Thursday, April 27, 2006

isolated and tortured, indefinitely.

A prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, held without charge for more than four years, has tried to kill himself a dozen times in an attempt to escape the misery and isolation of his incarceration. On one occasion he tried to take his life during a visit by his lawyer.

Jumah al-Dossari, 33, claims he has been repeatedly beaten and suffered intense psychological abuse during his years of incarceration at the US prison camp in Cuba. He says he has watched US guards abuse the Koran, that he has been sexually humiliated and regularly kept in isolation.
His 12 attempts to take his life - either by hanging, slitting his wrists or a combination of both - account for a third of all the suicide attempts by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay reported by the US authorities. The most recent was in March.


"The enormous horrors that my eyes have seen and continue to see, renew my anxiety and pain and my very being and feelings are shaken at the mere thought or flash of them in my memory," he wrote in a 20-page account given to his lawyer. "I have written these lines from behind the walls of the dreadful detention camps. I have written about my pain and my sadness. I do not know what will happen in the future and what fate has hidden for me, when the end will come or how it will be."

(via AngryArab)

Meanwhile, Guantanamo North in Canada is up and running. One of the people indefinitely imprisoned is Mohamed Harkat:

ALGERIAN REFUGEE MOHAMED Harkat was arrested, ironically, on Human Rights Day, on December 10, 2002, in Ottawa. Harkat has been in Canada since 1995. Working as a gas attendant and pizza delivery man, he worked an average of 18 hours a day. In 1997, he was given refugee status after successfully claiming government persecution should he return to Algeria.

Also see: Campaign to stop the secret trials in Canada.
Justice for Mohamed Harkat.
A letter from prison.

Letter from Sophie Harkat:

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Moe was able to have his first real call yesterday from the Kingston Immigration Holding Center...first thing he said was that he HATED it there!

He feels so isolated and lonely. He thinks everyone will forget about him since he's now there...I said that NO WAY IN HELL would his supporters ever forget him...and I would like to be right about this !! :-) So please send him a letter or just a postcard to remind him that he is not alone...and that we all continue to fight for him...please do so asap as he REALLY needs a pick me up !! It will be a few days before I am able to visit him and the new rules are VERY complicated...making it much harder on the families.

So here it is...Don't let me down....I've been saying we have the best supporters in the world !! :-)

MOHAMED HARKAT
Kingston Immigration Holding Centre
c/o CSC RHQ Ontario Region
440 King Street West
PO Box 1174> Kingston, ON
K7L 4Y8

I know we will be able to send personal items at another delivery addr. Once I know more about what he can have...I will let you know. Thanks for your continued support. Have a nice weekend

Take care

Sophie

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