Approximately 550 men are being detained at a U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The U.S. government maintains that these detainees can provide critical information on past and future terrorist attacks. The administration calls them "enemy combatants" who are not eligible for the usual protections afforded to prisoners of war.
The International Red Cross, however, concluded after a recent visit that the U.S. military has employed interrogation techniques "tantamount to torture" at Guantánamo.
One detainee reported to have undergone psychological torture is Moazzam Begg, a British citizen who was taken from his apartment in Pakistan by U.S. soldiers in early 2002. He was held at a U.S. base in Afghanistan and later transferred to Guantánamo. Afterward, communication with his family was intermittent and heavily censored.
Guantánamo: 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom' is a play based solely on spoken and written evidence from detainees like Moazzam Begg and their families and legal advocates.
This is an excerpt from the play. You first will hear an actor speaking the actual words of Moazzam's father, and then words that Moazzam himself has written to his family in letters. You also will hear actors speak the words of attorneys Gareth Peirce and Clive Stafford Smith.
This excerpt appears with the kind permission of authors Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, and the Culture Project in New York City, where the full play ran until Dec. 19, 2004. Guantánamo first appeared in London and is directed by Nicolas Kent and Sacha Wares.
To experience this piece, please enable sound.
Epilogue//In June 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees in Guantánamo are entitled to question—in federal court—their status as enemy combatants. The U.S. military responded by establishing tribunals at Guantánamo, where detainees appear before three-person military panels and argue their cases.
In the tribunals, detainees can neither know nor respond to the evidence against them. A handful of civilian lawyers have been allowed to see their clients in Guantánamo, but the lawyers can not reveal the detainees' state of health to their families or report any allegations of torture.
In November 2004, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the tribunal of one detainee be halted until it is determined whether that detainee is a prisoner of war, which would afford him more rights to a trial. The U.S. administration has appealed the judge's decision.
As for Moazzam Begg, he was released from Guantánamo in January 2005, after three years of detention. British police said there was not enough evidence to arrest him in the UK.
For information about the cases of Guantánamo detainees, go to the Center for Constitutional Rights. To read U.S. government releases on Guantánamo, go the Department of Defense.
