In a live telecast to a packed auditorium at the Georgetown Law Center, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee recalled the dehumanizing atmosphere of the military detention center there and criticized the U.S. government’s war on terror.
Speaking from his home in the United Kingdom at an event sponsored by the Muslim Law Student Association, Moazzam Begg, who was released from Guantanamo two years ago without charge, said that the majority of detainees are never charged, but are forced to live in physically and psychologically damaging conditions.
Begg said that even sympathetic guards are forced to view detainees as subhuman in order to do their jobs. He added that the base has proved a disastrous byproduct of U.S. foreign policy, serving as a model for repressive regimes.
Gitanjali Gutierrez, who also spoke, is a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who has worked on behalf of detainees.
“Guantanamo is not only illegal. It has crossed the line into the immoral,” she said. Detainees live in extremely small, frequently windowless cells locked into a metal grid, said Gutierrez. Their sleep is often disrupted, rarely amounting to more than two to three hours.
Begg speculated that it might be difficult for Americans to understand and accept this story.
“Will they think, oh, he’s just a terrorist and he’s putting on a good show?” he asked.
“It really doesn’t matter,” he said. “Because I’m free.”
