Activist poses as Guantanamo prisoner Adel Hamad #940 at a public action in Miami Adel Hamad #940
Reports show that there are nearly 400 detainees at the Guantanamo detention facility, many of who have never been tried and remain in indefinite detention. Adel Hamad, a former elementary school teacher of orphans, a hospital worker, and someone who coordinated the delivery of food, medicine and blankets to refugees, has been imprisoned for 5 years according to The Project Hamad website. He was taken from his home late one night in Pakistan, classified an enemy combatant by Americans and flown to Guantanamo detention facility. The United States is detaining him on three allegations – 1. The charity where he worked may have supported “terrorist ideas” 2. He may of come into contact with Al Qaeda members 3. He is an enemy combatant. Hamad’s case, displayed on YouTube, became a viral internet piece, which prompted Lydia Vickers, a CODEPINK Tallahasse activist, to join the Global Day to Shut Down Guantanamo, just blocks away for the US Southern Command Center in Miami. She arrived dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, black muslin hood, black plastic chains, and an Adel Hamad #940 hand made sign. Hamad’s Federal Public Defender came across Vickers creative public display and thanked her, “…for protesting the detention of our client Adel Hamad #940.” The Public Defender expressed the need for public knowledge about Hamad’s case by going to his project website www.projecthamad.org
Nancy Mancias and local activists at a Guantanamo protest in Miami
US Southern Command
Tucked away in a quiet business park in sunny Miami, Florida resides the US Southern Command Center (USSouthcom), the center to which controls the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Inside this square ominous green-windowed office building, lay the commands
of different military components including the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF) located at U.S. Naval Base in Cuba that oversees the interrogation process of the nearly 400 men and boys who remain in indefinite detention. The command center relocated to Miami in 1997 from Panama where it has and still provides US military security in Central and South America. With shiny palm trees and palmetto backdrop, Miami residents go along with their daily lives unaware that this silently remote Pentagon-run building is responsible for the controversial Guantanamo detention facility. But just down the road, a small January 11th vigil was being planned in accordance with the global call to shut down Guantanamo, a local attorney, at the vigil, was asked by reporter Tamara Lush of the Miami New Times, “Do you think the people of Miami know that this place exist?” Her respond was, “No, that’s why I’m out here today, all attorneys should be out here.” Miami resident Warren Hoskins is well aware of the command centers community presence, he states, “The employment of torture in Cuba and Iraq has been directed by people stationed among us in South Florida, living among us, and coming and going on their missions or just with their families from our local airport to do so. That airport, Miami International, is just a few miles east of SouthCom.”
Guantanamo to Iraq
Widespread criticism has loomed over the abuse and torture of detainees in Guantanamo and Iraq. Among those critics is South Florida resident, Camilo Mejia, a former Florida National Guard sergeant, who served in Iraq. Mejia witnessed the torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees, first-hand, at Al Assad air base. He refused to return to Iraq and applied for conscientious objector status. While speaking at a Miami press conference, just blocks away from USSouthcom at a boutique hotel, Mejia told reporters, “I don’t need someone to tell me whether or not there was abuse and torture, I know because we (military unit) were responsible.” He was later court-martialed, convicted of desertion and received a one-year sentence. Amnesty International declared him a Prisoner of Conscience, and he has received numerous awards of courage, including the 2005 Global Exchange “Young Leader” Human Rights Award. Also, speaking at the press conference was Steven Wetstein of Amnesty International, Linda Belgrave of Miami for Peace and CODEPINK cofounder and Cuba peace delegate Jodie Evans who was on her way to Guantanamo, Cuba to join “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan and prominent peace activist Medea Benjamin in their protest of the wrongful detention and abuse of hundreds of detainees at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo.
The Media
On the 5th year anniversary of the first detainees taken into the Guantanamo detention facility, Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald along with other reporters, are still unable to speak with them. She explains in an interview with the Herald that due to, “their (military) interpretation of what would be humiliating behavior…it (an interview) would be some kind of violation of the Geneva Conventions by subjecting them (detainees) to the media.” According to Rosenberg, the only civilians allowed to speak with detainees are their attorneys and members of the Red Cross. After 5 years of what is labeled “The Alcatraz of the Caribbean” there are still many unanswered questions about the controversial detention facility, Rosenberg has a few questions that she would like answered:*When are there going to be trials?*How have interrogations been carried out?*How much does this cost?*How will this end?She further explains in the Herald interview that it seems, the US detention facility is here to stay. The US Southern Command, as she indicates, “had been given orders to prepare a prison camp for 2000 prisoners, so the idea that there would be 2000 cells, 2000 cages for terror suspects.” Rosenberg is one of the first reports to cover the arrival of the first 20 detainees flown into the detention facility 5 years ago, and she’s one of two reporters who was ordered to leave the US Naval Base Guantanamo by former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, this notice came after widespread criticism of the detention facility and detainee suicides.
Nancy L. Manicas is with human rights group Global Exchange and CODEPINK Women for Peace.
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