On 10/7/01, when the US launched the #WarOnTerror w/ Operation Enduring Freedom, they littered Afghanistan with Tomahawk missiles, cluster bombs, and pamphlets like this offering $$$$ for al Qaeda & Taliban fighters.
Like thousands of others, I was sold to the US for bounty money, sent to a black site where I was tortured & then sent to Guantanamo. I was only 18 years old. I wasn’t a fighter. I wasn’t al Qaeda leader or Taliban.
At Guantanamo, I met farmers who were sold by neighbors who wanted their land. I met charity workers, teachers, engineers, all kinds of men who were sold as fighters.
[Me at #Guantánamo Camp 6 2012]
Yes, there were some al Qaeda & Taliban, but most were not. As early as the summer of 2002, US leadership & intelligence officials knew this & referred to us in private as “dirt farmers” because we had so little intelligence value.
Even Donald Rumsfeld, in this April 2003 memo to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote, “We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay (“GTMO”) with low-level enemy combatants.”
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But publicly, Rumsfeld & other govt officials continued to insist #Guantanamo held "the most dangerous, most vicious terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers & would-be suicide bombers." @SetonHallLaw reports document it all.
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Instead of releasing us, General Miller turned Guantanamo into a Battle Lab & model for interrogation that used torture, inhumane treatment, religious defamation & cruelty to extract intelligence we didn’t have. Miller brought that model to #AbuGhraib
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I survived 14 years at Guantanamo by fighting for what I knew was right and searching for humanity wherever I could, sometimes in art, sometimes in a kind gesture from a guard, sometimes in an iguana.
Almost 20 years after opening, 39 men are still held at Guantanamo, many have never been charged with a crime. It’s time to #CloseGuantanamo, #reckonwithtorture, and make sure this never happens again.
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