"Ordeal" is part of the headline Harper's gives to this piece in the latest (June) issue -- in its "Readings" section. It's certainly that and more, and it forms part of the ordeal America will have to face if it is to come to any understanding of who we are as opposed to who we'd like to think we are.
It's the sworn affidavit "by Hussain Abdulkadr Youssouf Mustafa, a fifty-one-year-old Palestinian man who plans to sue the US Government for cruel and unusual punishment." He was picked up by the Pakistani police in late May of 2002, turned over to American intelligence and finally released -- from Guantánamo -- in mid-August of that year. Excerpts from his descriptions of torture follow, but on a separate page. It's pretty awful stuff.
...The Pakistanis gave us over to the Americans, and they forced me onto a plane. After it landed, we were taken out and put in a line with sacks on our heads and our hands shackled. Some Afghans and Pakistanis said we were in Bagram. The bag was taken off my head and I was undressed until I was naked. It was very humiliating. It there was anything at all I could have done to avoid it I would have done it -- this as the first time as an adult I have been naked in public.
We were tortured, abused, and put in very embarrassing positions. They would threaten me, saying that they knew I was guilty and that they would make me talk. They would deprive me of sleep. You were never allowed to speak to each other, or even to yourself. They would hang us on the door by our wrists for an hour or more. If someone was praying, the American soldiers would make them stop. The soldiers did not like us praying and made fun of us. They would threaten the prisoners with ghastly and immoral acts like rape.
In fact, the worst thing that has even happened to me took place in Bagram. An American soldier took me blindfolded, with my hands tightly cuffed, and with my ears plugged so I could not hear properly and my mouth covered so that I could only make a muffled scream. Two soldiers forced me to bend down, and a third pressed my face down on a table. A fourth soldier then pulled down my trousers. They forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum. It was excruciatingly painful. I have always believed that I am not a person who could scream unless I was really heart, but I could not stop screaming when this happened. This torture went on for several minutes, but it felt like hours, and the pain afterward was almost as bad as anything I experienced at the time. I have pain to this day from what they did to me. I will never feel comfortable having a bowel movement both because it is sometimes painful and because it always reminds me of what happened. I simply cannot understand why it happened to me. It will always cloud my life...
One of the threats I would often hear was that if I did not confess they would send me to Cuba...
I arrived in Cuba around the fifth or sixth of August, 2002. In the beginning, they would constantly yell, "Do you know where you are? You're with the American Army now!"
Mustafa goes on to describe the abuse of other prisoners and the suicides in Guantánamo:
...The prisoner could not confess, so the interrogator went ahead and stomped on the Koran. The Americans had clearly been trained in how to abuse Muslims and did things that were calculated to inflame...
...They came one day and said that I would be taken to Camp November, a prison used for punishment. I asked why I was being taken there, and they did not say. When I got there, they measured me for jeans, gave me the shoes I am wearing today, and told me that I was leaving. I thought I was going to Jordan, but actually I was taken to Bagram again. I stayed there for another four and a half months. There were no interrogations there. I was told I was innocent and that I was a guest. It was just a matter of waiting to see where they were going to send me...
