I grew up watching american TV shows and movies, and learning all the catchphrases like ‘Land of Opportunity’ and ‘Land of the Free’. I never thought of America as anything other than a good country, and certainly not an oppressive country. So when I was sold to the Americans for $5,000, like a slave or a hostage, and sent to Guantanamo it was a shock. All my thoughts of America standing for justice and greatness disappeared. I started to see the propaganda.

When I was released uncharged I lived the propaganda, as they said I was a liar and denied everything I said. They got away with murder and they’re still getting away with it.

Tarek Dergoul, ex-detainee

The panic button. The man before you is naked, trembling and chained to the floor, pale, with a look of horror on his face. But you are master and he is a mere animal, so you have to protect yourself in case he bites.

Michael Koppelman, Professor of Neuropsychiatry, advisor on cases of torture and abuse

First you heard the guards coming onto the block rattling the chains. No one knew whose cell they were going to. Then your would hear your number: “Number five, number five, interrogation.”

You were chained before you left the cell, with shackles on your hands running down your stomach to your legs and ankles. The shackels were not padded like these in the picture, they were like metal handcuffs which cut your ankles as the guards on either side made you walk at whatever speed they wanted.

Tarek Dergoul, ex-detainee

Anyone who enters the surreal world of Guantanamo is forced to play the inhumane game of master and servant. The law that operates in Guantanamo is the law of insanity, instability, chaos, injustice, and frustration. The individual inside the cell has no authority, no control, and no say on how he lives, what he eats, when he wakes, when he sleeps, when he showers, or what he will do each day. He merely exists and survives and is expected to perform and act under the absolute direction, control, and fear of the individuals outside the cell.

Yvonne R. Bradley, Esq.
Former military defense counsel of released detainee

This is the Savoy end of Guantanamo. They actually have bar football to play, allegedly. Something that can only be dreamed of when isolated and chained to the floor. Faceless footballers whose every movement is controlled by The Other.

Michael Koppelman, Professor of Neuropsychiatry, advisor on cases of torture and abuse

This is a copy of a blank sheet of paper in a letter sent to me at Guantanamo. People wrote from all over the world. What I received were photocopies, each marked with the censor’s stamp. I missed the envelopes, the colour of the postage stamps, the smell and feel of the letters. Everything was copied and stamped. The fronts of cards and backs of envelopes, even blank sheets of paper would be copied and stamped and passed on. The amount of post became bewildering. Some of the images and messages were very strange as well. It got to the stage where I could not believe that it was all genuine; I thought it was a prank by the interrogators. I had become so paranoid that I thought they were faking the letters.

Omar Deghayes, ex-detainee

Yvonne R. Bradley, Esq
Former military defense counsel of released detainee

A regular cell would be about 8ft by 6ft and about 7.5ft high. You could do about three small steps corner to corner. I can tell this is at the end of a line because it’s two or three inches wider and the sink is not flush with the window.

The water in the sink would often be cut off at prayer times when we, as Moslems, would have to make our ritual ablution by washing our hands, our mouths and our noses for our prayers to be accepted. It would cause a lot of trouble. they were looking for a reaction to call the ERF.

The heat there was intense, it could reach probably 50 degrees and it would be airless.

Tarek Derghoul, ex-detainee

Nails sticking out of the wall of a Guantanamo returnee’s home, put there by the returnee. Peanuts compared to Guantanamo protection, but pretty vicious. After however many years away he feels he needs the protection of a barrier from the world, or perhaps it is just that he doesn’t want them to come and get him again.

Michael Koppelman, Professor of Neuropsychiatry, advisor on cases of torture and abuse

Welcome to the Guantanamo Inn: single bed, ocean views available, extended stays welcomed, special suites for 18 and under, meals included, group rates available (paid by the American tax dollars). Don’t forget to ask management about the daily and weekly interview and interrogation specials. “Frequent Fliers” points also available. Plenty of vacancy—current occupancy: approximately 174.

Yvonne R. Bradley, Esq
Former military defense counsel of released detainee

You’d be allowed a five minute shower twice a week after recreation in the cage. A lot of times you would be standing in the shower with soap all over your hair and body and the guards would say: “Time’s up!” and turn the shower off after a few minutes to spark a reaction. If you refused to come out they would call the five cowards, the Emergency Response Force, dressed in armour and riot gear.

Tarek Derghoul, ex-detainee

Tom Wilner, Lawyer defending Guantanamo detainees

I spent much of my time with prisoners trying – with some success — to get them to see the guards not as their enemies, but as suffering along with them. Obviously the prisoners suffered worse, but the only way that decent soldiers could be brought to abuse the prisoners was through their indoctrination programme, where they were constantly told how evil the prisoners were. This provoked a vicious cycle where they would mistreat the prisoners, and the prisoners would, in turn, respond with resistance, normally passive, sometimes hunger strikes, sometimes more active.

Clive Stafford Smith, Lawyer for Guantanamo detainees and founder of Reprieve

In 2005 I first saw the affidavits from prisoners alleging mistreatment by the medical staff and the deliberate use of over-size tubes to force them off their hunger strikes. I was, however, much more interested in the affidavit of Dr Edmondson, the doctor in charge of the hospital in Guantanamo refuting the allegations and stating that he had permission to force-feed the prisoners as he was following the orders of a “higher military authority”. These words exactly mirrored those used by the Nazi doctors charged with war crimes at Nuremberg.

Dr David Nicholl

This is very sad. The sadness comes from the patently unnoticed irony – Guantánamo is surely one of the world’s irony free zones, starting with its motto (“Honor Bound to Defend Freedom” when all it does is deprive people of freedom); and the notion that it would have a table for POW’s comes when 779 people have been held there who should have the rights of POW’s under the Geneva Conventions, but none has been.

Clive Stafford Smith, Lawyer for Guantanamo detainees and founder of Reprieve

On one occasion fifteen of them came into one of the small exercise yards with a dog, while two other guards pointed their guns at me from the watch tower. They surrounded me, held me down chained on the floor and tried to gouge out both of my eyes. I can’t see through my right eye properly any more. It’s something that’s hammered into my memory forever.

Omar Deghayes, ex-detainee

The Leeward Side is where we – as lawyers, identified to the prison guards as “the enemy” by the powers that be – have to stay, well away from the action on the Windward Side of the base. When I first started going there, it was like a decaying 1950s film set. There was a drive-in film screen with some kind of kudzu growing all over it; this swimming pool, the focal point of a disused recreation area; and the airport, still in use but looking less like the 21st Century than the aerodrome where Humphrey Bogart stood in the mists of Casablanca.

Clive Stafford Smith, Lawyer for Guantanamo detainees and founder of Reprieve

Receiving their Red Cross messages over the years I saw my children’s child-like writings evolve from simple words and pictures to complex thoughts. But these concisely written sentences on the few lines available had to pass US censorship, which no child could or should have to anticipate. The message would often reach me with great chunks heavily redacted. I once asked the then Guantanamo Camp Commander, General Hood: “What could you possibly fear from the writings of a seven-year old girl?” He gave me no answer.

Moazzam Begg, ex-detainee

This cell reminds me of just really awful feelings of many years in lockups like these, in complete isolation, not speaking to anyone. The most striking thing is the glaring white paint which makes the room very, very light. The reflection of the light is everywhere, coming straight into your eyes. It’s very harsh. I remember my eyes aching.

Omar Deghayes, ex-detainee

During my time in isolation in Guantanamo I heard some US Marines talk about how many pull-ups (chin-ups) they could do. I decided, as part of my own rigorous fitness routine to add in pull ups, somehow. There were no bars to swing from in the cell but, I found that if I rolled up my towel and looped either end through the links in the top corner of the cage I could make have an improvised pull-up bar right in my cell, which of course had to be taken down as soon as I’d finished my workout. When I came back I realised there was something missing in my fitness routines: pull ups. The bar is placed conveniently in the door frame of my living room.

Moazzam Begg, ex-detainee

I saw Guantanamo as an evil place, a place where the United States, out of fear, had abandoned its principles of justice and fairness. I was always struck by how so many of the people we met there were nice people, good people, just doing their jobs. But the overall job they were doing was depriving people, many of whom were clearly innocent, of any chance of proving that fact and from any access to justice, and it was just plain wrong. I am sure these people needed to pray from time to time. But I wondered what they prayed for. I also wondered what a shrine can mean at a place where there is no justice and little humanity.

Tom Wilner, Lawyer defending Guantanamo detainees

The central figure is the Iguana, made famous by our efforts to secure legal rights for the prisoners.  Because the US environmental laws applied in Guantánamo Bay, the government thought that Iguanas had greater rights than human beings (at least, “foreigners with beards”) on the base.  If a US marine kicked an Iguana, he could get a $10,000 fine and 10 years in prison; if he kicked a prisoner, nothing happened. 

The police pulled us over one day when our escort was allegedly driving without due attention to an Iguana beside the road.

Clive Stafford Smith, Lawyer for Guantanamo detainees and founder of Reprieve

This is a picture of the cliffs at Saldean, between Saltdean and Brighton. It was a gift from a very close artist friend when I came back. It hangs in the most prominent place in my new flat and means a lot to me because it reminds me of a picture my Mother sent me in Guantanamo. I wrote asking her to draw the view from her room of the cliffs, the beaches and the small park in front of our house. I got the picture through the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) and had to fight over and over again with the guards to be allowed to put it on the wall and have a way of looking at memories of home.

Omar Deghayes, ex-detainee

I had campaigned for this man who had been on hunger strike, in part, to uphold his right to refuse food to protest at his inhumane treatment. Ironically, if I had been a doctor in Guantanamo and had followed my patient’s wishes, Omar might have been dead. Thats a tough one, but I don’t regret for one moment what I did to highlight the appalling treatment these men have endured. When I met Omar I was able was able to deliver a letter that I had sent by recorded delivery to him at Guantanamo, but which got sent back to me as “Return to Sender”. I promised myself I would keep that letter on my desk until I got the chance to hand deliver it..

Dr David Nicholl

My iPhone is now an intrinsic part of my life, it goes wherever I do and, can very easily demonstrate what my working – and private – life now looks like. Hidden within its memory, just like mine, is the image of my cell in Camp Echo, isolation block, where I spent two years, being denied, amongst other things, the ability to make even a phone call. The view of the cell is from the outside, one that I rarely got to see. The phone is set on the backdrop of my prayer mat, Prayer, both in and out of the cell, has been the greatest source of comfort and tranquillity before, during and after Guantanamo.

Moazzam Begg, ex-detainee

Some of the detainees’ hands were chained; others were not. In each case, though, their ankles were encircled by large heavy metal cuffs attached to large chains that were then attached to these steel rings bolted into the concrete floor. It was the first thing I noticed; their ankles chained to that ring bolted into the concrete floor. Most of the detainees were small and emaciated. Many looked as if they had not eaten for days. At that point they had been at Guantanamo for three years. None had had a hearing. Most had not even been told why they were there. And there they were chained like animals to the floor.

Tom Wilner, Lawyer defending Guantanamo detainees

Until 2004 or 2005, we weren’t allowed to know anything about days or dates or time. I remember writing many things for my lawyer about the events going on and most of the time I got the dates wrong. Suddenly, in 2007, we were allowed to know the date and I was given this calendar with a picture of a building in Afghanistan. This was a big gift because it became possible for me to plan. I wrote things I wanted to do on certain dates. Down the white sides of the calendar, I’ve written down small things that I aim to achieve within the year. We had lots of time in prison cells to think about how to improve ourselves.

Omar Deghayes, ex-detainee

I am a doctor working in England, but I grew up in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles”. Hunger strikes have always been an incredibly emotive subject in Ireland, and when the hunger strikes started in Guantanamo it brought back memories of how disturbed and unstable Northern Ireland was during that period culminating in the death of Bobby Sands, a Catholic. As a Protestant, I found myself thinking as a doctor how would I have dealt with a hunger striker? I felt very angry at the way in which the doctors in Guantanamo were denying the one right the prisoners being held there had – the right to refuse treatment.

Dr David Nicholl

Diamond shaped windows, that’s what I think of when I see this image. It reminds me of my time in Camp Echo. One female soldier tasked with guarding me wrote a poem about what she saw on the other side of the cage. She described the scene as being set behind ‘Diamond Shaped Windows’. My conversations with her were some of the most intellectual and stimulating discussions I had in US custody, a true rarity in my experience.

Moazzam Begg, ex-detainee

The extinguishment of Hope. To begin with the new dawn of the Obama era created great optimism in Guantanamo Bay (among the prisoners) and a resigned depression among the authorities. But the last paragraph ultimately tells the tale – that nothing in the order created new rights for the prisoners. Obama is probably a very decent person, judging by his book Dreams from my Father, but he allowed his predilection for consensus to abort any chance of achieving his goals. The pronouncement that Guantanamo would close has become broken glass on the pathway of the prisoners.

Clive Stafford Smith, Lawyer for Guantanamo detainees and founder of Reprieve

This was my room when I came back from Guantanamo. I felt very comfortable in it, even though it was so small and the ceiling came down so close. It felt like I was sleeping in my cell, but I had control. I was able to turn the light on or off when I wanted, to wake up or sleep when I wanted. It was small like my cell but there was no harassment, no knocking on the door, no searches and no fights or beatings. Outside I had other problems but here in this room I was completely serene, comfortable, calm.

Omar Deghayes, ex-detainee