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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington02242009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington02242009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">February 24,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>The Long Road to
Recovery <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">Who
is Binyam Mohamed?
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By ANDY
WORTHINGTON <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">A</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>s British resident Binyam Mohamed stepped off
a plane at RAF Northolt on Monday February 23, six years and ten months
since he was first abducted by the Pakistani authorities at Karachi
airport, it was impossible not to sympathize with the words written in
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/02/23/binyam-mohameds-statement-on-his-release-from-guantanamo/">
a statement</a> made by the tall, thin, slightly-stooped 30-year old, and
delivered by his lawyers at a press conference. <br><br>
“I hope you will understand that after everything I have been through I
am neither physically nor mentally capable of facing the media on the
moment of my arrival back to Britain,” the statement read. “Please
forgive me if I make a simple statement through my lawyer. I hope to be
able to do better in days to come, when I am on the road to
recovery.”<br><br>
For the last three and half years, since Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers (at
<a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/">Reprieve</a>, the legal action
charity) first released
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/02/terrorism.humanrights1">
his harrowing account</a> of his torture in Morocco at the hands of the
CIA’s proxy torturers, the British resident’s story has, understandably,
had few bright episodes. As Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s director,
explained in his book
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eight-OClock-Ferry-Windward-Side/dp/1568584091">
<i>Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side</a></i>, during the three
days in Guantánamo that Binyam related the story of his horrendous ordeal
-- for 18 months in Morocco, and then for another five months at the
CIA’s own
“<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington12152008.html">Dark
Prison</a>” near Kabul, until he finally made false confessions that he
was involved with al-Qaeda and had planned to detonate a radioactive
“<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington10162008.html">dirty
bomb</a>” in New York -- he explained, “I’m sorry I have no emotion when
talking about the past, ‘cause I have closed. You have to figure out the
emotion part -- I’m kind of dead in the head.” <br><br>
And yet, as Binyam embarks on his long “road to recovery” -- attended by
his lawyers, and, mercifully, by his sister Zuhra, who flew from her home
in the United States to meet him, and to fill what would otherwise have
been an aching void, as Binyam has no family in the UK -- it is unlikely
that the media will, in general, manage to report much of the man behind
the myth that has grown up around him.<br><br>
To that end, I thought it appropriate to relate a few anecdotes that
bring Binyam the human being, rather than Binyam the prisoner, to life.
The first comes from Stafford Smith’s book, where he describes his first
meeting with Binyam as follows:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>“Binyam was twenty-seven. He was tall and gangling, dark-skinned,
originally from Ethiopia. He smiled and immediately told me how glad he
was to see me. He spoke quietly, with a particular dignity. Some
prisoners would take many hours of convincing that I was not from the
CIA, but Binyam immediately opened up.”<br><br>
</dl>Of particular interest is an extraordinary chapter, “Con-mission,”
which relates the farcical story of Binyam’s first hearing for his
proposed trial by Military Commission at Guantánamo, in 2006, just before
the Commissions were declared illegal by the US Supreme Court. It’s worth
buying the book for this chapter alone, as it explains in extraordinary
detail quite how farcical Guantánamo’s
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington10032008.html">rigged
trial system</a> was, and how it was exploited mercilessly by Binyam, who
arranged for Stafford Smith to get him “a proper type of Islamic dress,”
dyed orange (he wanted a Dutch football shirt, but Reprieve couldn’t find
one), to make a clear visual statement in court that he was no ordinary
defendant and this was no ordinary trial. He also asked for a marker pen
and a piece of card, and, during the hearing, after he had thrown the
judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kolhmann, off his stride by launching into a
rambling monologue about justice that Kohlmann found himself unable to
interrupt, he took the marker pen, scrawled “CON-MISSION” on it, showed
it to the gathered journalists, and declared, “this is not a commission,
this is a con-mission, is a mission to con the world, and that’s what it
is, you understand.”<br><br>
Warming to his theme, as Col. Kohlmann “ was staring into the headlights
of Binyam’s speech and could see no way to cut him off,” he
continued,<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“When are you going to stop this? This is not the way to deal with
this issue. That is why I don’t want to call this place a courtroom,
because I don’t think it is a courtroom.” <br><br>
<dd>“I am sure you wouldn’t agree with it, because if you was arrested
somewhere in Arabia and Bin Laden says, ‘You know what, you are my enemy
but I am going to force you to have a lawyer and I give you some bearded
turban person,’ I don't think you will agree with that. Forget the rules,
regulations and crap ... you wouldn't deal with that. That is where we
are. This is a bad place. You are in charge of it.”<br><br>
</dl>Stafford Smith then proceeded to explain:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“It was an extraordinary lecture. Binyam finally came to a firm
conclusion. ‘I am done. You can stop looking at the watch,’ he said. He
then turned away from Kohlmann, as if to ignore any response. He was
holding up his sign, ‘CON-MISSION,’ and waving it to the journalists
behind him, just in case they had missed it the first time.”<br><br>
</dl>The other story was related by another British resident held at
Guantánamo, Bisher al-Rawi, who was
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington06202007.html">released
in March 2007</a>, and his words capture how Binyam’s concern for justice
permeated his entire approach to his imprisonment, and, in Bisher’s
opinion, also reflected a very British approach that he had learned
during the seven years he had lived in the UK before his capture:
<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“He is so British -- I mean so</i> British! The way he stands, the
way he talks, his painstaking use of logic. He's such a gentleman. And he
is knowledgeable and he stands up for his rights in a really British way.
Like with S.O.P. This is something the guards have. It is called Standard
Operating Procedure -- S.O.P. And the funny thing about this Standard
Operating Procedure is that it changes every day. Every day you have
new</i> Standard Operating Procedure. And Binyam, he draws attention to
this and insists on his entitlement to be treated the same way as the
Standard Operating Procedure dictated the day before. And they hate him
for this. But he's just being British.”<br><br>
</dl>Perhaps the
<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article5780273.ece">
media snipers</a> who are asking why Binyam should be allowed back into
the UK would like to dwell on this as they ignore both the seven years
that he lived in Britain, when, as MI5 confirmed, he was “a nobody,” and
was not wanted in connection with any crime, and the seven years that he
spent in the custody of the United States -- or its proxy torturers --
when, as David Miliband, the foreign secretary,
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/02/05/the-betrayal-of-british-torture-victim-binyam-mohamed/">
has conceded</a>, he had “established an arguable case” that “he was
subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the
United States,” and was also “subject to torture during such detention by
or on behalf of the United States.” <br><br>
In addition, as the British government
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/02/21/binyam-mohameds-coming-home-from-guantanamo-as-torture-allegations-mount/">
struggles with claims</a> that it has regularly fed intelligence
information about British “terror suspects” seized in Pakistan to
Pakistani agents, knowing full well that the Pakistanis regularly use
torture, those same critics might want to recall the words of the judges
who reviewed Binyam’s case in the High Court last summer.
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington08302008.html">The judges
explained</a> that the British government’s involvement in Binyam’s case,
and its relationship to the US -- which involved sending agents to
interview him in Pakistan, even though he was being held illegally, and
providing and receiving intelligence about him while he was being
tortured in Morocco -- “went far beyond that of a bystander or witness to
the alleged wrongdoing.”<br><br>
There are more revelations to come about torture policies that involve --
or involved -- the US, the UK, Morocco, Pakistan and a host of other
countries, but for now I’m content to let one of its victims try to
rebuild his life in peace. As Binyam also explained in his statement
after his release, <br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter
in my darkest nightmares. Before this ordeal, ‘torture’ was an abstract
word to me. I could never have imagined that I would be its victim. It is
still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one
country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways -- all orchestrated by
the United States government.”<br><br>
</dl>Andy Worthington</b> is a British historian, and the author of
'<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga">
The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's
Illegal Prison'</a> (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at:
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/">www.andyworthington.co.uk</a>
<br>
He can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:andy@andyworthington.co.uk">andy@andyworthington.co.uk</a>
<br><br>
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