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28.03.2008

Reprieve is releasing the fourth in a series of protest pieces called Sketches of My Nightmare, inspired by the suffering of Sami al Haj. Mr. al Haj is an al-Jazeera journalist picked up covering the Afghan war and sent to Guantánamo Bay. He has been on hunger strike in Guantánamo since January 7, 2007.

Sami al Haj drew a series of powerful, graphic sketches that illustrate the suffering in Guantánamo Bay, particularly the abusive treatment of those on hunger strike. The drawings were submitted to the US military censors, and were barred from public release. However, Reprieve also submitted Mr. al Haj’s detailed descriptions of his sketches, which were permitted through the censorship process.

Based on these descriptions, political cartoonist Lewis Peake has now completed the last in a series of four Sketches titled: “THE INFLATABLE MAN.” This last sketch – actually reinterpreted as two separate sketches, based on Mr al-Haj’s original two-part drawing – is Mr. al Haj’s take on the force-feeding of prisoners at Guantánamo. Whether they are emaciated (as in the first picture) or portrayed by the US military as overweight (as in the second), the inhuman process remains the same.

“All they care about is the prisoner’s weight,” Mr al Haj explained. “Are you sick? Are you in pain? Who cares? It is all about the number on the scale. At the top of the drawing there is a skeleton again, but this time without hands or feet. The top of the head, the cranium, even the eyes are gone. Our lives depend on the doctors, but we get nothing from them. So we’re going mad.”

Mr. al Haj also reported that the US soldiers ‘cheat’ on the weights, including the 4.5 lb weight of the shackles, and sometimes even pushing down on the scale.

He continued: “A man who is mad has no mind, but he still has a heart. We’re all going mad here. The skeleton is strapped to a gurney, there’s a tube and a pump, and the gurney is on a scale. It reads 98 lbs. But that’s with the weight of the gurney, and maybe the soldier’s pushing down on the skeleton a bit also.”

Mr al Haj also explained: “As they prepare the feeding they don’t use gloves. When they take the tube out, things come out of the nose, but the people are strapped to the chair, and cannot do anything to clean the revolting tube. There are psychological teams all around, all keen to work out what the impact of this is on the prisoner.”

Mr. al Haj explained what he meant by the second picture of a bloated body. Even if the prisoner’s weight were to rise due to force feeding, he would still be losing his mind: “In the second half of this drawing the prisoner is INFLATED. The man is strapped to the gurney, and the weight on the scale reads 250 lbs. He has filled out, there are rolls of fat on his belly, but he is still mad. The pumps are all hooked up, forcing food into him. But the top half of his head is still vacant.”

Today (March 27, 2008) is the 441st day of Sami al Haj’s hunger strike, where his only demand is liberty or an open and fair trial.

As Reprieve’s Director, Clive Stafford Smith, explained: “Sami al Haj knows more about the brutal force-feeding of prisoners than anyone else in Guantánamo. The IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died in a British prison in 1981, refused food for 66 days. Sami has been on strike for more than a year longer than that. And yet, because he has the courage to protest his imprisonment without charge or trial, he – and Guantánamo’s other hunger strikers – are strapped into restraint chairs twice a day and force-fed in the most abusive manner.”

He added: “Mr. al-Haj’s vivid depictions of the callousness of the military – and of the medical and psychiatric doctors who are shamefully complicit in his torture – serve only to reinforce the power of his basic demand: that the prisoners in Guantánamo be tried in a recognized court, or released without any further delay.”

Backstory: Notes on Sami al Haj’s First, Second and Third Sketches

The sketches are based on drawings done by Mr. al Haj earlier this year, depicting his ongoing hunger strike in Guantánamo. Cori Crider, a lawyer with Reprieve, explained: “When I saw Sami on February 1, he showed me four very gruesome and incredibly detailed sketches. He explained he felt compelled to express the nightmare that he, and the rest of the hungerstrikers in Guantánamo, have been suffering. Sami’s sketches spoke volumes about what he goes through every time they strap him into that chair for forcefeeding. But I knew that they might be censored, so I had him describe what he was trying to say in his own words as well.”

As predicted, Mr. al Haj’s drawings were censored, although a memo describing them was unclassified. Lewis Peake’s drawings try to reflect Mr. al Haj’s design as honestly as possible.

“This is typical of the senseless censorship used by the authorities at Guantánamo, where the motivation is not national security but trying to avoid embarrassment for the illegal acts of the military,” said Clive Stafford Smith. “The Bush Administration can suppress Sami’s sketch, but they can’t stop another artist from replicating it. Ultimately, Sami’s spirit is irrepressible. Like Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, the world will hear him, because he seeks only justice.”

“The first sketch is just a skeleton in the torture chair,” Mr. al Haj explained. “My picture reflects my nightmares of what I must look like, with my head double-strapped down, a tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, strapped into the torture chair with no eyes and only giant cheekbones, my teeth jutting out – my ribs showing in every detail, every rib, every joint. The tube goes up to a bag at the top of the drawing. On the right there is another skeleton sitting shackled to another chair. They are sitting like we do in interrogations, with hands shackled, feet shackled to the floor, just waiting. In between I draw the flag of Guantanamo – JTF-GTMO – but instead of the normal insignia, there is a skull and crossbones, the real symbol of what is happening here.”

“There is a second sketch, which is about the Hospital,” explained Mr. al Haj. “Again it is a skeleton, but with a face this time. The top of the skull is dotted with tracks, tracks of pain. This is the hospital gurney prisoner. He sits completely still, his hands and feet shackled to the side of the bed.”

Speaking of the third sketch, Mr. al Haj explained, “This time, the hooded skeleton is in a three-piece suit. The head is totally blacked out. The wrists are shackled at the back, with chains running down the legs. There are very elaborate arm bones, leg bones and the spine. And again the flag, the Jolly Roger of JTF-GTMO with a diabolical smile on the skull. The title is, naturally, ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’, and it’s signed by me.”

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