USA

Who are the Guantánamo detainees?

CASE SHEET 11

Bahraini national: Jumah al-Dossari

August 2005

AI Index: AMR 51/129/2005

Full name: Jumah Mohammed Abdul-Latif al-Dossari

Nationality: Bahraini national

Age: 32

Family status: Divorced with a young daughter

"He pushed his face and he smashed it into the concrete floor…There was blood everywhere. When they took him out they hosed the cell down and the water ran red with blood. We all saw it"

Released Guantánamo detainees speaking about the torture of Jumah al-Dossari

Background

Jumah al-Dossari was seized in Pakistan in late 2001 and held for several weeks by the Pakistani authorities. He was then taken in an airplane by US agents to Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan. On the plane he was shackled – he had chains around his thighs, waist and shoulders and his hands were tied behind him. When he complained about the pain, he says he was hit and kicked in the stomach, making him vomit blood.

He was held at Kandahar airbase for approximately two weeks. He was kept with other detainees in a freezing tent with just one bucket as a toilet. He was interrogated several times and tortured – his body shows the scars from this abuse.

In January 2002 Jumah al-Dossari was transferred by US military aircraft to Guantánamo Bay. He and other detainees were chained to the interior of the aircraft. He was made to wear goggles with blackened lenses and ear muffs. When he complained about the pain caused by the manner in which he was chained he was hit repeatedly. He says that later he was given pills to make him sleep.

After many hours the aircraft landed and the detainees were transferred to a second aircraft which flew them to Guantánamo Bay. He was initially held in Camp X-Ray, shackled in cells he says were frequented by rats, snakes and scorpions. He was later transferred to Camp Delta, where at one point he was held in total isolation for five months.

Torture

"The man with the shield threw the shield away, took his helmet off and when the door was unlocked ran in and did a knee drop onto Jumah’s back just between his shoulder blades with his full weight. He must have been about 240 pounds."

Released Guantánamo detainees speaking about the torture of Jumah al-Dossari

In Kandahar, Jumah al-Dossari says he was regularly beaten, once so severely that he vomited and then fainted. He also says that:

1. US Marines urinated on him and on other detainees, and stubbed out cigarettes on their skin.

2. A US soldier pushed his head to the ground while others walked on him.

3. He was kicked in the head, and hit in the eye with an object he could not identify.

4. He was forced to walk barefoot over barbed wire and his head was pushed to the ground on broken glass.

5. He was subjected to electric shocks, spat upon and threatened with death.

In Guantánamo, Jumah al-Dossari says that:

6. He was shackled during interrogations, threatened with rape and regularly beaten. He was threatened with death and told his family would be killed.

7. During one interrogation he was wrapped in Israeli and US flags and asked for his opinion regarding US policy towards Israel. He also claims that the interrogator then threw a copy of the Qu’ran on the floor, and stepped and urinated on it. Notably, an FBI agent at Guantanamo Bay wrote a report in which he described seeing a detainee wrapped in an Israeli flag during an interrogation.

8. He was forced to watch guards having sex and was offered sex with women in return for his cooperation during interrogations.

9. He was severely beaten by the Immediate Response Force (IRF). His head was smashed repeatedly against the floor until he lost consciousness. Three other former detainees have said that they witnessed this beating. They also report that the incident was videotaped.

A book by a former military intelligence soldier at Guantánamo Bay ("Inside the Wire" by Erik Saar) describes Jumah al-Dossari’s face as being black and blue days after the beating. Further, a report by an FBI agent who interviewed him shortly after the beating states that Jumah al-Dossari had "a recent wound on the bridge of his nose." He currently has a prominent scar on his nose that he attributes to the beating.

Detained in Camp 5

"How do I keep myself from going crazy?"

Jumah al-Dossari to his lawyer

In or around May 2004, Jumah al-Dossari was transferred to Camp 5. This Guantánamo facility is modelled on the harsh "super-maximum" security prisons on the US mainland. He is held in a concrete isolation cell, in solitary confinement, for up to 24 hours a day. There is 24-hour lighting and large, loud fans designed to prevent detainees from communicating between cells are kept on all the time. Jumah al-Dossari is only allowed to exercise for up to one hour a week by himself in a small pen, sometimes for no longer than half an hour.

The water in the cell is reported to be yellow, and to smell of sewage. On one occasion he believes he saw worms in the water. Until recently he was allowed only one bottle of water per month - recent reports suggest that the detainees may now be getting three bottles a day following a hunger strike in July 2005. Meals in Camp 5 are reported to be smaller than in other camps and he has reported that occasionally the food is rotten.

He is regularly interrogated in Camp 5 and has been threatened with transfer to Bagram airbase where he was told conditions are far worse than Guantánamo..

Jumah al-Dossari is suffering both physically and psychologically as a result of his detention and torture. He has now been held in solitary confinement for more than a year. For the past two years he has experienced pain in the area of his heart and pain and numbness in his left arm. He also suffers from dizziness and has problems with his teeth and eyesight.

Legal issues

In June 2004 the US Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Rasul v Bush, that the federal courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from foreign nationals detained in Guantánamo Bay. Yet none of the detainees still held there has had the lawfulness of his detention judicially reviewed. Instead, the administration set up Combatant Status Review Tribunals to determine if each detainee was an "enemy combatant". For this process, the detainee had no access to secret evidence used against him or to legal counsel. Furthermore, the tribunals were allowed to draw on evidence extracted under torture or other ill-treatment.

After the June 2004 ruling, lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees filed habeas corpus petitions with the US District Court in Washington DC. The first judge on the DC District Court to interpret the Rasul v Bushdecision, Judge Richard Leon, ruled in favour of the executive authority of the US President during wartime, holding that the Guantánamo detainees had no right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention.

Two weeks later, Federal District Judge Joyce Hens Green gave a different opinion. She rejected the government’s argument that the detainees have no substantive rights, and held that the detainees had the US constitutional right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law. The government is seeking to have a higher court, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, resolve the difference of opinion between the two judges in its favour. Meanwhile, the legal limbo of the detainees continues, with none having had the lawfulness of his detention judicially reviewed.

Whatever the Court of Appeals decides, the case is likely to be sent for appeal to the US Supreme Court. This would keep the detainees in their legal limbo and leave the lawfulness of their detention unreviewed by the courts.

"We brought you here to kill you"

A US soldier reportedly said this to Jumah al-Dossari

TAKE ACTION FOR JUMAH AL-DOSSARI Write to the US authorities: Stating that Jumah al-Dossari and all the other detainees must be given full and fair trials or released; Calling for a full and impartial investigation into the allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Jumah al-Dossari while in US custody, and for all those found responsible to be brought to justice; Calling for the US government to set up a commission of inquiry into all aspects of the USA’s "war on terror" detention policies and practices. Write to the Bahraini authorities: Calling on them to make representations on behalf of Jumah al-Dossari; Seeking assurances that the allegations of torture and ill-treatment while in US custody have been raised with the US authorities; Seeking assurances that if returned to Bahrain, he will be released or charged with a recognizably criminal offence and given a full and fair trial, and that evidence gained through torture will not be used against him. WRITE TO: Alberto Gonzales His Excellency Attorney General Sheikh Muhammad bin Mubarak al-Khalifa US Department of Justice Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Foreign Affairs Washington, DC 20530-0001, USA Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fax: + 1 202 307 6777 PO Box 547 Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov al-Manama, Bahrain If you want to take further action on this case, please contact your national AI office Amnesty International, International Secretariat, Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW, UK. www.amnesty.org

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