Guantanamo 20 years later: "Still no excuse or forgiveness from the US government"
Prisoners at the high-security military detention center at the US naval base at Guantánamo in southeastern Cuba.
REUTERS
Text by: Véronique Gaymard Follow
9 mins
Twenty years after the September 11 attacks in New York, many questions remain open, including those posed by hundreds of detainees who were forcibly transferred to Guantanamo, this detention camp located on the island of Cuba where the administration Bush practiced the extraterritoriality of law: why was I detained without trial, without apologies, without forgiveness, when I was found innocent?
This is the question posed by Lakhdar Boumediene, who spent seven and a half years in Guantanamo.
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Lakhdar Boumediene lived in 2001 in Bosnia and worked for the Red Crescent.
Arrested with five other Algerians suspected of plotting an attack on the American embassy in Sarajevo, he was released after a three-month investigation in Bosnia which had cleared him.
But CIA agents arrested him as he left court with his five companions.
"
For three months, I was detained in a remand center in Sarajevo
"
Lakhdar Boumediene explains: “
The security forces searched the house, the association where I worked, cell phones, landlines, but they found nothing.
And despite that, I was sent to Guantanamo.
"
Guantanamo, the legal black hole used by the Bush administration
In January 2002, a few months after the September 11 attacks, the American base of Guantanamo on the island of Cuba was transformed into a gigantic detention camp during the "war on terror" launched by the Bush administration, a war that has not stopped.
For the American government, it was a question of using this large extraterritorial prison, where neither American law nor international law should apply according to the Bush administration, to lock up those it designated as "enemy combatants." ".
780 men passed through it, 39 are still detained there without trial, the five individuals accused of having fomented the attacks of September 11 are also heard again this week during preliminary hearings which have stalled for nine years in the courts. military - the use of torture making any trial impossible.
"
Almost 20 years later, I don't forget the day I opened my eyes at Guantanamo
"
Handcuffed, hooded, Lakhdar Boumediene was transferred from Bosnia to a “black site” of the CIA - a secret American base - before being sent to Guantanamo in early 2002. “
I don't forget! It's been almost 20 years but I haven't forgotten. Already the day of my arrest, it was very hard with indirect tortures, kicks, tight handcuffs. I was transferred to Incirlik base I believe, a military air base in Turkey. Then I was transferred to Guantanamo. Until now, I don't know how many days, how many hours, I was blindfolded, with earmuffs on my ears and when I opened my eyes, I found myself in a cage, like in a zoo.
"
►
See also: The trial of the five accused of the September 11 attacks resumes at Guantanamo
Lakhdar Boumediene arrives at the beginning of February 2002 at the American base at Guantanamo, and disembarks in the middle of a crowd of other detainees, many of whom were wounded, he describes.
“
In the first camp called X-Ray, around me there are people I don't know, people who are injured, no legs, no feet, no arms.
We treat animals better than we do
.
We were in a cage, there were two buckets: one with water to drink, -
full of dust, brown, rotten water, mixed with sand
-
, and the other to do one's business. , without any privacy.
"
Then the time for questioning begins.
For Lakhdar Boumediene, who is convinced of his innocence, it is only a matter of a few days.
“
At first I was happy, I thought Americans were democracy, but that was the wrong picture.
I thought that after answering their questions, I could go home, because I hadn't done anything wrong.
But that's not how it happened.
"
Insults, torture, kicks, sensory deprivation
Lakhdar Boumediene undergoes "thorough" interrogations.
First while he is in these cages "
like an animal in a zoo
" he says, under the sun and bad weather in the X-Ray camp.
“
Every month, I said to myself
: maybe next month they will realize the reality, that I am innocent.
For a year, I spoke to officers like a parrot, non-stop.
But after twelve months, I stopped answering their questions.
"
TO
From 2003, the interrogation program hardens. Lakhdar Boumediene finds himself in solitary confinement in a metal cell, with the air conditioning taken to the extreme. “
I started a hunger strike in 2003 because of the torture. The interrogations multiplied, in the morning, afternoon and night, each time with different people
: soldiers, civilians, trainees, women, men… Among the officers in charge of the interrogations, one of the leaders told me
:
"10,005 (which was my number, my name for 7 and a half years), we know that you are innocent, but we need you to testify against two people who were also at Guantanamo".
One of them was in Bosnia with me. I answer
:
"But ask them the question!"
The way of asking the questions, the insults, the torture, it was too much. I refused to continue to answer.
"
During his hunger strikes, which he interrupted and then resumed in 2006, the officers force-feed him, inflicting abuse on him by twisting the pipes in his nose and the needles for infusions in his veins. To force him to stop his hunger strike, he is put under pressure: he is thus once forced to run, surrounded by two guards who drag him because his hands are handcuffed and his feet chained. His feet scrape the gravel floor and bleed, his knees hit the concrete stairs, injuries from which he still has sequelae
.
"
I said to the agents
:
'I'm going to eat, I'm going to play sports like everyone else, but first, answer me: why am I here? One answer, and I stop my strike. hunger."
Why was I in Guantanamo
?
It's 2021, it's been almost 20 years and I still don't know why I was in Guantanamo for seven and a half years.
"
"
Boumediene against Bush
"
: the Supreme Court ruling that changed everything
It was thanks to the perseverance of Lakhdar Boumediene and that of the lawyers who visited him every two months that a decision of the Supreme Court was finally successful in 2008: it recognized the right of detainees not charged to invoke justice. federal government and to demand their release, contrary to what the Bush administration recommended, which wanted to confine them in a
legal black hole
, without access to justice, in unlimited detention and without trial.
"
In 2004, the senior lawyer told me
:
'We are going to bring a complaint against George W. Bush, the American president, to the Supreme Court. The complaint will be entitled' Boumediene against Bush '
.
At first I refused, because I was just a prisoner in a hole, against a President of the United States.
He said to me
:
"Don't worry, we'll see at the end who wins."
So I accepted.
"
After my death, the name "
Boumediene against Bush
" will remain engraved in the law books
The case is first dismissed and then returns to the nine judges.
Lakhdar Boumediene remembers the conservative judge Richard Leon: he was nevertheless appointed by President George W. Bush in September 2001, but he ordered the release of five of the detainees, including his own, against the advice of the President of the United States. United.
“
The judge said,
'You've already taken away seven and a half years of her life, that's enough.'
», Remembers Lakhdar Boumediene.
The decision of the Supreme Court, “Boumediene against Bush” set a precedent and will remain engraved in the books of law, the only positive point for Lakhdar Boumediene.
Declared releasable in November 2008, he will have to wait six months for a country to welcome him. Because the Americans did not want to send him back to Algeria where he could have been tortured. "
You have tortured me here for seven and a half years,
" Lakhdar Boumediene retorted, not without irony. "
I don't care, I want to get out of here, send me to Somalia or to the Moon, the main thing is that I get out of this hole
" he replied.
It is ultimately a third country, France, which will accept to welcome
Lakhdar Boumediene
on its soil.
When he arrived in France in May 2009, he reunited with his wife and children.
His family has grown.
At 55, he is the father of five children and a grandfather.
Despite great difficulties in finding a job, he wants to continue "
building his life
".
As former Taliban detainees at Guantanamo negotiate with the United States, "
I'm waiting for an apology
"
As the Taliban regime resettled in Kabul, 20 years after the war launched by the US-led coalition, Lakhdar Boumediene remembers the many Taliban who passed through Guantanamo and remains bitter about those who inflicted on him seven and a half years in the hell of Guantanamo.
“
There were hundreds of Taliban and Afghans.
Next to me, on the other side of the fence, was a Taliban who spoke good English.
I noticed that at least four or six Taliban who had passed through Guantanamo were on the team negotiating in Doha with the Americans.
They were detained back then, they were enemies, and now they are signing deals with the Americans.
And me, I did nothing, and I am not even entitled to a word, neither
"apologies"
nor
"forgiveness" ”
.
Lakhdar Boumediene also told her story at length in a book published online,
Witness of the unseen, 7 years in Guantanamo
[Witness of the invisible, 7 years in Guantanamo].
Today, he no longer expects compensation from the US government.
“
I don't care about compensation.
But I hope one day I will finally hear the word
"apologies"
.
I hope that one day they will tell me
"Mr. Lakhdar Boumediene, sorry, we apologize to you because you spent seven and a half years in Guantanamo for nothing".
It's a part of my life that I lost, because of them.
"
► To read also: Attacks of September 11: "There will never be a fair trial"
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