Moazzam Begg | ukwatch.net

Interview: Moazzam Begg

JamieSW — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:26:41 +0000

Operation end your freedom

The government won the House of Commons vote to extend detention without trial to 42 days. What do you think about this attack on civil liberties?

It’s important to remember that the government didn’t want 42 days – they wanted 90 days and they’ve settled for less than half of that. What’s really bizarre for me is that I was at the protest close to Downing Street when George Bush visited and I actually caught a glimpse of him.

In 1996 the IRA fired a home-made mortar very close to Downing Street. Despite all of that and the whole of the period of the Troubles in the 1970s, detention without trial – other than internment, which I think was terrible – never went beyond three days as far as the law was concerned. That it’s now 42 is unbelievable. The government do have the power – regardless of whatever it wants on pre-trial detention – to detain people without charge or trial, and they’ve done that in the case of several people held in Belmarsh prison who have been detained for seven to eight years plus.

One lawyer has said it’s tantamount to torture because of the conditions under which people are kept, often without light or contact with people.

The United Nations convention against torture defines it as being both physical and psychological. It’s not just about fingernails being pulled out or being waterboarded or hooded. The psychological effects of being detained without trial are very real. They destroy not only the individual – they destroy their family; they destroy the individual’s ability to reintegrate back into society, to get a job. I know many individuals who have never been charged with anything and yet they can’t be cleared to do any of the jobs they were trained to do to begin with. It’s a bizarre concept because the government is always harping on about how Muslims need to integrate.

How have you been treated by the government and media since your release from Guantanamo?

The government hasn’t treated me in any particular way, other than not allowing me to leave the country without express permission – a condition for my release and the release of others at the same time. Other than that the government hasn’t really put any stops on me at all and hasn’t caused me any problems. I have even spoken inside the House of Commons many times.

The public has been fine. I spend most of my time speaking up and down the country to thousands of people and I get a tremendous response from the average person. I get very little, if any, hostility from people at all. As far as the media is concerned, it varies. Most of the time they call on me to comment on one thing or another, but what I often have to say is that it’s sad that we’re walking into a situation nearing that of a police state.

Samina Malik, the “lyrical terrorist”, has recently won the appeal against her charges. There was a big furore when she was first convicted and very little coverage now that she has won the appeal.

I’ve met people, from the heads of the BBC to ITN, and spoken to them about these specific issues – the sensationalist style of reporting on issues surrounding Muslims – and they’ve often said that they have to get there before the Sky News helicopter.

There doesn’t seem to be an onus on good quality reporting. It seems to be more about what fits the pattern. So when a former member of the British National Party was arrested for possessing a huge haul of chemicals which could be used for explosives in Pendle last year, they felt it wasn’t newsworthy in the same way that it would have been had he been a Muslim. It is sad, but it’s the reality. Sensational reporting will take place when there’s an arrest but there will be very little if that person is released or found not guilty. The media decides to take upon itself to become the mouthpiece of government policy.

What has been the impact of all this on young Muslims today? Has it got to the stage where people don’t know what’s legal and what isn’t?

I don’t think it’s just Muslims actually. I think most people are confused as to what they can and can’t do. How does somebody avoid the sort of prosecution cases we’ve seen against the “lyrical terrorist” or people who’ve downloaded things from the internet? People don’t really know what the parameters of the law are any more. I remember discussing this with some former IRA prisoners of war who were released as part of the Good Friday Agreement, and one of the things they said was that at least in their time they were convicted of things that they did, or were planning to do.

Today people are being convicted literally for thoughts; for looking at things, for having something on a computer or having a copy of the Al Qaida manual downloaded from a US government website. It’s ludicrous.

What was your aim when you started writing your book in Guantanamo?

I wanted people to learn from it. In a sense the book was about my experience with the US and of the US. I’d never been there before it came to me. But it was for US soldiers and also British soldiers who are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also for the British public, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

For the Muslims it was to give strength and hope, and for the non-Muslims to give a glimpse of a world parallel to them but that perhaps they don’t know very well. We’re not so different; we all want the same things. We want security; we want happiness. We love; we get angry; we get upset.

That was my intention, to make people understand. Not necessarily to empathise or sympathise – not everyone is going to be my friend just because they think I’ve been tortured or abused. I want to look beyond that and look at the society we’re in. It’s not just about tolerance – we can tolerate anything – it’s about acceptance. If they can accept difference, then that’s the Britain that I thought we were heading towards and wanted.

Are you surprised at the support you have when you give talks?

The support is tremendous. It’s so difficult to quantify. It’s massive, and it’s continuous. Last night I was speaking in Cambridge and a lady came up to me at the end and said, “I’ve never been at political meetings, I’ve never been involved in these sorts of things, but just listening to you has made me want to be involved more than I ever was and I am going to make it a point upon myself to learn about things before I ever make judgements.”

Some people may have some fixed views, but once they face them they’ll find that they’ve been mistaken. I’m trying to break stereotypes, to explain to people that we are not, and I am not, representative of what they may have assumed.

The US still claims that it does not use inhumane treatment at Guantanamo. How does this sit with your own experiences?

We have a detention site in Cuba where there is no freedom, and outside the walls and the cages you have written on the plaques “Honour bound to defend freedom”. They called it “Operation: Enduring Freedom”, but freedom isn’t something that you endure. Freedom is a right for every creature on this planet, from the point that it’s born to the point that it leaves its life.

The things that you have to endure are torture; cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment; being beaten, punched and spat at; humiliation; pain without charge or trial; being falsely imprisoned; being held away from your family. They should call these things “Operation: End Your Freedom”. It would be nearer the truth.

Guantanamo has become untenable. Even Colin Powell, one of the architects of the “war on terror”, has waded in. He wasn’t one of those further on the right, but he was certainly there. He called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. It has become chic to call for its closure – everybody’s doing it.

But Guantanamo is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is much more sinister and causes much more damage – the secret detention sites where the majority of the people held in the “war on terror” are. After going through some of those secret detention sites, I was looking forward to going to Guantanamo.

What impact have organisations like Liberty and Reprieve made in highlighting the conditions of prisoners and people who’ve suffered rendition?

I think they have made an impact – there’s no doubt about that. Clive Stafford Smith, of Reprieve, was the first person I met in Guantanamo. There is also my own organisation, Cage Prisoners, which consists of prisoners. The organisations are very good but they speak on our behalf and they need to hear what we – the prisoners, the people who went through and continue to go through the process – have to say about what happened.

One thing that has surprised people is your level of sympathy with the Guantanamo prison guards.

The important thing to remember is that they are individuals, and I dealt with them and judge them according to my experiences with them. There are some good, some bad and some in between. People are complex characters.

Many of the soldiers treated me and other detainees in a decent way. It’s important not to let any personal experience of torture or witnessing murder cloud my judgement of the others who were appalled that it was taking place, are appalled now, and have apologised for their wrong – even though they didn’t take part in the torture. I think it’s important to recognise that many of these people have now become outspoken against the “war on terror” and their own government, which requires a level of courage and bravery which should be commended.

But as far as the system they were part of then, yes, it is one that destroys lives and continues to do so. If the argument is that this has happened as a result of the 11 September 2001 attacks, well, it happened seven years ago. The deaths in the US stopped on 11 September. Deaths have not stopped in Afghanistan and Iraq from the day they were invaded. You cannot justify the deaths of untold numbers – millions perhaps. But who knows? who cares? who counts? – because of the tragic deaths on 11 September.

I spoke to one of the Guantanamo guards, and suggested organising a speaking tour. He said he was happy to do it. I’m concerned for his safety more than anything else – particularly on his return to the US having spoken on a platform with a former Guantanamo detainee. After all, his president did designate us as “the worst of the worst, most dangerous men on the planet”. But if he’s able to do so then I will be too.

You wrote about how you heard about the Stop the War demonstrations in Britain when you were in Guantanamo. What effect did that have on you personally and on British society today?

The Stop the War movement has become a buffer between people who may want to carry out acts of violence on innocent Westerners, and the government itself that does carry out acts of violence against people in the Middle East.

I had a conversation with the only self-described member of Al Qaida I’ve met, in Guantanamo. He said that people in the West are not innocent because they vote in their leaders and therefore must share part of the blame. I explained that most people vote on domestic issues like the health service and roads. I said that you’ll probably find a great number of them don’t support the war, but when you strike you don’t discriminate. Then he started thinking about it a little bit.

The Stop the War movement is a buffer which helps prevent terrorism in a way that the government would never conceive; when they see people demonstrating against the war it helps to pacify some of the radical elements who would otherwise have said, “They’re all the same – go and bomb the whole lot of them.”

After your experiences many might have opted for a quiet life, to recover and rebuild your family life and everything else. What inspires you to keep fighting?

On the day I returned from Guantanamo I was welcomed back to the country in a cell especially prepared for me in Paddington Green police station. Shortly after that I met the solicitor Gareth Peirce – the first really friendly face I’d met in all these years. She couldn’t be there for me for the next day as she had to go the House of Lords for a historic decision was going to be passed about the detention of terror suspects who had been held for three years.

That’s the same amount of time I had been held in Guantanamo, but in this country. I realised what sort of situation I returned to. I couldn’t just sit around. People I knew were being held in Guantanamo and secret detention sites, and I was a witness in history to what had taken place. To remain silent would be doing a great disservice to myself and people being held, especially in the wake of the 7 July bombings, the racist Islamophobia that has resulted, and foreign policy. It’s been important for me to speak out.

It has given me a great sense of strength and moral support to see that there are a great number of people in this country who haven’t given in to the ludicrous attitude of the government and some forms of the media, and have stood bravely challenging both of them. As long as that remains in this country, I’m very pleased to be part of it.

Close Guantánamo Now

Tim Holmes — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:51:47 +0000

The announcement that the British government has formally requested the repatriation of five British residents held in Guantánamo to the UK has been met by their family members and supporters with a sense of profound elation and relief.

When I received a call this morning from one of the lawyers advocating on the men’s behalf, I wanted to cry. Gareth Peirce, my friend and lawyer, had been the first friendly face I’d seen on my return to the UK over two and a half years ago; it seemed so apt that she now was informing me of the impending release of the men whose freedom I’ve campaigned for since my return.

However, instead of breaking down in tears, I called the relatives of Shaker Aamer, Jamil el-Banna and Omar Deghayes. Some of them had already heard: hand-delivered letters had been received from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirming what I’d heard. Some of them, though, did break down in tears when I gave them the news. I don’t know how may times, over the past five and a half years in some cases, these men, women and children have cried in anguish, not knowing when they would see their loved ones again. But this time is undoubtedly the first when those tears have been of joy, not despair.

This commendable decision by the government took more than half a decade to reach. During that time, Shaker’s youngest son, Faaris, whom he’s never seen, has grown into a beautiful five-year-old, as has Jamil’s youngest daughter, Maryam, whom he, too, has never seen. And last year, Jamil’s mother died, after hoping in vain that she’d get to see her son once more before she passed away.

The five men are Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer, Jamil el-Banna, Omar Deghayes, Abdulnour Sameur and Binyam Mohammed al-Habashi. Out of these, only Binyam was designated for trial by military commission – a process that has the US government and judiciary at constant loggerheads with each another. Some of the others were even cleared for release over a year ago, but the UK government had always maintained it could not make representations on behalf of non-UK citizens.

So why the apparent volte face? After the return of Bisher al-Rawi earlier this year, the UK resident for whom the government did make representations – after four years in Guant&aacutenamo – when it was revealed that he’d been cooperating closely with MI5 prior to his incarceration, the insistence that the UK could not advocate on behalf non-UK nationals became painfully absurd.

I am sure this decision is designed, in part, to help the government in its ‘hearts and minds’ campaign. I wish them every success. But for me and many others, the fight to have the Guantánamo prison facility shut down and its occupants returned home continues. In the meantime, we welcome the government’s move and wait eagerly for the prisoners to be reunited with their families.

From Anomaly to Ordeal

Alex Doherty — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:09:12 +0000

They have been unceremoniously paraded on television screens across the world as combatants acting illegally. Rightwing hardliners demanded their trial, long-term imprisonment and possible execution. But the released captives have repeatedly claimed they were blindfolded and kept in solitary confinement, treated harshly and subjected to psychological torture, and that they had no meaningful communication with their loved ones other than what was reported by the media, which never had free access to them.

The captives were bound and threatened with arbitrary detention for years if they did not cooperate. False confessions were made – allegedly under duress. And their distraught families, fearing the worst, have had to wait in anguish.

Meanwhile, the host nation is having a go at damage control. It realises it may have miscalculated the international response to its attempt to look tough on security matters. So the counter-information machine beams pictures very different to the one the returnees will paint. In this picture, the captives are shown enjoying themselves, playing board games and sports, indulging in lavish meals and wearing new clothing. The country’s leader dismisses the claims of torture and degrading treatment as concocted lies and propaganda.

Having taken many casualties at the hands of foreign-backed terror groups who call themselves mujahideen, as well as having suffered heavy losses in the Iraq war, the heightened state of alert is somewhat understandable. And yet, while claiming to be an example of democracy and morality, this nation has policies that demonstrate a contemptuous disregard for the international community, from which it regularly earns scathing criticism.

However, since this country’s current president is a deeply religious man who has the firm conviction that he is on a mission from the Almighty, especially when it comes to the Middle East, he cares little what the critics say.

But Blair hits back, with unequivocal condemnation of the treatment of the British captives and demands for a swift resolution. Failure to comply will have consequences, he warns.

A few readers may have assumed I was thus far referring to the case of the released British naval personnel, but they would be wrong. Because I am talking about Gitmo – and Blair was never so passionate about that.

The plight of British citizens abducted under US auspices (of whom I was one) and detained by them for over three years, the continuing plight of the long-term British residents still in Guantánamo, has never been condemned by the present UK government. In fact, while we were being interrogated by MI5 in Kandahar, Bagram and Guantánamo, my family in England was receiving letters from the Foreign Office claiming the US military would not grant access to foreign officials.

The released sailors have spoken about the harrowing torment of being made to kneel blindfolded and hearing the shick-shick sound of a round being chambered in an assault rifle before interrogation. I heard that sound so often during the first year in US custody that I stopped being afraid of it: the punches and kicks, the suffocation under the hood, the agony of being hogtied and the sounds of screams I was made to believe were coming from members of my family were doing an adequate job of keeping me frightened.

Tony Blair described the capture and treatment of the British sailors in Iranian custody as “cruel and callous”. He called the detained personnel “hostages” who had had to endure an unimaginable ordeal; it took him four years just to call Guantánamo an “anomaly”.

Only days ago, it seemed highly unlikely that the captives would be released any time soon. But they were released, all 16 of them – 15 from Iran and one from Guantánamo. The long-term British resident Bisher al-Rawi is home after over four and a half years in US custody; the British naval personnel held in Iran are home after just over a fortnight.

The last time I saw Bisher was in the winter of 2002 at the notorious Bagram airbase detention camp. The rules forbade talking, walking, standing up and communal prayer. But we still managed short, whispered conversations. There was no going outside, no fresh food, no hot drinks, little fruit and no water to wash with. Punishments included being hooded and having ones hands shackled to the top of the cell door for hours – sometimes days. The only sound to break the deafening, monotonous silence was of the screams of prisoners – men and women – being interrogated. Two of these prisoners were beaten to death by US soldiers within yards of where Bisher and I were kept.

Bisher, along with his companion, Jamil el-Banna, had both been extraordinarily rendered from Gambia to Bagram. The marks of abuse were evident on their bruised faces. In February 2003, we were all made to board the excruciating 36-hour flight to Guantánamo wearing earmuffs, face masks, blacked-out goggles and, of course, shackles on hands, waistss and feet. I never met Bisher and Jamil after that because I spent most of my two years in Guantánamo in solitary confinement.

The families of the released seamen and the family of Bisher are relieved and celebrating the retur of their loved one. The wife of Jamil el-Banna and his children (all British citizens) are not so fortunate.

When I visited the el-Banna family last week I was shown a Foreign Office letter to Jamil’s 10-year-old son stating that officials are unable to make any representation for his father because he is not a British citizen. I was also shown another document that harks back to a time when the British government had made another fine mess of its foreign policy. It was was Jamil’s father’s passport. It’s British, issued under British Mandate Palestine.

Enemy Combatant

Tim Holmes — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:06:57 +0000

In February 2002, the British-born Moazzam Begg was seized by the CIA in Islamabad. No reasons were given for his arrest. He was hooded, shackled and cuffed and flown to the U.S. detention facility at Kandahar, then to Bagram airbase where he was held for approximately a year before being transferred to Guantanamo. The U.S. government labeled him an “enemy combatant.” He was never charged with a crime. In all, Moazzam spent three years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He was subjected to over three hundred interrogations as well as death threats and torture. At Bagram, he witnessed the killing of two fellow detainees. In January 2005, he was released from Guantanamo along with three other British citizens. He received no apology or compensation for his imprisonment.

Moazzam is a British citizen, born and raised in Birmingham. The story of his ordeal begins in mid-2001 when he moved to Afghanistan with his wife and three young children to work as an aid worker in education and water projects. After September 11th and the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, he relocated to Pakistan. In February 2002, Moazzam was seized by the CIA in Islamabad. No reasons were given for his arrest. He was hooded, shackled and cuffed and flown to the U.S. detention facility at Kandahar, then to Bagram airbase where he was held for approximately a year before being transferred to Guantanamo. The U.S. government labeled him an “enemy combatant.” He was never charged with a crime. In all, Moazzam spent three years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He was subjected to over three hundred interrogations as well as death threats and torture. At Bagram, he witnessed the killing of two fellow detainees. In January 2005, he was released from Guantanamo along with three other British citizens. He received no apology or compensation for his imprisonment. Moazzam Begg has written a book about his experience that has just been published in the United States titled “Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar. It is the first book known to be published by a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner. Moazaam Begg joins us on the satellite from Birmingham.

AMY GOODMAN: We are going now to Birmingham, England, where Moazzam Begg joins us by satellite. We welcome you to Democracy Now!

MOAZZAM BEGG: Hello.

AMY GOODMAN: Its good to have you with us. Before we talk about your experience, Moazzam, we’ve just spent the first half of the broadcast talking about whats happened in Lebanon and specifically the latest Israeli air strike on Qana, and I was wondering if you could share your response.

MOAZZAM BEGG: I think my response is pretty much similar to most normal, good, reasonable-thinking people, and that is, utter outrage and a terrible amount of sorrow. Listening to Robert Fisk and what he has spoken about has just reiterated what most people have felt all along, and that is, an apparent double standard is applied by a lot of the Western powers in relation to the actions of Israel and how they’re behaving in relation to targeting innocent civilians. My wife, herself, is Palestinian, and I went to a Jewish school, so I understand both sides. But I can’t understand at all the raison d’etre, the justification of killing innocent civilians, children, for goodness sake. Its heartbreaking.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you a clip of your prime minister —

MOAZZAM BEGG: Im sorry?

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you a clip of your prime minister, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He had a joint news conference with President Bush in Washington, D.C. This was before the Qana bombing. It was on Friday.

PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: Look, weve had a problem even in our own Muslim communities in Europe, who will half-buy into some of the propaganda thats pushing it: the purpose of America is to suppress Islam; you know, Britain is joined with America in the suppression of Islam. And one of the things weve got to stop doing is stop apologizing for our own positions. You know, Muslims in America, as far as Im aware, are free to worship. Muslims in Britain are free to worship. We are plural societies.

Its nonsense. The propaganda is nonsense, and were not going to defeat this ideology until we in the West go out with sufficient confidence in our own position and say this is wrong. Its not just wrong in its methods, its wrong in its ideas, its wrong in its ideology. Its wrong in every single wretched reactionary thing about it. And it will be a long struggle, Im afraid. But theres no alternative but to stay the course with it. And we will.

AMY GOODMAN: British Prime Minister Tony Blair, standing with President Bush, unlike a number of members of Blair’s cabinet, and also past cabinet ministers, like Jack Straw, in opposing an immediate ceasefire. Moazzam Begg, your response to your own prime minister.

MOAZZAM BEGG: I think, again, it reiterates that our own prime minister, sadly, although hes been elected into office so many times, is not in touch with the reality of what most of the people feel in relation to his foreign policy vis-a-vis President Bush. It seems that he is falling and fallen down this path, whereby hes inadvertently or advertently demonized a whole population, a whole section of this country and of the greater world, by being involved in these actions, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, now complicity by not doing anything in relation to Lebanon.

And to say somehow that the grievances of the Muslim world and community are ridiculous and ludicrous and have no basis is itself the height of stupidity, in my opinion, in how he is trying to tackle the problems that are arising as a result of these actions, which, of course, according to his closest advisors have said will increase the likelihood of terrorism in this country and in the world and make the world a much less safe place than it already is.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to talk about your own situation, about being imprisoned for three years, the U.S. calling you an enemy combatant. You just mentioned that you went to Jewish schools. Can you explain?

MOAZZAM BEGG: Yes, I went initially to a Jewish school, a Jewish primary school in this country, in this city, and my father sort of sent me there because of his liberal attitude towards faith and towards living in this country, and also the standard of education there was higher than most schools. During my time there, my best friends, for the greater part of my early years, were all Jewish. I learned to speak a bit of Hebrew. I celebrated Chanukah and Purim and Pesach and Yom Kippur with all the other Jewish kids. I used to wave around the Israeli flag, and in the evenings I used to go home and have my Koranic study lessons. So, there was no contradiction. In fact, it helped to broaden my understanding of the greater world, of which I was a part of.

So, as I said before, I have an understanding and an empathy towards the Jewish people, in general, that perhaps a lot of people in my position wouldn’t. And yet also, as I said before, my wife is Palestinian. She’s never been back home to Palestine, because her parents were thrown out in 1948. They still hold onto the documents or the deeds of the properties, in the dream that one day theyll return to their homes. And, of course, thats another side of the whole story of Muslim disaffection in the world, which we are seeing today has not stopped, and that is as a result of the aggression inside Palestine by the Israeli government.

AMY GOODMAN: Moazzam, we have to break. When we come back, I want to talk about your experiences in the three U.S. prisons, Kandahar, Bagram, and Guantanamo, and talk about what you witnessed there and talk about what you experienced there. Were speaking to Moazzam Begg, a former prisoner at the three U.S. prisons.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We continue our discussion with Moazzam Begg. He was a prisoner at three U.S. prisons. He has written a book called Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar. He joins us by satellite from Birmingham, England, where he lives with his family, after being released last year after three years of imprisonment. Moazzam, can you start from the beginning of your detention? Can you start in Pakistan, why you were there? The year was 2001, it was in the midst of the bombing of Afghanistan. And can you describe what happened on the day you were detained?

MOAZZAM BEGG: Yes. I had evacuated to Pakistan in Islamabad, where I have family and relatives, with my own wife and children, after we had been living in Afghanistan, where I had worked on a project to build a girls school and to build wells in the drought-stricken regions of the northwest. It was the 31st of January, 2002. It was several months after I had arrived in Pakistan and was still there, that at midnight, I heard a knock on the door, and when I opened the door, I was faced with a group of civilians — well, were dressed in civilian clothing, at least — pointing guns towards me, and a few of them had tasers or stun guns cracking in the background.

Nobody said a word to me at all. I was pushed straight back into the front room of my house, pushed to the grounds on my knees. My hands were shackled behind my back, and my legs were shackled, too, and the last thing I saw before a hood was placed over my head was them walking towards the room where my wife and children were sleeping. And I told them, Don’t go in there, please. That was the last thing, the last words that I said in my house.

I was physically picked up and taken into the back of a vehicle, which I believe was some sort of a jeep, and driven off to an unknown location, which I believe was close to where I live, not too far away, in that it didnt take too long to get there. And one of the things that happened was that during the journey, somebody lifted the hood, and I was lying in a prone position in the backseat, and I saw this, what appeared to be a Caucasian man dressed pretty badly, I would say, as a local, taking a photograph. And the next person was this, again, I believe American, who spoke and produced a pair of handcuffs, and he said that he was given these handcuffs by the wives of one of the September 11th victims, for him to go and capture the perpetrators. And so that was my first encounter with American intelligence in my whole period of incarceration, which was to last for the next three years.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you an excerpt of a conversation we had with your father, Azmat Begg. He was in the studio in New York with us when you were in the midst of your imprisonment. Im going to play that in a few minutes, but if you could talk then about where they took you, once they put you in this car in the trunk of the car, where were you brought to? And did you know where you were?

MOAZZAM BEGG: There was always an air of secrecy about my location, so I was never told exactly where I was, although sometimes I learned from sympathetic or empathetic guards. Initially, the Pakistanis were very apologetic about having brought me into custody. They said it was all because of the Americans pushing for it.

After a couple of weeks I was handed over to U.S. custody, which was completely different to how the Pakistanis treated me, of course. The Pakistanis were very gentle. They didn’t hurt me or beat me, swear at me, or abuse me in any way, other than falsely imprison me. But once I was in U.S. custody, it all changed, and I believed the opposite to be true, because Pakistan is a third world country where torture is part of an unwritten convention, if not written constitution. So that when I was eventually given into American custody and taken over to Kandahar, the treatment that I received through the processing was probably the most dehumanizing process, I think, that anybody has ever endured in recent times, which included having soldiers sit on me and then many other detainees, several of them pushing down on my head and my legs and my back; ripping open my clothes with a knife, which I could feel slicing, the cold blade against the back of my legs and back; and then photographs being taken of me naked; being shackled; being spat at; photographs of me shaven and unshaven; photographs of soldiers abusing me and other detainees; and derisive remarks about being a terrorist, being a murder, being Muslim scum, things like this; dogs barking; and then eventually being taken over to an FBI agent who looked rather strange with his FBI cap on, while Im shivering there naked, and him asking me when was the last time I saw Mullah Omar, when was the last time I saw Osama bin Laden, which is a standard question that they asked of every detainee.

Eventually, I was clothed and moved into a disused barn that was caged within by concertina razor wire, in which I spent the next few weeks. After that period, which lasted for about six weeks with all sorts of minor abuses and major abuses upon me and other people, notwithstanding the fact that even during this time I managed to make friends, if I could call it that, with many of the guards who seemed to understand that they were overstepping on the boundaries of what they felt soldiers in the U.S. military are supposed to do.

After that period of six weeks, I was moved to Bagram, and Bagram was this disused Russian factory near the air base, still with inscriptions in Russian around the building, where interrogation was of a stricter and more stringent nature. And I was placed in one of the cells, communal cells, that were in this facility, of which there were six, and held there for approximately ten months. And I think the worst interrogation techniques that Ive ever faced in custody were perpetrated in Bagram.

It was probably in the month of May that I came across the harshest, and that was when FBI, CIA, Military Intelligence and a host of other people who were interrogating me threatened to send me to Egypt to be tortured. They said that a senior ranking member of al-Qaeda had been sent to Egypt, where he was forced into giving a confession that al-Qaeda had been working on weapons of mass destruction with Saddam Hussein, which, of course, is now found to be a complete, utter lie, which was said under torture and had no basis. But at that point, I didn’t know this, of course. Ive known this subsequently. At that point, I had a very real fear of being sent there. I was tied with my hands behind my back, hogtied in an animal-type position, kicked, beaten, punched, sworn at, and so forth. And to top it off, I was threatened — or rather, I felt that the woman they had screaming next door was actually my wife, because up until this point I had no idea as to what had happened to her from the day that I had been abducted from my house.

And probably, if you can get worse than this, it would be the witnessing of the deaths of two detainees. The first one was in June 2002, as part of what I was told was an escape attempt. This detainee had been captured from an area from behind my cell by two of the guards. I saw them dragging his beaten and bruised limp body across from in front of my cell, where they took him to the medical room. Shortly afterwards, after the doctors had come and the medics, they carried his body out on a stretcher, covered.

And the second death that I saw was in December 2002. A well-documented case now is the case of detainee 421, Mr. Dilawar, who was held in my cell in the what’s known as the airlock area, with his hands suspended above his head, shackled, and a hood placed over him, because it was deemed that he needed to be broken, and the method that they used to break him was through sleep deprivation, and by the time that they came to take him again, after he had been held for several days in this similar type of position, his body had gone limp. He had been calling for unintelligible noises — making unintelligible noises, and eventually when they came to take him, rather than administer to him medical treatment, they started punching him, kicking him, and then removed him.

We never heard of him ever again, as detainees, but I heard of him specifically from internal investigators a year and a half later in Guantanamo, when they brought in photographs of him alive and then photographs of his corpse. They asked me to describe, if I could, the circumstances of which I had seen his beating of and then to point out who I believed the soldiers who were responsible for those beatings were, which I did. And greatly ironically, when I was putatively sent, facing my own trial, a military commission in the United St— in Guantanamo, they asked me whether I would be willing to stand up as a witness in a trial against these soldiers, so it was quite bizarre, actually.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you think they were holding you because you had witnessed this?

MOAZZAM BEGG: I certainly think that being in Guantanamo in solitary confinement for such a long time was one of factors. I have no doubt about that, because of the way in which they questioned me about and continued to ask me about this. I had written a statement back in Bagram, asking and demanding many things. One of the things I had asked for in Bagram from the interrogators was to be able to take a polygraph test and to be asked these questions: had I ever been involved in terrorism? Had I committed acts of terrorism or prepared terrorism or been a member of a terrorist group or al-Qaeda? Or had I met bin Laden? Or any of those sort of things that could help to prove my innocence. They didn’t do this, but also I asked and noted that I had witnessed these two deaths, and I intended to make this known to the public at whatever time it is that I would be freed.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Moazzam Begg, former prisoner of the U.S. military at Guantanamo, at Kandahar and at Guantanamo. In the headlines today, we read the Washington Post piece about an obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled congress a decade ago thats made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts. Do you think these men, these soldiers, should be prosecuted? And how far up do you think it should go?

MOAZZAM BEGG: I think thats a very important point. In the case of the last detainee who I mentioned, Mr. Dilawar, there were several of the guards who I remember were involved, to one degree or another, as after I have read about their cases, in the killing. And what one of the soldiers, Willie Brand, mentions is that he felt that it was part of this broad guideline under the standard operating procedures that they had, that it was okay to administer these strikes to the thigh, which was done to this detainee, I believe, over 30 times. And it does beg the question as to when people within the White House, Donald Rumsfeld and others, are asked, Is it okay for these detainees to stand for hours on end? and he replies, Well, I stand for hours on end in my job, in my capacity as the Defense Secretary, then why can’t these detainees do so? And, of course, he’s not mentioning that they’re being beaten at the same time or being tied to the top of a cage.

It is having a trickle effect, from when they say right from the outset, when people have not been charged, not been convicted, not had any access to any legal recourse, that the people in power, the most powerful men on earth, are saying that they’re killers, that they’re terrorists, that they’re murderers, that they’re the scum of the earth, that they are the worst of the worst, that they’re bad people, although we don’t know what they’ve done. These are all direct quotes from the people in power in the United States of America. So when the soldier, the average soldier on the ground, the enlisted soldier, sees these things, he feels he’s got carte blanche to basically do what he wants to, because he’s in a proximity of the war zone, and Bagram and Kandahar, places like that, are regarded as war zones, even though the scale of military operations within Bagram is extremely limited, if at all perpetrated by Taliban in that region.

So I think that there is a huge level of culpability from the commanding officers all the way to the top, because it’s not just one or two cases. There are many cases, and it follows a pattern. We know that what took place in Abu Ghraib, if somebody was to show me the pictures and say, “Who did this?” without me ever knowing that the Americans had been involved or whether it was in Iraq, I could easily say to you that it was — this is definitely Americans doing this, from the style and the method in which they treated detainees in Kandahar and Bagram. It does follow a pattern.

AMY GOODMAN: Moazzam, in your book, Enemy Combatant, you do say that you went to several training camps. What were these camps? Why did you go? When did you go?

MOAZZAM BEGG: The first camp that I went to was in 1993. It was run by the Kashmiri organization called Jamaat-e-Islami, and it was in a border region within Afghanistan. The reason I went there was because I was in Pakistan, I was invited by them to go. Its not unusual for people in Pakistan at that time to have visited many of these sort of Kashmiri-based camps. Indeed, the greatest Pakistani sort of population in this country, of Muslims, actually come from Kashmir, so its not unusual for people to go to these types of places, but to insinuate somehow that its part of al-Qaeda or that — you know, al-Qaeda didn’t even exist, as far as I understand, at that point, and certainly the Taliban didn’t. And the Taliban actually closed down this camp when they came into power, as they did the second one that I visited, which was in 1998. I only went there for a day, because I was living in Pakistan. It was over the border. I crossed over into Afghanistan to swim in the lakes and to meet the people who were living there, and the camp was actually run by Kurds, anti-Saddam Hussein Kurds who had set up a camp there since their village had been destroyed in the Halabja massacres of 1988. No connection with al-Qaeda there.

AMY GOODMAN: Weren’t those Kurds supported by the United States?

MOAZZAM BEGG: Well, they were supposed to be, but I think well after, they were supported by the United States. But their whole position was that, you know, they came over to Afghanistan to be able to set up some sort of forum to defend themselves. And, yes, of course, the Kurds in general were supported by the United States, but that, in the great scheme of things after September 11, really mattered very little, when they bombed everybody indiscriminately.

AMY GOODMAN: Moazzam Begg, we have come to the end of this segment of the broadcast. We continue with part two of our interview with Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo, Kandahar and Bagram prisoner. He has written the story of his life, Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar. Tomorrow we’ll bring you part two of our interviews with Moazzam Begg, as well as with Robert Fisk reporting from Lebanon.