[For 21 years, the Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah has been in US
custody without charge, tortured and sexually humiliated, with no
prospect for release. ]
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‘THE FOREVER PRISONER’: ABU ZUBAYDAH’S DRAWINGS EXPOSE THE
DEPRAVED US TORTURE POLICY  
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Ed Pilkington
May 11, 2023
Guardian
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_ For 21 years, the Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah has been in US
custody without charge, tortured and sexually humiliated, with no
prospect for release. _

, Courtesy Abu Zubaydah

 

A detainee held in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay
[[link removed]] who was used as
a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program has
produced the most comprehensive and detailed account yet seen of the
brutal techniques to which he was subjected.

Abu Zubaydah has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle the
torture he endured in a number of CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006
and at Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of a full official accounting
of the torture program, which the CIA and the FBI
[[link removed]] have labored for years to
keep secret, the images give a unique and searing insight into a
grisly period in US history.

The drawings, which Zubaydah has annotated with his own words, depict
gruesome acts of violence, sexual and religious humiliation, and
prolonged psychological terror committed against him and other
detainees. They were sketched from memory in his Guantánamo cell and
sent to one of his lawyers, Prof Mark Denbeaux.

Together with his students at the Center for Policy and Research at
Seton Hall University law school, Denbeaux compiled Zubaydah’s
images and words into a new report. The Guardian is posting the
report, American Torturers:
[[link removed]] FBI and
CIA Abuses at Dark Sites and Guantánamo, for the first time along
with a set of never-before-seen sketches.

“Abu Zubaydah is the poster child for America’s torture
program,” Denbeaux said. “He was the first person to be tortured,
having been approved by the Department of Justice based on facts that
the CIA [[link removed]] knew to be false.
His drawings are the ultimate repudiation of the failure and abuses of
torture.”

[Drawing of a man tied to a chair with technicians inserting a tube
into his nose in order to force-feed him.]

 Illustration: Courtesy Abu Zubaydah

Download original document
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The new report comes at a critical moment for Zubaydah, who is being
held in Guantánamo under Kafkaesque terms. He is known as a
“forever prisoner”, because he has neither been charged with a
crime nor offered any prospect of release.

Last week a UN body called for him to be set free
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finding that his ongoing detention may be a crime against humanity
[[link removed]].
The detainee’s international legal representative, Helen Duffy, said
that the judgment of the UN working group on arbitrary detention
chimed with Zubaydah’s visual account of his torture.

“The drawings are a powerful depiction of what happened to him, and
are remarkable given that he has not been able to communicate directly
with the outside world,” she said.

Denbeaux added that the combination of the UN’s intervention and the
new drawings provided a glimmer of hope that Zubaydah’s legal
quandary would be addressed. “The only thing that’s ever kept him
incarcerated has been silence and darkness, and now sunlight is
shining on this forever prisoner,” Denbeaux said.

Zubaydah’s sketches provide a unique visual record of the US
government’s use of torture in the wake of 9/11. Videotapes of
Zubaydah being tortured
[[link removed]] were filmed by the CIA but
then destroyed in violation of a court order, while a 6,700-page
torture report
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the Senate intelligence committee remains secret almost a decade after
it was completed.

Though the full Senate report has never been made public,
its conclusion is known
[[link removed]]:
that the abuse of Zubaydah and other detainees failed to elicit any
new intelligence. In other words, torture does not work.

Zubaydah, 52, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and renditioned
to several CIA dark sites in Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere. He was
the first victim of what was to become the widespread use of torture
by the US against terror suspects.

He was transferred to Guantánamo in 2006, where he has been held ever
since.

The US initially claimed he was a top al-Qaida operative but was
forced to concede he was not even a member of the terror group.
“Everybody agrees, they tortured the wrong guy; they went ahead
anyway so they could get permission to torture other people,”
Denbeaux said.

Zubaydah’s depictions are so accurately rendered that the faces of
the CIA and FBI agents have been redacted to protect their identities.
They reveal the extent to which the US government violated
international laws and even its own guidelines on what it
euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

Among the images the Guardian is publishing for the first time is one
showing masked agents physically threatening Zubaydah with anal rape.
The detainee also reconstructs the extremely violent technique used
against him known as “walling”.

In another image, Zubaydah draws himself chained in the nude in front
of a female interrogator. A further drawing shows guards threatening
to desecrate the Qur’an – techniques which were never officially
approved by the justice department.

“Sexual assault was never approved, nudity was never approved,
humiliation by having women present was never approved, and nor was
subjecting someone to prolonged torture to the point of exhaustion or
worse,” Denbeaux said. In his account, Zubaydah calls the prolonged
use of multiple torture techniques “the Vortex”.

Zubaydah was subjected to simulated drowning, or waterboarding, 83
times. The detainee records different variations of the technique,
including one in which he was placed in a coffin-sized box that was
then filled with water up to his nose.

He remained “terrified of drowning all day”, he writes.

Zubaydah’s annotations, which have been lightly edited for length
and clarity, describe the abuses that Zubaydah suffered personally as
the first victim of the American torture program. But Denbeaux said
his client had produced the material in order to highlight not just
his own suffering but also that of the many others subjected to the
same techniques.

According to a 2014 summary of the Senate report, at least 119
individuals were victimized under the program.

Walling

[Drawing of a prisoner being tortured.]

Zubaydah: Sometimes they would use a towel wrapped with duct tape
which they place around the prisoner’s neck and they hit him against
the cement or the timber wall. They would suddenly enter the
prisoner’s cell and start to hit him against the wall without any
towel or even gloves and they deliberately hit him strongly on the
back of his head and back many times and continue for a long time
until he passes out. Then they awake him with cold water and continue
the beating even if he does not pass out, they will start to slap his
face while they were asking him questions and verbally cursing him
with obscene language and continue to beat him strongly on his head,
back and buttocks until he collapses on the ground.

Waterboarding

[Drawing of a prisoner being locked into a coffin-like box which is
then filled with water.]

Zubaydah: Waterboarding is not only using a water and a board. In this
type they put him in a wooden coffin for a long time, until he
urinates on himself. His hands are behind his back, or he’s
restrained in front. If he was restrained from the front, he will stay
like this for days. They leave him drowned in his waste.

If it was behind his back … they converse with him from a small
hatch on the top of the coffin, asking him things that as soon as he
denies or swears that he doesn’t know it, another person starts
strongly pouring very cold water from another small hatch. Because the
coffin is made of wood the water would leak, but slowly.

During this time the investigator asks him and threatens him, then
leaves him, until the water reaches his nose, mouth, and then he
starts to move strongly with distress, coughing [to stop] drowning.
Then, the investigator will come over again and the other person stops
pouring water. The water will leak from the box, but the cycle is
repeated, and he’ll stay terrified of drowning all day.

The Vortex

[Drawing of a prisoner with arms and legs shackled to the ceiling and
the floor being tortured with water, loud music and a scorpion]

Zubaydah: This drawing shows the Vortex – the vortex of conciseness,
pain, stress, hunger and cold where they place the detainee in 24
hours a day of intense torture, which continues for long weeks or
months … They use a specific torture method, in this case hitting
with a stick in very cold weather, so the pain will be doubled, and
they focus on hitting till the prisoner almost passes out, or even
passes out for real. They wake him up roughly, then they start
focusing on another torture method for an hour … Then, the next hour
they use a third method and so on until they finish all their methods.
Then they start again with the first method for a second time, third
time, and so on, for the whole day and for the whole torture duration,
as long as it takes.

Female interrogator

[Drawing of a naked prisoner being tortured in a chair in front of a
female interrogator.]

Zubaydah: I am sitting on the chair for continuous long weeks, and I
am completely naked. Very hungry. I feel frozen from the very cold
weather. I almost get hallucinations because of the psychological
nerves and body pressure … In addition to the sleep deprivation I
feel that I’m really hallucinating. And then a woman immediately
came in wearing very light clothing (like it was summer). She sat next
to me and there were two men wearing very thick clothes (suitable for
the north pole) … !! I didn’t move at all, not even to cover my
genitals as it should be following the courtesy and religious beliefs,
because really in the beginning I thought I was hallucinating. But
when they talked to me … I covered my genitalia completely. I
shouted to them: “At least give me something to cover my genitalia
in front of that female … Don’t you feel ashamed of yourselves?”
They only gave me a bucket of very cold water. And they poured it over
my head. I couldn’t speak for a period of time due to the severe
shivering in my mouth and lips, and all over my body. She stayed
sitting, looking and staring, waiting for me to answer her first
question. She was waiting a half hour without any answers, then she
left and she was shaking with coldness and anger.

Threatening with rape

[Drawing of a prisoner surrounded by guards threatening to sodomize
him.]

Zubaydah: This drawing shows threatening the detainee with rape …
They used to drop the prisoner on the ground, and hold him in a way as
if actually someone will sodomize him, and they start using dirty
sexual words describing the beauty, size or softness of his behind.
Then they start the disgrace, using their hands or some sticks in the
sensitive areas around the anus. Wherever the detainee resists, the
other guards would place him back in the proper way to do sodomy …
They used to say loudly, “We will put this big stick or a bigger one
in your anus to perforate it” … You can picture the feelings the
prisoner suffers, such as fear, pain and embarrassment.

Threat to desecrate the Qur’an

[Drawing of a guard yelling at a prisoner in a chair and threatening
to desecrate the Qur’an.]

Zubaydah: I think the dialogue/comment inside the drawing is enough.

Threats with a power drill

[Drawing of a guard threatening a prisoner with a drill.]

Zubaydah: I was hearing the sound of the power drill moving very
powerfully and violently, and no other sound could cover it up …
They were opening the door of my cell (which I stay locked behind 24
hours a day) only when the interrogators/torturers entered. They
opened the “cell” door of the person that they will torture with
the power drill, so I could hear the drill and the shouting, begging
and crying in horror of the brother who is receiving the torture. When
they turned off the power drill after several hours, I could hear the
tortured brother still shouting, begging and crying, then I hear the
person who is doing the torture shouting and threatening that he will
drill the tool into the head and/or foot, and/or rear end, and/or
stomach of the brother who is exposed to torture …

Did they drill the brother’s head?!! Did they drill his stomach or
his foot or his rear end?!! Using the power drill?!! All these
questions kept going through my mind for days and months until another
day when they come back and use the same method: threat with power
drill. The same sounds of horror come back, and craziness sounds come
back to my head with new questions: is he the same brother?!! Didn’t
he die? Didn’t they kill him? Or this is another brother different
than the first one? Who is the second one? And who will be the third
one? Will it be me?

* Abu Zubaydah
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* Torture
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* Guantanamo
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* war crimes
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