Beatings, Bagram and the hell of ‘Gitmo’: Briton’s horror story
In 2013, Scotland Yard detectives flew to Cuba to hear Shaker Aamer’s complete account of his torture and captivity. On the next four pages, in all its terrifying detail, the MoS can now publish his damning testimony
TOWARDS the end of 2013, two officers from Scotland Yard led by Det Insp Tom Ali spent three days interviewing Shaker Aamer at Guantanamo Bay. Their inquiries formed part of Operation Lydd, an investigation that started in 2012 into claims that British security and intelligence officers had been involved in the illegal rendition and torture of suspects held by America during its ‘war on terror’. The Mail on Sunday this week obtained a draft of Aamer’s 24,000 word statement to the police. Today we publish extracts from it for the first time.
Dated December 13, 2013, it is the most vivid account yet given of brutality and torture at Guantanamo and other US detention facilities…
IWAS first detained in Afghanistan in December 2001 by Afghan villagers, before being turned over to Northern Alliance irregulars. I was then sold for a bounty to the United States forces. I was flown by helicopter to Bagram Air Force Base. I arrived there on or around Christmas Eve in 2001. I have been detained in US custody continuously ever since.
I was abused by the US military from the day I arrived. I had to strip naked in front of 15 people or more, who were just standing watching me squat, and frisked at arrival. They put me in a cage with barbed wire around it. It was in a big hangar, and there were large cages on either side of a walkway. I had to use a hole in the ground with two big doors on the top of it as a toilet and I had to use one hand to clean myself.
There was no water allowed and all the MPs [military police guards] were watching me, both male and female. They would point their M-16 rifles at me while I used the toilet and force me to get up before I finished. Sometimes they refused to let us use the hole so I ended up peeing on myself.
Beating was common. Once, after a few days of sleep deprivation, they took me to the interrogation room. Intelligence team members started coming one after another until the room was full, with perhaps ten or more people there. One of them was a British agent. I felt someone grab my head and start beating my head into the back wall – so hard that my head was bouncing. I later learned that this was a special technique that they used called ‘walling’. They were shouting that they would kill me or I would die.
They would throw cold water on me, [although] it was the middle of winter. We had essentially no protection from the cold, since being held in a cage in the hangar was as cold as being outside.
I thought I was going to die from hypothermia. Sometimes I was tied up like a hog, with my wrists tied behind my back, and then a rope tied from there to my ankles. Another loop would go around my neck, so that if I struggled I would begin to strangle myself.
I MEET BRITISH AGENT ‘JOHN’
I ENCOUNTERED at least two British agents in Bagram. For some of the time they were there, I would have been in a cage alone.
At one point I was forced to stand up for the best part of nine days, in the Americans’ effort to break me. Anyone coming into the hangar would have seen this, they could not have missed it. It was impossible for someone coming into that hangar not to see how prisoners were being abused.
One of the British people called himself John. The second British agent gave no name and said nothing about himself.
I saw John first. I was being tortured by the Americans and suddenly they started asking questions about Britain. This would have been sometime around New Year, in early January 2002. The American interrogators were going back and forth, clearly coming into the room with information from the British.
The British agent said something along the following lines: ‘My name is John. You don’t know me, but I know you. I was watching you for a long time. I wanted to talk to you about some issues. I have some questions as I want to close your file.’ He interrogated me for about an hour, with questions about England. He saw how skinny I was from my mistreatment and how I had not been allowed to wash. He remarked, ‘Shaker, you look like a ghost.’
Perhaps three days after [the walling incident] I saw John again. I cannot be precise about this timing as the torture I was suffering was really bad at the time.
Indeed, the abuse had escalated a great deal, and the interrogators had been telling me that I had to say what John needed, as he wanted to leave.
THE SCREAMS OF TORTURE
I WAS moved to [the US base at] Kandahar near the end of January 2002. I was in a tent there that was roughly four metres square. Again it was the middle of winter, so it was very, very cold.
My torture by the US authorities continued throughout this period in ways that were similar to what happened in Bagram.
On – I believe – my fourth day there another British man came. He gave a name which I have forgotten because I was in the middle of such bad abuse. I’ll call him Brown. He said he was British and he had a strong British accent.
All the time I had been in the tent I was hearing the screams and cries of others who were being abused. It was not possible for Brown to be there, or to be there interrogating me, without hearing this and knowing about our abuse. He also saw the way I was. I was in as miserable a state that a human being can be in. I had been badly beaten on arrival, then kept for four days and nights on the ground in the freezing cold. He asked me whether I would like him to interrogate me on behalf of the Americans. I asked him if he would help me resolve my situation. He said no, he would not.
I eventually said whatever anyone wanted to hear. I have no real idea what I said.
A SANDBAG OVER MY HEAD
I KNEW we were going to Guantanamo. I was waiting for that day [February 14, 2002] as nothing could be worse than the hell of Afghanistan. When my number was called I came to the gate. I was in the dust with my hands behind my back.
They covered my head with a sandbag, and for the first time I was not taken to the interrogation tents, but to the outside fence where they had tents to get us ready for the flight.
They shaved my head and my beard. Then they sprayed me with some kind of chemical and pushed me towards another tent.
Here, they told me to take off all my clothes – I complied, though again I refused to take off my underwear. They told me that I had to take that off too, or they would do it for me. So I took that off too, and stood naked there, with eight or nine people around me.
They then gave me an orange uniform and a jacket and gloves. They took a picture of me, and then cuffed me, and shoved me hard into the next tent. Here I found some other detainees with their eyes covered with goggles and their ears muffled with some kind of headset.
I sat there like that until nightfall. Not long before the flight, they gave us each a dry, cold piece of Afghani bread.
About two in the morning they told us all to get up. They took us one by one and roped us by the upper arm again. They did it very tight. My
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