Ahmed Errachidi had never heard the story of Robert the Bruce and the
indefatigable spider until this week.
But in the cell blocks of Guantanamo Bay, Inmate 590 learnt the same lesson as
the Scottish King, in the same hard way.
Just as the Bruce took heart from the spider, the most inspiring moment in Mr
Errachidi’s five-and-a-half years of internment came as he watched a
solitary ant’s struggle for life.
The insect was trapped inside the fortified glass dome housing the security
camera that watched Mr Errachidi’s every move in his isolation cell. It was
trying to climb out, but kept slipping backwards again and again.
The tiny creature’s survival became, at that moment, the most important thing
in the world. Mr Errachidi decided to intervene, taking a square of toilet
paper, separating it into single ply and rolling it between his palms to
form a thin thread.
He slipped the lifeline through a slim gap between the ceiling and the glass
and hoped that the ant would find it.
To his delight, it did – climbing on to the paper and walking along it as Mr
Errachidi pulled the paper out of the dome. In a matter of moments he had
the ant in the palm of his hand and laid it down in a corner where other
ants were feeding on the crumbs that he had left them from his meal. “I was
so pleased, so excited,” Mr Errachidi said as he described the rescue
operation to The Times in his first interview since he was freed from
Guantanamo.
“When you’re alone for so long, when it’s only you, you do a lot of thinking.
You see things that before you never paid attention to. I learnt a lot from
the ants. They were another form of life and reminded me that there was
hope. I used to get so angry with the guards when they killed the ants.”
In similar vein, a pebble that fell from the sole of a guard’s boot assumed
huge significance when he was in the punishment block.
Apart from himself, the stone was the only nonmetal object in the cell.
It is just six weeks since Mr Errachidi, 41, a chef who worked in London
hotels, restaurants and gastro-pubs for 16 years, was released from the
camp, where he was interned without charge or trial, at the United States
naval base in Cuba.
He was freed after the sole allegation against him – that he had been a senior
figure at an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in July 2001 – fell
apart. The claim came from an unidentified source and was proved false by
lawyers from the London-based charity Reprieve.
According to payslips, witness statements and bank records, Mr Errachidi was a
long way from Afghanistan during July 2001 – working in the kitchens of the
Westbury Hotel, Mayfair. The US military eventually declared Mr Errachidi
“approved to leave Guantanamo” – as close as it comes to proclaiming him
innocent.
Even though the evidence that could have freed him years ago lay in Britain,
and that British officials were aware of its existence, Whitehall had
rejected appeals to help him.
Mr Errachidi, a Moroccan, had been a resident in Britain but never a citizen
and the Government decided it had no obligation to negotiate his release.
Freedom came on Tuesday, April 24, with a brutal farewell present. Mr
Errachidi was taken from his cell in his orange jumpsuit, his ankles
shackled, arms cuffed to a waistband, ear-muffs, goggles and a muzzle
clamped on his head.
“The mask was cutting into the corners of my eyes, it was hurting me and I
couldn’t see so I tried to lift my shackled hands to pull it down,” he said.
“As I did that, they grabbed me and threw me against the wall, my head smashed
into the wall and they started beating me. They tightened the shackles and
gave me one last beating.
“I decided not to scream. I said to myself this is the last time, I’m going to
take it.”
Mr Errachidi was then taken to the base’s airfield. As he approached the cargo
plane on which he would be flown to Morocco, the mask and goggles were
removed to allow a military film crew to record his departure. Once inside
the aircraft they were replaced and remained on his face throughout the
seven-hour flight.
The Red Cross had asked him before he left Guantanamo if he would not rather
stay than go back to Morocco where there was a risk of torture. He found the
question insulting and says that in his homeland the police received him
with kindness, courtesy and mint tea. After seven days, he was sent home to
his family in Tangier.
It has been hard to get used to liberty. For five years he has not been
allowed to walk more than three paces – the length of his cell – unshackled.
Sitting in the shade of a tree at Cap Malabata, overlooking the Strait of
Gibraltar, it is not long before he stumbles over memories of captivity that
are too raw and painful to talk about.
There were 19 days in the Dark Prison at Bagram airfield near Kabul,
permanently in chains; 26 days of torture; long, long periods of solitary
confinement. The tears well up and the usually fast-flowing words are choked
off.
“I am on the edge,” Mr Errachidi says after a pause. “I don’t want to fall
off.” He is remembering how to cook, but learning again how to be a father
to his sons, Mohammed, 11, and Imran, 7, is much more difficult.
He pretends to his family that he is OK, that he is a tough guy, that he has
come through it all unscathed. Everyone is going along with the pretence for
now, but no one is really fooled.
Mr Errachidi’s incarceration was worse than that endured by many other
Guantanamo inmates because the guards decided he was a senior man in
al-Qaeda. Camp Delta’s commanders nicknamed him “The General” because he
seemed to wield an influence over the other inmates.
He did, but only because he spoke English, understood what the guards were
saying, got bored easily and was prepared to challenge the petty rules. It
was Mr Errachidi who, after three-and-a-half years of arguing, convinced the
commanders that toothpaste and toothbrushes were not “comfort items” and
achieved an increase in the allocation of toilet paper from ten sheets per
day to thirty.
It rankles, however, that he was not able to have the inmates recognised as
people. Mr Errachidi said: “Even the name detainee was not given to us. We
were called packages because we were in identical jumpsuits and wrapped up
in chains.
“Two guards would escort you everywhere, they would radio their control room
and say, ‘Package has been picked up’ and outside the interrogation room
they would contact the interrogator and say, ‘Package is at the door’.
“If you ask why you are called a package, why you can’t be called a person
they say, ‘This is the procedure’.” The same procedures forbid the guards
from telling the inmates what day or month it is.
The process of dehumanisation began, Mr Errachidi said, shortly after he was
arrested in Pakistan. He had gone there in September 2001 pursuing a wild
scheme to buy and sell silver in an effort to raise money to pay for a heart
operation for his youngest son and was still in the country when the US
bombing raids began after 9/11.
It seems an unlikely story but appears to be verified by evidence. The Times
has seen the detailed medical records indicating the diagnosis of Imran’s
heart problems in the summer of 2001. Witnesses in London have spoken of Mr
Errachidi’s desperation that summer to raise the money for the boy’s
treatment. Mr Errachidi has a history of mental breakdowns and bipolar
episodes which lead him to take impetuous actions.
Pakistani police passed him to American agents in return for a $5,000 bounty
and he was taken to Bagram, then to a prison camp at Kandahar.
As he was being marched on to a flight to Cuba, a guard hissed in his ear:
“From now on, we dictate your food, your water, your sleep and your shit.
You have no life.” Mr Errachidi said: “That whisper lived with me for five
years, it became louder and louder in my ears.”
There were things, however, which kept his hope alive: the ants, the pebble
and many hundreds of letters and cards sent by British people who he had
never met but who wished him well and remembered him in prayers of many
faiths.
He never received the originals, just black-and-white photocopies stamped with
the approval of the camp censor.
When he boarded the aircraft that took him off Cuba, that collection of
letters were the only possessions that Mr Errachidi had with him.
He said: “The people who wrote those, the students and the retired ladies and
everyone else – I have so much to thank them for.”
I m sure that Irvine must belong to the military body. Who else could know the details of how muslims are treated in Guantanamo? "were also provided with their own legal counsel, prayer times (5 times a day), a strict Muslim diet, even toilets were re-configured so as not to offend the religious sensibilities of Muslims who would otherwise need to defecate while facing Mecca." and who else could defend Guantanamo this way?
I think that americans,as always, never recognize theirs faults. What happened to this man is a shame for a country which pretends to be the most strong country in the world, a country which pretends to defend human rights. they detain people without charges, without trial, and a the end, they can 't even recognize that what they did has no base. It s the feeling of american superiority.
Helga, Berlin, Germany
One only has to experience the rude welcome one receives at US customs and immigration to imagine how the treatment of innocent people in Guantanamo must be.
The USA is acting tough after being humiliated in the eyes of the democratic world.
As for the rest of the world?
The gung ho attitude of the US is just creating a whole new wave of terrorists.
MM, London, UK
I see that soldiers American post their opinion on this page guantanamo it is shame, it is torture and humiliation, we must do something to close this hell, or are the human rights.
David, london, uk
I, for one, don’t buy for one minute the story that this man was regularly beaten by his U.S. military guards apparently only to satisfy their personal sadistic pleasure.
No mention was made in this story that Guantanamo prisoners who, in addition to suffering certain psychological deprivations designed to break down the resistance of Al-Queda trained operatives, were also provided with their own legal counsel, prayer times (5 times a day), a strict Muslim diet, even toilets were re-configured so as not to offend the religious sensibilities of Muslims who would otherwise need to defecate while facing Mecca. Additionally, regular inspections by the Red Cross and organizations such as Amnesty International led to humanitarian conditions for detainees that exceeded international standards and in fact would be considered luxurious relative to the prison standards of the home countries of the detainees.
laohu, Irvine, USA
It’s unfortunate that the real story of interest was not deemed worthy enough by the writer to explore (or to at least ask basic journalistic questions). The author seems to have accepted ‘carte blanche’ the simplistic, “made-for-television” plot explanation for this young Moroccan to have left his family and traveled to an active ‘war zone’ on the Afghan border of Pakistan in search of quick riches as a silver merchant. This unlikely sounding plot probably wouldn’t have even made it to TV.
It seems that the ‘journalistic template’ of this article was to establish as much sympathy for the “victim” and any information that might “interfere” with that particular objective was summarily disregarded by the author. What is even sadder still is how many readers seemed to have ignorantly bought into the presupposition that America has “blood lust” and/or have themselves become “terrorists”.
laohu, Irvine, USA
Rodica, you're implying in your post that it is OK to torture people to get information. You should have your head checked.
Ron, Phoenix, AZ
War on Terror is Waterloo
jah, wash dc,
As a British Citizen I am ashamed that our government, the government I voted for, stood idly by and let these atrocities occur. Future historians will look back on these times and compare Blair and Bush with Stalin - and our descendents will ask why we did nothing about it.
Kit, Derby, U.K.
This is not the America that I grew up in. I'm old enough to remember when we tried to be an example of respect for human rights. The circumstances at Guantanimo make me ashamed.
AP, you paint with a pretty broad brush, buddy.
David, Texas, USA
"It is high time for the world to wake up and see how dangerous these terrorists are"
or may be it is time for you to wake up and realize what kind of story they are selling you... may be you haven't noticed, but for most people in the world, the US is being the terrorist
I am horrified how prisioners are treaded, being terrorists or not. We are all the same in the eyes of the law and therefore human beings shouldn't be denigrated as they have been, no matter what actions they have chosen to take in the past. The real punishment should be decided by God, not by the US.
Sonia, Buenos Aires,
I am truly sorry for everything that my country did to Mr. Errachidi. I hope that his story can help people understand the vital importance of due process rights for all, no matter who they are or what they are accused of.
Alex S., Carrboro, USA
I don't see any Americans' comments here... What, too embarrased to admit what pathetic, simple-minded, ignorant, intellectually lazy, cheap-thrill seeking, hypocritical zealots you are? Come on, post something... Wow us all with your myopic, ill constructed opinions; and try justifying Guantanamo for the benefit of the world.
AP, Mex,
The tales Mr. Errachidi is telling are pure lies, or some construct of his sick imagination. I am wondering when are the reporters going to be tiered of reporting all the lies that the terrorists are feeding to them. US has no interest in detaining innocent people. If the Pakistani Police handed him to the US Army, there was probably enough information to consider him a terrorist. Us has nothing to gain from torturing an innocent person from whom they cannot get any valuable information. By the way, torture is not the only way to get out information from prisoners.
A clear proof that Mr. Errachidi is lying, is when he dares to say that in Marrocco, prisoners are treated with respect. The world know how vicious, cruel and sadistic the Arab prisons, and are, not to mention the terrorists who top all the rest.
It is high time for the world to wake up and see how dangerous these terrorists are!!! I am pleased to hear that he was to Tangir, and not back to England.
R.R.K., Los Ange
rodica reif-kohn, Los Angeles, CA, USA
It hurts me as an american to see these types of abuses commited knowing that all types of illegal abuses were commited due to the illegal war and laws broken.I now pray that with time wrongs will be righted and war will only be a word in the near future that children will not understand.Peace to my fellow man and AHMED
david, pima, USA
I couldnt help but shed a few tears for this courageous young man, who suffered for so long .knowing that he was innocent it was an amazing story, told by an extraordinary man,no one could know what he has been through but himself .the story of Mr Errachidi reminds me of the film " Pappilon".im sure this fine man has a lot more stories to tell, and the world needs to hear it
yasmin, london, enfield
I am sure that most are speechless at this. What if anything can be said to defend the actions of the USA?
Up to the point where there was accepted proof of innocence there may have been some excuse. The final beating and ill treatment of a man proven innocent negates any reason for Guantanamo other than vengance for 911.
When will America's blood debt be paid?
I supported and still support the clinical removal of Saddam. I cannot support the USA's blood lust of vengance.
J D S, Cardiff, Wales UK
Guantanamo Bay is a disgrace to both Bush and Blair and the many other organisations such as the UN that have allowed it to exists unchallenged. We have become as bad as the terrorists that we were supposed to hate.
Sergei, London, UK
Yet another reason why Blair is stained and with him all who allowed this to happen.
simonS, Bolton,