“Can Obama Bring Back My Mother, Life?”
“Obama has no idea what I have lost.
I have lost everything,” Iqbal told
IOL in an exclusive interview.
LAHORE — Watching the news about US President Barack Obama’s decision to close down Guantanamo within a year did not bring a smile on the face of Mohammad Saad Iqbal.
It rather reminded the 31-year-old Pakistani of the hellish days he endured in the notorious detention center and how that many innocent people would still have to do that for more 365 long days.
“Obama has given one more year to brutal interrogators to torture innocent people,” Iqbal, released last August, told IslamOnline.net in an exclusive interview in his family’s home in Lahore.
The US has been holding hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo, opened in 2002, for years, branding them unlawful enemy combatants to deny them legal rights under the US legal system.
Obama ordered Guantanamo closure last week together with a case-by-case review of the 245 detainees still held there to determine if they should be released, transferred or prosecuted.
“This is eyewash,” insists Iqbal who, like many of those thrown into Guantanamo, shuttled around the globe under the George W. Bush administration’s system of extraordinary renditions.
He arrived in his Lahore home in August after a six-year-ordeal of humiliation, interrogation and ill-treatment under US orders in Indonesia, Egypt and Afghanistan, not to mention five years at Guantanamo.
Iqbal was never convicted of any crime, or even charged with one.
“The closure of Guantanamo is not enough.
“What about those who lost precious years of their lives just on the basis of suspicion.”
Ordeal
Iqbal closes his eyes in pain as he recalls how the years of horror began.
“It was January 9, 2002,” he recalls.
The young lecturer of Islamic studies and Qur’an reciter at Radio Pakistan was on a visit to his step-mother in Jakarta when he was picked up by Indonesian secret agents acting on US orders.
“On the very next day, they handed me over to Egyptian and CIA intelligence people at Jakarta airport. With my hands tied on my back and my eyes blind folded, they took me to Cairo.”
In Cairo, Iqbal says he was incarcerated in an underground cell for 92 days, during which he was repeatedly interrogated about Washington’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden.
“They chained my whole body, and forced me to walk like an animal,” Iqbal said.
“They asked me questions like when did I visit Afghanistan? Where and when did I meet Osama Bin Laden? What are the future plans of Al-Qaeda?
“I told them I never visited Afghanistan. I never met Bin Laden. I have no connections with any political or militant group. However, they continued to torture me.”
On April 13, 2002, Iqbal was handed over to CIA officials who took him to Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, where another phase of the nightmare awaited him.
“It was simply horrible there. I don’t have words to explain the atmosphere. I bore the physical torture, but the mental torture was unbearable,” he said.
“I personally saw the bodies of prisoners who could not bear torture and died. They killed two Afghan boys, Asadullah, 10, and Naqeebullah, 11, by torturing them.”
At Bagram, Iqbal was again asked the same questions, and replied with the same answers.
After a few rounds of interrogation, he was put in solitary confinement for seven months before being flown to Guantanamo on March 23, 2003.
Hellish Gitmo
Despite all what he has been through before, Iqbal says his experience at Guantanamo was by far the worst.
“Electrocution was the favorite hobby of the interrogators. They used to release power in the floor and the walls of the cages,” he said.
“As we screamed they laughed and laughed.”
Iqbal says the interrogators used to threw the Noble Qur’an to the floor and flush it down the toilets during interrogations.
“As we cried and protested, they laughed and said ‘call your Allah, call him to punish us’.”
Though he fiercely denied he had anything to do with Al-Qaeda, Iqbal was interrogated over and over.
He went on hunger strike for two and a half months to protest detention and torture.
In 2004, Iqbal was informed that the US government had no case against him and that he would be freed.
However, he had to wait for three more years to get back his long-lost freedom.
His family hired a team of New York lawyers who filed a case with district court of Columbia against his detention.
“The court in August 2008 announced its judgment in my favor ordering the US administration to release me and send me back to Pakistan within next 10 days.”
Scarred for Life
Even after leaving Guantanamo, Iqbal’s woes are far from over.
His mother died while he was detained and his old friends and close relatives have abandoned him.
“Everybody is reluctant to meet me, to sit with me, and even stand with me for a minute.
“I feel if I am a resident of some far-flung planet and have landed on earth mistakenly,” he said while fighting back his tears.
“Me and my family are still being harassed by the security agencies.
“They want guarantees that I would not take part in any political activity.”
Iqbal is also suffering from a permanent limp and from a severe damage in his left ear and his stomach.
“I cannot walk without a stick. I’m getting help from psychologists and I have been undergoing physiotherapy.”
He lives on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants.
“Look at me, don’t I look like a skeleton. I used to be a healthy man.”
That’s why nothing, not even Obama’s Guantanamo closure order, would compensate Iqbal for what he suffered.
“Can Obama bring back my mother, my health or my precious seven years?
“Obama has no idea what I have lost. I have lost everything.”
Iqbal is planning to sue the US government for his illegal detention and damages.
“I am not going to do this for just myself. I am doing this for other lives which have been ruined at Guantanamo.”
SOURCE: freedetainees.org
