Thread by @MansoorAdayfi

Thread 🧵 1
21 years ago today, I was sent to #Guantanamo gagged, hooded & shackled to the floor of a military plane. I remember the heaviness of the heat, the salty smell of the sea & the ISN they gave me as my name: 0441. I was 19 years old.

I’ve written about that first day so many times,thinking that if I write it maybe it will lose its power over me. Maybe that memory will let me rest.Although GTMO is a drak place, we managed to find beauty in among us,all of us Muslim men who were detained.hachettebooks.com/titles/mansoor…

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Yes we were isolated and disconnected from our families and the rest of the world but even in America’s dark hole, life won, we created our world, yes we were tortured and abused but we also sang, danced, resist, and survived.

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Even though we were prisoners of the United States’ destructive War on Terror, the United States is and always has been a prisoner of its own violence. Guantanamo is yet another chapter of this violence and one whose legacy will live on long after the prison is closed.

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But Guantanamo is still open w/ 34 men. 20 have been approved for release, only 10 have been charged w/ crimes (all transferred to Guantanamo in 2006 from black sites), 1 convicted, and 3 held indefinitely. 779 men were held there.

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A Yasmina Khadra quotes captures my life after Guantanamo: “They can take everything you own -- your property, your best years, all your joys, all your good works, everything down to your last shirt-- but you'll always have your dreams, so you can reinvent your stolen world.”

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Every day I survive post #Guantanamo, I reinvent my stolen world – and now no one can take that away from me.
And together we will #closeGuantánamo and seek accountbilty.

@POTUS
@JoeBiden