<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5">
<div style="display: block;" id="reader-header" class="header"> <b><small><small><small><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/18/trapped-guantanamo-letters-mohammed-al-hamiri/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/18/trapped-guantanamo-letters-mohammed-al-hamiri/">https://theintercept.com/2016/04/18/trapped-guantanamo-letters-mohammed-al-hamiri/</a></a></small></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Prisoner’s Letters Document Tragedy and
Hope Inside Guantánamo</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Murtaza
Hussain✉murtaza.hussain@theintercept.comt@mazmhussain</div>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div style="display: block;" id="moz-reader-content">
<div
xml:base="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/18/trapped-guantanamo-letters-mohammed-al-hamiri/"
id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div data-reactid=".ti.1.0.1.1.0.0.0.0.1.$p-0">
<p><u>On April 16</u>, the Department of Defense issued a
short press release announcing that Mohammed al-Hamiri,
a Yemeni citizen held at Guantánamo Bay, had been
transferred for release. Hamiri had been incarcerated at
Guantánamo since 2002, when he was detained by American
forces. First taken into custody at the age of 19,
Hamiri spent more than a third of his life at the
prison. During that time, he was never charged with any
crime.</p>
<p>Writing was one of Hamiri’s greatest comforts during
the 13 long years he spent at Guantánamo. Hamiri’s
letters and other personal writings were cleared for
release earlier this year through the work of lawyers at
the Center for Constitutional Rights. The letters
reflect an enduring sense of hope, love for family and
friends, and a remarkably poetic imagination.</p>
<p>Hamiri’s release this week represents the start of a
new chapter in his life, one he has spent years
waiting for with both hope and trepidation. His writings
from Guantánamo offer a glimpse into what the prospect
of freedom meant to him during his long imprisonment. “I
do not know why I am writing these words, and I do not
know if my letters and my words are going to be read by
eyes that know the meaning of justice,” he
reflected recently, writing that prison had given him
“no voice other than this pen with which to write a
painful memory from the pages of my life.”</p>
<p><u>Last April, al-Hamiri</u> sat on the bed of his
prison cell in Guantánamo Bay and indulged in one of the
few liberties available to him. He opened his notebook
to write. “I keep looking at the sun and hoping that,
maybe, it will reveal a secret that would wipe away my
tears,” Hamiri put down. “But I discover that it is
pointing to the horizon, to tell me that it wants to
leave and not be here to witness what destiny had in
store for me. So I’m left alone with nothing but the
moon and the moonlight shining on me, as everyone and
everything else on earth has gone to sleep.” </p>
<p>Arriving in Guantánamo while he was still a teenager,
Hamiri spent the majority of his young adulthood
imprisoned there. Despite being cleared for release in
2009, he remained behind bars six years longer,
thanks to political wrangling over the fate of
Guantánamo detainees, as well as civil strife in his
native Yemen.</p>
<p>In a letter written several months ago, Hamiri
reflected on the possibility of the public one day
reading his words.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want you to understand my reality. As far as I’m
concerned the government has closed its door on our
cases. Unfortunately, a tragedy happened on September
11, and many innocent people were killed. Every year
on that same date people relive the suffering
repeatedly; yet it is also saddening that other
innocent people are dying or put in jail without
having committed any crime. It doesn’t make sense for
someone who gets stung by a thorn in his leg to start
hitting everybody around him to relieve that pain, for
he could be hurting innocent people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2009, a multi-agency government review
board unanimously cleared Hamiri for release from
prison. Despite this ruling, the government failed to
promptly transfer him out of custody. After
the promise of the review board decision dimmed over the
years, it gave rise to increasing melancholy. In an
undated passage in his notebook, Hamiri wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The government cleared me for release in 2009. It
handed me the “cleared for release” document. In 2011,
I pulled out that clearance document and I was looking
at it when something very funny happened. I was
reading that document which was lying on the floor and
I dropped the cup of coffee I was holding my hand. The
coffee spilled over the document. I did not wipe the
coffee, and do you know where it spilled? It spilled
on the line that says: “The United States is planning
to transfer you as soon as possible.” It felt like my
destiny was telling me that it was a deception.<em><br>
</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hamiri spent much of his youth behind bars. Like many
other Guantánamo detainees captured at a young age, one
of his greatest worries in prison was losing touch with
trends in the outside world. In a letter to his lawyers
in April of last year, he requested DVDs, including
films dealing with “drama, family, youth problems,
students in college, things like that.”</p>
<p>Hamiri asked for a documentary about Bob Marley,
several popular contemporary films, and the book <em>Humanism
and Democratic Criticism</em> by the late
Palestinian-American author Edward Said. In his notes he
wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One night while I was immersed in my thoughts I saw
that segment of a television program and it felt like
a message was being sent to me from heaven. I am aware
that many people don’t believe in these things, for
they are too busy and enamored with money, whereas in
this prison every whisper I hear and every breeze I
feel mean a lot to me. Everything in this life is
beautiful and everyone, with a positive outlook
towards life, can make his life beautiful and make
everyone around him joyful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Along with his writing, the other great source of
comfort for Hamiri during his incarceration was his
friendship with a fellow Guantánamo prisoner,
Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif. Latif was incarcerated at the
same time as Hamiri and of roughly the same age. Like
Hamiri, Latif was also a Yemeni. While behind bars at
the the camp, the two young men became, as much
as possible in such conditions, inseparable. Their
similar backgrounds and histories created a bond that
helped sustain them through circumstances that offered
little hope.</p>
<p>But in 2012, after spending more than 10 years behind
bars in Guantánamo, Latif was found dead in his cell. A
subsequent investigation deemed the cause of death to be
suicide, although questions about the circumstances of
his passing have <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/opinion/death-of-a-prisoner.html">lingered</a>.
Latif was a writer like Hamiri. In the months leading up
to his death, his own notes documented him grappling
with what seemed to be an unremittingly bleak fate. In
one of his last letters to his lawyer, Latif <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201291872137626701.html">wrote</a>,
“I will do whatever I am able to do to rid myself of the
imposed death on me at any moment of this prison … the
soul insists to end it all and leave this life which is
no longer anymore a life.”</p>
<p><u>For a time</u> after the death of his best friend,
Hamiri did not pick up a pen. “I lost my dearest and
most honest friend in this detention facility,” he would
write, months after Latif’s passing. “He left this world
after long suffering, and I got a taste of his suffering
too.”<em><br>
</em></p>
<p>In 2013, Hamiri took part in a <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/opinion/hunger-strike-at-guantanamo-bay.html">mass
hunger strike</a> by detainees at the prison. The
strike was in protest against harsh treatment by prison
guards under the command of a new officer, Col. John
Bogdan, as well as what prisoners perceived as growing
government indifference to their predicament. Within
months, the number of striking detainees rose to roughly
130 out of a total of 166 prisoners then at the camp.
Many of these prisoners were subjected to painful
force-feeding procedures. Among them was Hamiri. In the
midst of the strike, in June 2013, directly after a
particularly painful force-feeding session, he sat
down in his cell to write the following note.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We see animals killing their prey swiftly to avoid
suffering and torture, yet we see human beings
depriving other humans from their mothers, fathers and
families just for the sake of making them feel the
bitterness of deprivation and the pain of loss. Mercy
is present in the ferocious animals’ instinct, yet
harshness is present in human injustice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In late 2014, the rate of transfer of Guantánamo
detainees began to increase. In the last two months of
the year, 21 detainees were either repatriated or
transferred to third countries. Among these were a few
Yemenis, who were <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/31/us-usa-guantanamo-kazakhstan-idUSKBN0K905W20141231">sent
to new homes</a> in Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Slovakia.
Despite being cleared for release, Hamiri was not among
those transferred out. While once the release of
prisoners was a cause for celebration at the camp,
Hamiri told his lawyers in a meeting in late December
2014, “Now when we see brothers released, its a little
bit hard. Everybody thinks, when is my time?”
Increasingly despondent, Hamiri wrote then in his notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Guantánamo prison has undergone multiple renovations.
The worn walls needed repair and the steel structure
which has become rusty over time needed to be
renovated. Even inanimate materials have weakened over
time. If time has caused inanimate walls to tear and
their colors to fade, what do you expect it did to a
human being?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2008, the International Committee of the Red Cross
won the right for some prisoners to make periodic phone
calls to family members at home. In 2009, this was
expanded to allow Skype videoconference calls. Hamiri
was among the beneficiaries of these new measures, and
was able to call home and see images of his family for
the first time in years. He continued to be allowed this
privilege for the rest of his time at Guantánamo. But
paradoxically, this fleeting contact with his family fed
a growing anxiety, as he realized the distance that time
apart had created between them. His family had not seen
him in person since he was a teenager. Through their
calls, Hamiri found to his dismay that they could no
longer interact as they once did. As he wrote in a
letter from 2014:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This prison has made me forget my mother’s smile.
She looks at me now as if I was never part of that
family. I have been away for such a long time that now
when I talk to her, she uses a formal tone, for aging
has changed my appearance. She is timid and she talks
to me as if I were a stranger. The only thing that I
notice during the calls are her few tear drops which
she cannot control when she sees me. I try to bring
some humor to the conversation and remove that
noticeable sadness from my mother and family’s faces,
yet what I get in return is a look of pity which makes
me even more miserable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed, the single most persistent theme running
through Hamiri’s letters is his yearning to be reunited
with his family, especially his mother. At the beginning
of 2015, facing yet another year of incarceration
without hope of release, he wrote a letter to her saying
the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear mother, I wish I could write to you with my
blood on the walls of history so that these walls
could tell the story of my love and loyalty to you,
and light a candle for you in history. And even then,
I could not even come close to paying you back for all
those nights when you stayed up so I could sleep, when
you went hungry so I could eat. You cried and hoped to
see me free one of these days, and each day as the sun
goes down and disappears into the horizon to mark the
end of a day, I remember that you are getting weaker
and I start to worry.</p>
<p>Mother, without you, I’m like a small boat lost in
the middle of the ocean waves in a scary dark night.
If I could take away all your sorrows and put them in
my heart, I would not hesitate to do so and keep them
forever, and you would always see my smile. But I know
that you would not accept any such thing, because
sacrifice is your trade, love is your name and
compassion is your nature. We will see each other
again one day, God willing. I will carve the day in
which we meet again in all my being, God willing, and
kiss your head to tell the entire world that you are
the breath of air that I found to become alive again.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In recent months, the rate of transfers from Guantánamo
increased dramatically. Nearing the end of his term,
President Obama is now attempting to keep his promise of
shuttering the island prison. For those like Hamiri who
were never charged with a crime and were cleared for
release years ago, the futility and cruelty of their
treatment has stung. “I have spent thirteen years of my
life in a prison cell, though I have not done anything
to cause sorrow to any human being,” he wrote recently.
“I was cleared to be released six years ago, but I am
still under the rubbles breathing, after this earthquake
that shook the world.”</p>
<p><u>After years of longing</u> to be free, this week
Mohammed al-Hamiri was released from Guantánamo Bay. On
April 16, he was transferred to his release in Saudi
Arabia. For many former Guantánamo prisoners, adjusting
to life outside the prison has been difficult, even
impossible. Sent to unfamiliar countries far from their
homes, separated from friends and family, many have been
unable to find normalcy or happiness after their
ordeals. In some of his last notes cleared for release
this year, Hamiri reflected on his hopes for freedom
after life in Guantánamo:<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are always means to happiness. Nothing is
impossible in life, as long as you live and breathe.
Thirteen years I’ve sat here. I’ve never lost hope
that one day I will be free. … One day, our day for
release will come. We’ll wear a suit. I’ll wear a
black suit and I’ll shave. On the second day, God
willing, I would wear that new suit, nice shoes, and
just walk around the streets, meet the people. That’s
if it’s a new country, to see the world, to see the
people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In its statement announcing Hamiri’s release, along
with the release of seven other Guantánamo detainees,
the Department of Defense reduced these men and their
lives to a few perfunctory lines on a page. The hopes,
fears, and personal stories of these men were elided;
they were treated as simply names and numbers. But the
reality of their lives is far more complex than the
official narrative of Guantánamo Bay suggests. Hamiri’s
own writings from prison provide a glimpse into how a
young man’s humanity endured in one the bleakest prisons
of the war on terror.</p>
<p class="caption"><br>
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>