After years of his release from the famous Guantanamo prison, Kuwaiti prisoner Fayez Al-Kandari is recalling his 14 years of imprisonment and his journey from his detention until his release, through a book called "The Severe Scourge and the New Birth".
The book, issued by Dar Jusour for translation and publishing in Turkey, came in 512 pages of medium pieces, in which Al-Kandari tells the journey of his life, starting from his childhood through the events of the Iraqi invasion in 1990, and what he witnessed were the most prominent of which were the arrest of a number of his relatives and the death of one of his neighbors in front of the family home The Kuwaiti resistance killed one of the Iraqi officers who supervised the torture of Kuwaitis after his arrest during the liberation days.
Al-Kandari later passes through his education and transition from the study of engineering to the study of Sharia and law at Imam Muhammad bin Saud University, and then he sought knowledge at the hands of Sheikh Ibn Uthaymeen, all of which stages influenced his personality.
building a mosque
The book tells that the life of the young man was normal until the family decided in early August 2001 to donate the construction of a mosque and dig a well in the name of Kandari's mother, who was suffering from cancer at the time.
The last moments in Guantánamo were among the most difficult moments as the first was, it is like a stab of the knife, its entry is painful and its exit is painful, but the two Germans are different, they share anxiety of the unknown, like the inside of the tunnel when he is anxious about the darkness surrounding him, and the outside of him when he worries about what the light hides in his guts. , == pic.twitter.com/GkkybhlMjX
Bridges for Translation and Publishing (@ Gossor1) June 20, 2020
By the middle of the month, son Fayez, who was twenty-seven years old, and with him about $ 20 thousand arrived with the Afghan capital, Kabul, and there he asked members of a relief organization about the best place to build a mosque and dig a well in the name of his mother. Indeed, they pointed him to a village about an hour away from the capital by car In it, Fayez remained in charge of construction until the outbreak of the US war in Afghanistan after the events of September 11, 2001.
The book states that with the intensification of the bombing of the capital and the neighboring villages to pressure the Taliban government, the people fled to the Tora Bora mountains, and Al-Kandari was among those who fled to these mountains to take refuge in them until he was arrested.
The author says that his trip to Afghanistan was planned to take one and a half months, but it spanned 14 years inside Guantanamo, that is, about 5044 days.
In Afghanistan, Al-Kandari moved between several prisons, namely Jalalabad prison, the intelligence prison in Kabul, the Bagram prison, and the Kandahar prison, ending in Guantanamo, which he arrived in May 2002.
The story of the book
The book indicates that Guantanamo had 7 camps, each of which has its own conditions, as Camp 1, 2 and 3 were solitary cells where the prisoner could see those around him because the nets had side openings, while the fourth camp was preferable because it was a collective camp and was established in 2003 to blackmail The detainees are lured to cooperate with the investigators.
He adds that sometimes individuals were transferred to this fourth camp for security purposes, such as if an existing agent wanted officers to reassure the prisoner and speak with him to record the modern listening devices.
As for the fifth camp, it was established in 2004, and the prison conditions were very harsh, as well as the sixth camp, before turning in 2012 into a good mass camp for a year and a half, after which it returned to become an intolerable hell of severe torture, and the sixth camp witnessed several strikes that claimed the lives of some of the detainees .
While the seventh camp was completely isolated, it was designated for the suspects of the events of September 11, 2001, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others, and these were not permanently allowed to communicate with the rest of the detainees throughout the period of detention, and did not watch them.
Al-Kandari mentioned to Al-Jazeera Net that the idea of issuing the book was mentioned in the first days of his arrival at Guantanamo, and that he settled on his current address during the second week of his arrival, that is, in mid-May 2002, due to his confidence in going out one day despite the numerous conversations of investigators that he and other The prisoners will be buried in the same facility.
I saw the village mayor looking at the American plane flaunt in the sky of his country, and he shouted at her saying:
(Inevitably you will get off, and then we will understand)!
He did not belong to the students (the Taliban), but he belonged to the same spirit that he refuses to heal. pic.twitter.com/wmOntRQ5aU
- Tweet (@ maghrid_2) June 27, 2020
Viewing angles
Al-Kandari says that he tried through the book to be fair in his version of his experience and what was wrong or right and what he witnessed events, even those that may outrage some, and from this his opinion that not all detainees are equal, and the same is the case for the Americans supervising the prison. Some of the soldiers sympathized With them, there are those arrested themselves who insulted Islam with his ideas.
The detainee was packed with prisoners of various stripes, some of whom were supporters of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and others who were working in relief work. The detainees were the owners of various ideas, and this allowed the author to hear from them directly.
The book reports how the dialogue with some soldiers and female soldiers influenced many of them to convert to Islam, especially in the first two years of his arrest, and that one of the soldiers once offered the military salute away from the eyes of the officers, saying "welcome great lions", which subsequently prompted the prison administration to organize "washing" courses Brain "for the recruits.
The author says, "I saw soldiers pronounce the two testimonies and others insult the detainees and torture them and throw the Qur'an in the toilet to offend them ... I saw detainees who stood in front of the torture machine, and others who turned away from Islam and some of them converted to a spy for the United States, and also I followed how many people around our case rose after the media machine succeeded." American in convincing people that everyone who wears this orange uniform is a terrorist. "
The book indicates that, from the beginning of the families until 2011, the prisoners were prevented from watching TV and listening to the radio, and they were completely isolated from the world, and that with the start of the Arab Spring revolutions, they were allowed to watch some channels, including the Iranian and Al-Alam and Press TV channels, while they were prevented from watching a channel Al-Jazeera, for example, is a paradox that the writer described as strange and that it prompted him to ask the prison official why he watched channels affiliated with Iran, which America considers its enemy.
The message of the Afghans was clear: Therefore, there is no point in searching for the perpetrator (the events of September) as long as the Americans refuse to judge the judicial system in our country, if they prefer to take their right to the arm, so please, our door is open to everyone, but we do not guarantee them a safe exit !! pic.twitter.com/BbEkKocGsm
- Tweet (@ maghrid_2) June 27, 2020
Follow and continue
Through these channels, the prisoners learned of the existence of the Islamic State (ISIS), and the author states that about 99% of the prisoners - and their number at that time were about 300 prisoners - were against the organization and they remained in support of the expulsion of American forces from Afghanistan.
The book states that Al-Kandari's lawyer, an American named Barry Wenger, once told him that his response to investigators was the reason for his long years in prison, as Al-Kandari was responding to the investigator inquiring about the reason for his coming to Afghanistan by asking him, "You, why did you come here?", He added that he came to the relief, but they came as occupiers, an answer that the lawyer repeatedly advised him to stay away from, because justice is not present in this place.
And on how to record the events, Al-Kandari mentioned that the detainees were prevented from using papers and pens for long years, there were only 10 minutes per week during which one of the soldiers came and provided them with a paper and a small flexible pen that is difficult to write, and that period was dedicated to writing family letters only, and since 2005 they were allowed Also, communicate with lawyers about the issue of the arrest.
Guantánamo was not the worst prison in human history, there are more brutal prisons such as those run by Zabaniya (Bashar), but what distinguishes Guantánamo from others is that the Statue of Liberty was the one who built this prison with his hands and then burned the detainees with his flame. pic.twitter.com/wbldtmGzYD
- Tweet (@ maghrid_2) June 27, 2020
When the author discovered that family messages did not reach his family, his focus was solely on communicating with the lawyer, and he was keen to write many stories and events inside the prison with a link to his case so that he was allowed to send it to the lawyer.
After 5 years in prison, the time allowed to write is now an hour, and after 12 years the time has become open for writing, provided that he is also limited to legal communication, which helped him to keep many details to include in his book, especially since he is in good relationship so far with his American lawyer.
The book explains how torture was practiced against detainees in the name of humanity, how injustice wore justice and violated the law in the name of the law by torturing prisoners for many years without a fair trial, and that the screams of detainees and the distortion of the law will inevitably have an impact on investigators and soldiers themselves and will inevitably distort all values within them.
Stir controversy
About the book, Al-Kandari says, "The arrows and bayonets will alternate with me. Some will see my thanks to those who sought my freedom to subjugate those with influence, while others see a memory of the prisoners’ stories of sympathy for what they call terrorists, as well as the situation when I mention the humanitarian attitudes of some American soldiers or when I am subjected to other crimes of torture and killing, and the result towards it. " He is a terrorist, innocent, moderate, extremist, mistaken and right, just because he tried to present the truth as he saw it. "
When the prisoner defends his jailer because he was wronged !!
A detainee at Guantánamo has angered and spat upon the soldier because he molested a female soldier in front of him, and he says: Despicable that man who bows on women. pic.twitter.com/gm2PsvRllP
- Tweet (@ maghrid_2) June 27, 2020
The writer mentions how the Emir of Kuwait Nasr their cause, and that whenever he met with former President Barack Obama, the issue of detainees was a priority for him, which encouraged many to champion this issue, and how popular and parliamentary efforts and the stances organized by the Committee of the Families of Detainees contributed to their release, and that the Kuwaiti delegation He continued their visit in recent years until the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States was himself attending the periodic review session, and he is the only ambassador who was attending these sessions.
The book devotes a large area to stories from Al-Kandari in the place that included detainees from 50 countries, including Al-Jazeera correspondent Sami Al-Hajj, who met him in Kandahar, and he states that the prison companions narrated to him how he tortured Al-Haj severly in Bagram and that he met him again in Guantanamo while going to the interrogation rooms that witnessed all of their torture.
Al-Kandari adds that the United States wanted to recruit Al-Hajj who refused, which caused him to be tortured for long periods. He also states that he witnessed for himself how the Taliban ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef was insulted in the detainees of Bagram and Kandahar by the American soldiers, and that he saw him once as he led the detainees in the tent Neighboring him in the Kandahar detention center, and on that day the soldiers entered heavily armed and worshipers prostrating that a soldier who put his shoes on the neck of Mullah was weak in order to insult him.
The book states that Al-Kandari was in the ward of the Taliban leaders who went out in an exchange deal with one of the soldiers, and states that the prison administration closed all the wards at the time to start the procedures for exchanging the prisoners they learned later.
The author also states that when the detainees went on a hunger strike, the American Senator John McCain visited them, dressed in closest clothes and a hat, but the prison procedures did not allow them to talk to him, but he entered the wards and witnessed with poor conditions, and some detainees were groaning from the severity of hunger and pain, and that one of the detainees The detainees told him from a hole in the door and reminded him that he was a former prisoner in Vietnam and that he had to seek to close the prison. John McCain was referring in the affirmative to his head, but when he returned to Congress he was among those who refused a request at the time to close the prison.
Al-Kandari concluded his book with the moments of his last farewell to his father, who died about one year after his release, and the late always raised a sign saying "I want my son to bury me, not to bury me". His vision was his greatest dreams throughout his imprisonment.