eventually deface some copies of the Quran. Parks had the habit of turning off water to prisoners' cells. ERF's on SSG Johnsville's watch became commonplace.

p. 68: I apportioned the […] soldiers in GTMO thus: one-quarter of them treated the prisoners like human beings, half were indifferent to the prisoners, and another quarter were pure evil. Tactics of humiliation and torture occurred at the hands of these types (and their superiors) that would win in any international torture contest.

pp. 68-69: The tactics used on those prisoners seen as having significant knowledge had to be more sinister, as we prevented them from interacting with the general population after interrogations. So the misery that those prisoners went through could not be shared, even for comfort's sake, which no doubt made bearing it harder for them. If they were allowed to walk among the other prisoners after being water-boarded, sexually humiliated, confined in devices with insects, or following any number of other equally inhumane abuses, those running GTMO would have a riot on their hands.

p. 69: A frequent victim of the 'frequent flier program', Ahmed Errachidi became psychotic in the spring of 2004 and was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, but his interrogations continued […]

pp. 69-70: One such incident took place in September of 2003. We were asked to take a prisoner from his cell to an interrogation. The prisoner was older and unable to move as quickly as a younger man, and was duly punished for it. As we were shackling him, my partner told me to apply the shackles tighter, and then another guard reached in and clamped them down onto the skin so tightly that it must have caused great discomfort for the prisoner. We then began to walk him from the cell to the end of the block, and out of the sally-port. At GTMO, we had 'Gators' (off-road vehicles we used when taking a prisoner a long distance). As we began taking the prisoner to the vehicle, another guard got annoyed with how long it was taking. He thought he might step on the chain connecting the prisoner's ankles to motivate him to speed up. This caused him to fall to the ground. Compressed so tightly by the shackles, his skin ripped as they ground into his flesh. I immediately tried to help the prisoner from the ground.

p. 70: In one room, a prisoner had been shackled to the ground, a strobe light in front of his face, the AC unit turned down to forty degrees Fahrenheit, with some awful music playing so loud it would cause deafness. He had been in the position so long that he had defecated on himself. The interrogator came in yelling, pouring cold water on him. "Oh, how manly you are! Babies s*** themselves! Is that what you are? Do you need a diaper?"

pp. 71-72: Stress positions, blaring music, ice cold rooms, screaming and such abuses were routine. The use of certain disturbing tactics—such as showing photos of dead women and children to a prisoner and then telling him it was his family, or playing sounds of a woman screaming while being raped and telling him it was his wife—were all sanctioned methods of interrogation. ‘Acceptable’ also included punching or kicking prisoners as a form of 'attention grabbing'. It was not uncommon to see prisoners in stress positions which caused muscle failure and loss of bowel control, and then having to endure further abuse for being unable to endure that.

pp. 81-82: "[Peanut butter]'s good for treating rashes and the bruises from being shackled in awkward positions for ten or eleven hours at a time." [said Shaker Aamer, nicknamed "The Professor"]. I recognized the bruises on his hands, as they were similar to those of other prisoners I'd escorted from JIF back to Delta. The bruises came from squatting, hands shackled behind the legs to force one to remain in the stressed position.

p. 90: The last five and a half months of abuses at their hands flew through my mind in a vicious montage: I saw Smitty throwing a Quran in the toilet and flushing it, Sgt. Parks [NOT HIS REAL NAME] spitting Copenhagen into prisoners' faces, and Johnsville roaring insults as he ran to an ERF. I saw Ahmed soaking wet, half drowned and drained of his pride, and I saw the Professor [= Shaker Aamer] emaciated, holding his hand up to give me his copy of the Quran, tears running down his face.

pp. 104-105: Unlike Hicks, [the other prisoners] had not been captured with guns in their hands. They all had stories that were perfectly legitimate and reasonable. Some even had proof on government-issued paper that they were not where the Army said they were, or doing what the Army said they were doing. Many reported having been rounded up and sold to U.S. forces overseas. While meeting a guilty prisoner made me feel that perhaps GTMO was not entirely useless or evil, the endless abuses of those who appeared entirely innocent outweighed the benefit of holding one guilty man.

pp. 107-109: I had just escorted a prisoner to interrogation, and had stopped for a smoke afterwards directly outside the JIF building. A fellow MP and I heard three individuals leaving the JIF: two men and a woman. The men were congratulating her on the skills and tactics she had just employed in interrogation. Out of sheer morbidity, I looked to the other end of the building and watched a prisoner emerge, crying, escorted by Pvt. Enrique. I knew I would hear an account from him later. The prisoner had some blood on his face, which was not unusual as sometimes things got physical in interrogation. I thought perhaps the crying was the result of that roughness. I continued with my day, none the wiser. It was obvious that I was not the only one at GTMO to see that prayer was what gave the prisoners their strength. Although I was in awe of it, interrogators looked upon that strength as a challenge to their power. A Saudi man, the crying prisoner had reportedly been a student at a flight school in the United States. I learned later what had transpired in that interrogation via a published interview-article with the translator who was present at the time of the interrogation. The prisoner was seated and shackled to the floor. He was forced to hunch forward, and was told to be cooperative. The female I saw leaving the JIF had reportedly told the prisoner that this was going to be unpleasant for him. After a break, the interrogators returned to the interrogation room. She stood in front of the prisoner, and began unbuttoning her BDU to reveal a tightly fitting t-shirt underneath. She proceeded to try to sexually entice him. He refused to look at her and kept his gaze fixed on the translator. Other prisoners have reported similar stories of female interrogators using sexual predation to break them. The interrogators reportedly believed that sexual molestation would violate personal and Islamic tenets, dividing a prisoner from Allah. In this case, and at this level of questioning, it evidently wasn't working. In fact, the translator reported in the interview I had read that this type of questioning had never resulted in any intelligence gathered. Circling around the prisoner, the female put her hand down her pants. "This is menstrual blood," she reportedly said, then wiped what had come onto her hand on the prisoner's face. The prisoner, overcome with disgust, then reportedly lunged forward, right out of his shackles. MPs had to come in and bring him back into the chair and re-shackle him. "Have fun trying to pray tonight when there's no water in your cell to clean up with," the interrogator told the prisoner. The prisoner responded with silence. After that he was taken out of interrogation, at which point I saw him crying. I asked Enrique later that evening what had occurred. "I don't know, but it was strange. We were told to turn off his water and take away his shower privileges when we returned him to his cell," Enrique reported. The water had stayed off for the following three days. For non-Muslims, having menstrual blood on one’s face for that long would be disgusting enough, but Islam encourages the one who prays to be as clean as possible, so it must have been nearly unbearable for that prisoner to function with that blood on his face. In addition, observant Muslim men do not touch women other than their wives, mothers, sisters, or aunts. That act was an attack on several levels of the man's mind and soul, hence his tears upon leaving interrogation. However they wanted to measure how many days to leave the water off, or just how and by which method to make the prisoners feel unable to pray. Prayer is always accessible for a Muslim, as Islam instructs one on how to purify oneself when water is not available. Whether this fact was known to JIF (or to that prisoner) is irrelevant, because the intention was to break the prisoner—emotionally, mentally and spiritually. In my view it was more in service to abuse for its own sake, rather than for purposes of interrogation. Believing it likely that the prisoner had nothing to tell JIF anyway—that he was innocent—it was overwhelming to consider that the event actually occurred. I made myself believe that what was circulating among my fellow soldiers was true: that it was not in fact blood, but ink. My faith in the Army was already on shaky ground. I would not entertain the thought that the Bush Administration would allow that to happen at GTMO. I saw later that this was the way they operated, leaving laws vague and undefined so that the individuals that conducted these acts could be as creative, morbid and morally repugnant as they wanted to be. It was all legal in the end, because nothing was written in black and white. Additionally, it all took place on Cuban soil, in a legal limbo between American and Cuban law, a place of no worldly consequences. The prisoners all reported that it had definitely been blood. I quizzed them, unbelieving. "How can you be so sure?" I asked them. "Because you can feel the difference in blood. It is gritty, and it has a smell to it unlike any other," they replied, being no strangers to the texture and smell of their own blood. Regardless of these clear arguments, Bradley and I both refused to accept it, as we discussed the matter over chess. We decided it had to have been ink, and the matter was settled.

p. 110: "1, 2, 3, going to do PT, then go to work, and slam a detainee," Sgt. Parks was singing as he ran. Those that refused to sing with him were made to do sprints in circles until everyone was singing louder.

pp. 114-115: In the meantime, pandemonium had ensued in Camps 1, 2, and 3. As efficient as their communication system was, the prisoners were so confused that many had heard stories that the guards were systematically executing the prisoners in Camp 4, and stories that the flu shot was in fact anthrax. Every single prisoner was fighting with the guards in Camp 1 […] "You cannot kill us, this is not right! The world will know of what you have done here today!" they were yelling […] Nearly every prisoner got an ERF. The manpower was just not there for this scale of operation due to the panic that had arisen in the camps. Guards were becoming tired or, as in the case of Sgt. Parks [NOT HIS REAL NAME], overly excited. He was running into cells screaming things like 'Yee-haw', and 'Here we come, rag-head!' each time he went in to subdue a panicked prisoner. Volunteering for ERF after ERF, Parks incited the first sergeant who witnessed his intense hatred and anger. It wasn't helpful at all to the situation that the rest of the Regime members were telling the prisoners things like, "Oh, you're going to get yours now: time to meet your maker." The sight of Parks struck fear in me, so I couldn't imagine how it felt to be his prisoner. Then there was SSG Johnsville [NOT HIS REAL NAME], cheering on the increasingly aggressive guards, adding fuel to the already-blazing fire. Another unit was called in to work with us. We went through more cans of OC spray that single day than any other period of time throughout the entire year I was there […] "What makes the green grass grow? BLOOD, BLOOD, BRIGHT RED BLOOD!" he would scream as he went charging in, "We're going to turn GTMO green you sand niggers!"

p. 117: That night of horrors [described on pp. 114-115 above] started what was the longest hunger strike that I witnessed while I was in GTMO; some prisoners didn't eat for 39 days straight. Eventually they started dropping like flies from malnutrition, dehydration and other health issues. The hospital was packed, and the prisoners were not giving up.