It’s not every day that you get to write an article about a former Guantanamo Bay inmate coming to the Isle of Wight.
Near the start of May, Moazzam Begg came to the Island, in response to an invite from Rachel Bridgeland to speak to an audience. How many would make up the audience wasn’t clear, even up to the evening of the event.
It turned out there was a capacity crowd, with I understand, people having to be turned away at Newport’s Apollo theatre when Moazzam Begg, now director of Caged Prisoners, came to speak.
He’s an accomplished speaker with an easy delivery, but you can’t help but wonder how he seems to be so calm and unembittered, given what he described of his experiences.
Snatched at gun point in Pakistan
During the talk, he laid out his background, including time in spent in Afghanistan doing what he described as charity work at a school.
When the US & UK went into Afghanistan, he left for Pakistan with his family. It was at his house there in 2002 that he was taken at gun point, forced to leave his wife and three children, by what he described as ‘polite’ local forces.
It was after his handover to American forces that things appeared to have become considerably less polite.
Guantanamo not the worst
Surprisingly he said his worst experiences weren’t in Guantanamo Bay, but were before he arrived there during the eleven months at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan. It sounded horrific.
He described intense interrogation, including sleep deprivation and extended periods of prisoners being forced to stand at full stretch, with wire attached to the ceiling pulled tight around their wrists. He having to stand on tip toes, as this was the only real method to lessen the pain.
Later, details of the process of waterboarding were given, but fortunately he didn’t undergo this, although hearing him talk about a woman screaming – who he thought was his wife – in the cell next to him, was chilling to the point where the constant solitary confinement at Guantanamo seem desirable.
He also detailed his experience of watching a fellow prisoner being abused so badly that he ended up dying from the injuries that the American soldiers inflicted on him.
Now living in England having been released with no specific charges against him, Moazzam Begg now leads a life as a director of Caged Prisoners.
Stimulating
Although the material was clearly disturbing, it was a thoroughly interesting talk with a stimulating Q&A. If you get a chance to listen to him, I’d definitely recommend it.
I must admit, due to not having the time, I did go along to the evening without reading up about Moazzam Begg, somewhat breaking a normal rule of preparation. Very slack, but unavoidable.
I don’t think that my nothing-but-positive impression of Begg would have been any different if I had read the Wikipedia text about him which contained a list of alleged facts that were compiled for the military tribunal, to decided whether he should be classified as an “enemy combatant”.
Of course, sadly it’s not just wikipedia text that we don’t know if we can trust any more. Alleged facts without a prosecution are no longer facts, just alleged.
The evening with Moazzam Begg was strangely positive. If someone can endure that treatment he described at the hands of what we think of as civilised nations – and remain as a functioning member of society – I think there’s hope for us all.
WightEye take
I had the pleasure of meeting WightEye during the evening, as well as other interesting people. He did the right thing and wrote his views with no delay after the event and it’s well worth reading.
The Apollo
I’d never been to The Apollo before. What a gem that place is. Return visits plans are being hatched.
Interview
VB got the chance to catch up with Moazzam Begg after the talk, where we touched on such important things as the dinosaurs on the Island and a number of other subjects including the perceived speed of the apparent erosions of our civil liberty happening in the UK.
It’s interesting to hear today the section about the lack of accountability of politicians and how it appears all the more relevant, just a month and an half after its recording.
If there’s a demand, we’ve also got a recording of the full talk that we could host. [audio:http://otw-audio.s3.amazonaws.com/moazzam-begg-interview-may-2009.mp3] While we recorded these was some banging in the background as the set builders at the Apollo were working late – living by the moto “the show must go on.”
