A Young Woman’s Guantánamo Diary

Ever wonder what it would be like to visit the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?  Mahvish Khan is a law student at the University of Miami and has made frequent trips there.  Read her very personal account My Guantanamo Diary in today’s Washington Post.

"As an American, I felt the pain of Sept. 11, and I understood the need to invade Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also felt the suffering of the Afghans as their country was bombed. And when hundreds of men were rounded up and thrust into a black hole of detention, many with seemingly no proof that they had any terrorist connections, I felt that my own country had taken a wrong turn."

[…]"Over steak dinner, I comment on how nice our military escorts are. They joke and laugh with us. Primo gives me pointers on shooting pool in the CBQ lobby. Everyone brings them beer and cigarettes. I think I had expected them to be more aloof, even hostile.

But Tom Wilner, a partner in the Washington office of Shearman & Sterling LLP, quickly retorts: "Yeah, they’re nice. But this whole place is evil — and the face of evil often appears friendly."

His words hit me hard. Tom is one of the most passionate lawyers working at Guantanamo Bay. He gets angry talking about the conditions under which the detainees live. Most are held in isolation in cells separated by thick steel mesh or concrete walls. Every man eats every meal alone in his small cell. The prisoners are allowed out of their cells three times a week for about 15 minutes to exercise, often in the middle of the night, so many don’t see sunlight for months at a time."

Read the whole piece…it is quite moving.  No comment yet from the Post’s torture apologist Charles Krauthammer or the racist pundit Michelle Malkin and her German admirers.

Meanwhile the Mormon presidential hopeful Mitt Romney visited the Guantanamo Starbucks last week said that he "found that the detainees, to the extent I was able to observe this, were treated in a very responsible and humanitarian way, and came away with no concerns with regards to the fair and appropriate treating of those individuals."  The Republican governor didn’t attempt to speak with one of the prisoners.

Guantanamo War on Terror Menschenrechte