Karen Greenberg writing in The Guardian's Comment is Free - her latest book, The Least Worst Place, Guantánamo's First 100 Days (Oxford University Press), has just been published - reflects on how few Gitmo prisoners are as well known as Binyam Mohamed. US detention policy is designed to strip prisoners of their identities.
"When Binyam Mohamed set foot last week onto British soil after seven excruciating years of imprisonment in Pakistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he left the airport with his hand shielding his eyes, obscuring the rest of his features as well. The facelessness of Mohamed is but a reminder of the overall facelessness of the detainees in US custody.
Few detainees are as well known by name as Binyam Mohamed – whose civilian lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has periodically publicised details of his torture, including the use of razors to cut his client's penis. Yet even in this case, we don't have a widely known face before us when we hear his name. Startlingly, not a single photograph of a Guantánamo detainee is imprinted on public consciousness in America. After seven years, 800 prisoners and valiant efforts by human rights advocates, pro bono lawyers and an outraged minority of citizens, we are still talking about detainees in the abstract.
In Mohamed's case, the anonymity was the detainee's own choice. Yet his current desire to go unseen perversely echoes the policy of facelessness that has characterised American detention policy from its inception. When Guantánamo first opened in January 2002, the US enforced a non-photo policy on visitors. Citing the Geneva Conventions, which they were otherwise eager to declare inapplicable to the detainees, US officials insisted that press photos reveal no detainee faces. Paradoxically, given an alleged desire to avoid humiliation, photos of the detainees when hooded, goggled and ear-muffed were allowed. Not surprisingly, the infamous photos of the detainees in orange jumpsuits, shackled and bent over on their knees in an outdoor pen, was released by defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office. Nothing could have more effectively portrayed the identity-less, impotent nature of the detainees and the potency of the US authorities."
"When Binyam Mohamed set foot last week onto British soil after seven excruciating years of imprisonment in Pakistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he left the airport with his hand shielding his eyes, obscuring the rest of his features as well. The facelessness of Mohamed is but a reminder of the overall facelessness of the detainees in US custody.
Few detainees are as well known by name as Binyam Mohamed – whose civilian lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has periodically publicised details of his torture, including the use of razors to cut his client's penis. Yet even in this case, we don't have a widely known face before us when we hear his name. Startlingly, not a single photograph of a Guantánamo detainee is imprinted on public consciousness in America. After seven years, 800 prisoners and valiant efforts by human rights advocates, pro bono lawyers and an outraged minority of citizens, we are still talking about detainees in the abstract.
In Mohamed's case, the anonymity was the detainee's own choice. Yet his current desire to go unseen perversely echoes the policy of facelessness that has characterised American detention policy from its inception. When Guantánamo first opened in January 2002, the US enforced a non-photo policy on visitors. Citing the Geneva Conventions, which they were otherwise eager to declare inapplicable to the detainees, US officials insisted that press photos reveal no detainee faces. Paradoxically, given an alleged desire to avoid humiliation, photos of the detainees when hooded, goggled and ear-muffed were allowed. Not surprisingly, the infamous photos of the detainees in orange jumpsuits, shackled and bent over on their knees in an outdoor pen, was released by defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office. Nothing could have more effectively portrayed the identity-less, impotent nature of the detainees and the potency of the US authorities."
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