A Yemeni man detained for almost 13 years without charge in Guantanamo Bay has recounted his ordeal in the prison following the release of a Senate report over the CIA torture tactics.
Samir Naji, accused of serving under former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was cleared for release in 2009, but still remains in the prison.
In a first-person account of his time at Guantanamo, Naji said that he was deprived of sleep, drugged, and forced to watch pornographic footage or videos of other prisoners being abused.
Naji wrote in the account published by CNN that he was kept in “a tiny, freezing cold cell, alone.”
He said that his first interrogation lasted three full months and two teams interrogated him day and night.
“Each session begins with shouting, to wake me up. Then they hit me on the face and the back. I am so desperate for sleep, my head is swimming,” he added.
“The fear that comes when you realize that no one is coming to help; that the life, family and friends you knew are all far, far away,” the prisoner described.
Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report detailing torture techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency during the term of George W. Bush.
The Yemeni prisoner, however, said the 6,000 pages of the Senate report “are just the start of what Americans have to accept happened in their name.”
“The dirty and sadistic methods I endured — which were then taken directly to Abu Ghraib — achieved nothing, except to shame that American flag hanging in the prison corridor,” Naji said.
He said the United States “cannot keep hiding from its past, and its present, like this. Our stories, and our continued detention, cannot be made to disappear.”
Obama had promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison before his election in 2008, citing its damage to the US reputation abroad.
There are still 149 inmates at the prison, which was set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
SB/AGB
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