My Guantanamo Diary Read Online Free Page B

entire month. Then, a uniformed soldier made him take drugs, he said. To his consternation, the names of the pills evaded him, try as he did toremember them. “A doctor remembers the names of medications the way he remembers the names of his sons,” he said, shaking his head in dismay.
    There was one last item on his tally of torture. He shifted his eyes away from me and looked at the wooden table as he spoke of the sharam —the shame—he had endured at Bagram. “They made us take all our clothes off. We were naked . . . a lot of prisoners. They tied us together and herded us around like sheep,” he said as quickly as he could get the words out.
    I felt a bit like a voyeur and couldn’t meet his eyes.
    “Peter may not understand why this is so humiliating for our people,” Mousovi said to me. “But you are a Pashtun. You understand why.” I nodded awkwardly.
    Afghan culture is much more puritanical and guarded in these matters than the West. For example, in America, men can change or shower in front of other men in a locker room—and it’s no big deal. But Afghan or Arab men would not dream of it.
    Mousovi said he didn’t know why he’d been brought to Guantánamo Bay. He believed that someone had sold him to U.S. forces to collect a reward of up to $25,000 for anyone who gave up a Taliban or al-Qaeda member. Perhaps his political opponents had given false reports to the Americans to prevent him from running for parliament. He could only speculate. He insisted that he was simply a doctor who wanted to help rebuild his country.
    He spent more than a year and a half in detention before he was told that he would be given a hearing before a combatant status review tribunal (CSRT). The hearing would theoretically allow him to challenge his designation as an “enemy combatant.”
    At last, he had hope. A trial would be an opportunity to show his captors that his arrest had been a mistake. Asked whether he wanted to call witnesses, he drew up a list of eight names. Three of the men were in Afghanistan. Three were in Iran. Two were Guantánamo Bay detainees.
    I read the transcript of the hearing later.
    On January 15, 2005, guards led him from Camp Delta to a small room for the hearing. The Bush administration designed the CSRT in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Guantánamo detainees should be allowed to challenge their detention before an impartial judge, who would be a military officer. The hearing is supposed to determine whether a detainee is an enemy combatant and therefore not entitled to normal legal rights. But in most cases, the CSRTs are little more than dog and pony shows. They admit hearsay and evidence obtained through torture and coercion. They don’t allow prisoners lawyers, witnesses, or even the right to see the alleged evidence against them. CSRTs are a sham, designed to confirm a decision that has already been made.
    Mousovi’s hands were cuffed and his feet shackled to a thick steel bolt in the floor. A panel of three military officers sat behind a long table to his right. Also present were a court reporter to transcribe the hearing, an interpreter, and an appointed military “personal representative.”
    Always respectful, Mousovi stood up from the white plastic lawn chair provided for him and waited quietly for the officers to begin the proceedings.
    When he stood, the panel of officers glanced at each other and then back at the prisoner. Finally, the interpreter turned to him and explained that he should be seated. The chains rattled as he resumed his seat.
    The tribunal president read the hearing instructions. Ali Shah indicated that he understood, then turned and faced the panel of military officers.
    “Mr. President and respectable tribunal members, with utmost respect to all of you, I am delighted that after about one and a half years, I am for the first time witnessing a tribunal, which apparently looks like a court system,” he said nervously through the