Bisher
al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna had every reason to be
happy that November morning two years ago. Along
with their friend , Abdulla al-Janoudi, they were
on route to the Gambia to join Bisher's brother
Wahhab to start a new life in the West African republic
where the four of them had mutually invested almost
half a million pounds of their money into a peanut
processing plant. It was a risk but there was to
be no going back, machinery had been bought, family
savings had been pooled and houses had been re-mortgaged.
You cannot help but feel there was also an element
of adventure to it as well.
After
checking in at Gatwick airport the men's luggage
was subjected to the mandatory checks that any holiday
maker passing through an airport would be familiar
with. However, the post 9/11 climate and the fact
that Bisher al-Riwa was an Iraqi and Jamil el-Banna
a Jordanian would mean they were to be singled out
by the airport authorities for special attention.
Whilst looking through Bisher al-Riwa's case their
attention was drawn to an electronic device. Unsure
of what it was and choosing not to ask the owner
for an explanation they opted to arrest all three
men instead. They were first taken to a Sussex police
station and then later transferred by the Anti-Terrorist
Branch to Paddington Green police station in central
London.
Whilst
detained at Paddington Green the men were represented
by the seasoned civil rights lawyer Gareth Peirce
during their interrogation under the Terrorism Act.
In the interview room the centre of attention was
the presence of the electronic device found in their
luggage, the response of Bisher al-Riwa to this
was: "Go and look in any Argos catalogue and
you will find out what it is." It was nothing
more than a battery charger. The police, disappointingly,
had to except that it was in fact nothing more than
a battery charger and released all three men without
charge allowing them to resume their intended journey
to their new life in the Gambia.
When
they eventually arrived in the West African republic
all three men were arrested by the Gambian authorities
as soon as their plane landed, as were Bisher's
brother Wahhab and their Gambian business agent
both of whom were waiting for them at the airport.
During their questioning by Gambian intelligence
officials the men were able to produce papers relating
to the purchase of the peanut processing plant proving
why they had come to Gambia. Whilst this was enough
to secure the release of the Gambian business agent
events took a more sinister turn when American officials
representing the CIA took charge of the interrogation.
The Americans were convinced that the men had come
from England with the intention of setting up an
al-Qaeda training camp. It becomes clear at this
point that British officials had tipped off their
Gambian and American counterparts informing them
that the men were on their way to the Gambia and
that they were to be treated as terrorist suspects,
even though they had been released from British
custody without charge. The only contention the
British authorities had had in the first place was
the presence of an electronic device that they themselves
later accepted was nothing more than a battery charger.
Why was this happening to them? Not only were the
men innocent of any crime but why were the CIA interrogating
foreign nationals in a country outside of US jurisdiction?
For
the next four weeks the men were moved round a series
of residential addresses in the Gambia capital,
Banjul, where their American captors continued to
put to them the unsupported allegation that they
were al-Qaeda operatives sent to the Gambia with
the intention of establishing a training camp. The
families of the men were now becoming increasingly
concerned for their whereabouts and made representation
to the British Foreign Office asking them to help
secure their release. The problem here though was
that only Abdulla al-Janoudi and Wahhab al-Rawi
were British citizens, Bisher al-Rawi had never
taken out British citizenship like his brother and
neither had Jamil el-Banna although both of them
had been resident in Britain for the last twenty
years.
The
British government did eventually intervene on behalf
of Abdulla al-Janoudi and Wahhab al-Rawi and did
help secure their release and the two of them are
now living back in Britain having lost all their
money from their African business venture but the
British government washed their hands of the other
two men leaving them instead to the mercy, or perhaps
that should be the cruelty, of the Americans. Little
is known about what happened to them after the release
of the other two, at best it is patchy. Then the
mother of Bisher al-Rawi received a letter written
in January 2003 from her son sent from Bagram air
base Afghanistan it read:
"Dear
Mother
I am writing this letter from the lovely mountains
of Afghanistan, at a US prison camp. I am very well,
the conditions are excellent, and everyone is very,
very nice."
It
is often said that Americans lack a sense of irony,
whilst that generalisation maybe unfair in the case
of the US army censor who was charged with checking
letters at Bagram it would appear true.
Nothing
more was heard from either man until August 2003
when another letter written by Bisher arrived at
his mother's home:
Dear Mum and family,
I am writing to you from the seaside resort at Guantánamo
Bay. After winning first prize in a competition,
I was whisked to this nice resort with all expenses
paid ...
Everybody
is very nice, the neighbours are very well-mannered,
the food is first-class, plenty of sun and pebbles
(no sand, I'm afraid).
Your son Bisher.
PS: Please renew my insurance (motorbike) policy.
Bisher
al-Riwa shows that a sense of humour can get you
through a lot, at least past a US army letter censor.
Those
that have been released from Guantánamo all
tell of the same experience from their time at Bagram
to their transfer and incarceration at Guantánamo.
Shackling, hooding, beatings, being drugged, isolation,
all of them the favoured means. But it could be
said that the worst torture practiced at Guantánamo
is the not knowing; not why you are there, when
it will end, when you can contact your family, see
a lawyer.
Bisher
al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna are but only two out
of the 600 captives from 35 different counties held
at Guantánamo Bay. Most of the men at Guantánamo
are ordinary Afghanis in no way linked to the Taliban;
they were handed over to the Americans by the warlords
of the Northern Alliance to whom the Americans paid
a bounty for everyone they received. Some are Arab
men picked up in Afghanistan most of them unarmed
at the time; others were detained by the Pakistani
authorities for being just a little bit too close
to the Afghan/Pakistan border. A number of them
were even arrested in Bosnia by the Americans for
working for a muslim charity that the Americans
claimed was linked to terrorism, a claim that was
disproved by the Bosnian courts who had investigated
that charity and given it a clean bill of health.
And let's not forget the British citizen Moazzam
Begg kidnapped by the CIA in Islamabad, Pakistan
and then processed the familiar way, Guantánamo
via Bagram.
When
all these cases are considered then, perhaps, the
case of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna is unremarkable.
They are all beyond the rule of law without any
legal protection. For all of them the Kafkaesque
nightmare has become reality. Who gains from Guantánamo?
Some within the US military have gone public saying
that the interrogations at Guantánamo have
yielded no valuable intelligence. The construction
arm of Dick Cheyney's Halliburton Corporation, Kellogg,
Brown and Root, has to date made $155 million from
the misery that is Guantánamo: that detail
alone goes some way to help explain why Bisher al-Rawi
and Jamil el-Banna find themselves caged under a
Cuban sun. The fact that the father of Bisher al-Rawi
was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein is lost on the
Americans. His association with Jamil el-Banna,
a Palestinian refugee who lived in Jordan, is perhaps
the missing link that connects 9/11, Saddam, bin
Laden, the Intifada, WMD and anything else for the
Americans. The truth is more prosaic than any fantasy
cooked up by the neo-cons on Capital Hill although
it is perversely fitting that a man whose country
is under occupation and another man whose homeland
doesn't officially exist should find themselves
denied justice.
Gareth
Peirce is still representing the men even though
she has no way of communicating with them. At a
recent meeting in London she recalled her encounter
with them at Paddington Green police station and
how happy she was to see them released without charge
thinking that was the end of the matter. Who would
have known and who could have imagined how their
lives were to be taken away from them. Kidnapped,
tortured, imprisoned without charge or trial, they
lie in another part of the world hidden from view
caged like animals. The perpetrators of this crime
are well known and it is only our silence that allows
them to get away with it. Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil
el-Banna are the Gerry Conlon and Paddy Hill of
our times but unlike them Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil
el-Banna do not even know what the charges against
them are and with no access to either a solicitor
or an appeal court it is difficult to see how this
miscarriage of justice will be righted. Their situation
is far more severe in that respect but eventually
they too will be released, it will have to happen
for their sake.
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