S04 - Ep. 6: Part 2, Asymmetry
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This podcast is supported by the capital one quick super card, earn unlimited one point five percent cash back on every purchase everywhere, plus there is no limit the amount of cash back you can earn and rewards don't expire for the life of the account. It's that simple. The capital one quick over card, what's in your wallet terms apply, see capital one not come for details. Heads up before we start that this episode deals with suicide, including descriptions of suicide, which I know can be a hard thing for some people to hear about in any context. So if you're not ready for that right now, this might be when you want to come back to later.

You're not leaving .

previously on cereal going be .

here and I can try to help make your life a little Better while you're here are you continue .

to be miserable and I we .

are friends yeah in a way and why you're complaining and just be dragon on the floor beating me everywhere.

Maybe i'm giving the wrong message that these guys, they just wanted bitter food and bitter treatment. You're going to think that we are okay. You can keep us here for the rise of our lives.

He was peaceful.

From serial productions in the new york times, its serial season four, one tonio one prison camp told week by week i'm sarana. This is part two of kernel mike bomb gardener and the worst year.

Early on may eighteen th, two thousand six, bum garner was in his morning meeting when someone came in with urgent news.

So the meeting was interactive. With that we got a suicide tive here three minutes later. Now we got another, was that here, and they were being bound unconscious for think. In both instances.

a suicide attempt on his own shocked no one. Suicide attempts happen constantly. Bomb garner said.

So routine that somebody trying to cut the areas, or somebody please try to hang himself. I mean, I was everyday battle. There was always somebody trying to kill him.

So which bum garner a worried about? But not very much. He didn't think most of the people attempting really wanted to die, besides suicide, is in a loud in islam. Most of the detainees wouldn't abide IT. Anyone trying to hang himself, for instance, would be discovered immediately, usually because other detainees would stop him.

They wouldn't do IT. I mean, they prove that time and time again. They always told him. They always told us something so true.

Felt like there's a back step.

Yes, absolutely.

But many teeth was different. First off, these guys weren't found hanging. They were reportedly frowning at the mouth, which went poisoned. And not just one, but two people, bang. Gartner said his mind fu, straight to a guantanamo propac's.

Okay, there's two. There's going to be a third .

out there somewhere that influential saudi prisoner, shaker omar, 还 told him about IT a while back。 Shocker was in hospital at the time on a hunger strike. And he said, you know about this, don't you? About the dream? And he told them garner, that another detainee had had a dream that if three detainees died, they'd all get to go home.

The dream had made its way through the camp. Lots of people heard about IT. Several former detainees told us they didn't put me to stock IT just seemed whatever.

unlikely. But but garner believed that. He believed that the detainees believed IT. But he also believed the substance of the dream that what IT laid out was probably true.

I I honestly did believe if they got their way in, the three guys died from the vision that there would be such. I don't know what might I talk myself and believe, but I did believe there's be such tremendous pressure now that that such a hell hold down there. There people are killing themselves.

It's got to be shut and that you would force them facility be closed. And if we had to close in, the gather is really responsible for, let me happen. Was me that the way .

of such a huge responsibility that you're putting on yourself.

well, IT, is IT maybe arrogant to think that you ever thought of that? They know that this the world's dependence poll? Y maybe i'm crazy, was like the captain of the ship though, you know everything that happens, so much ship i'm responsible for. If we succeed, you know, it's me in the crew. If we fail, it's me.

And under this skipper, the U. S. S. Guantanamo was currently enjoying bomb garner signature achievement, a period of peace. He wanted to keep IT. That way he could not be, would not be the guy who screw this up for the country.

The men, found unconscious, had taken overdoses of anti anxiety medication, not their own medication. In all, four detainees had become sick, the prison personnel said. Only two seemed to be genuine suicide attempts.

They were hospitalized and recovered. And the propac's bomb na dreaded, about three detainees dying, was averted. Still, he failed to recognize this made a tenth crisis for what IT was a pre lude.

Instead, the headline that day for bomb gardener was that detainees had somehow managed to hord medication, which freaked him out. But with the medical protocols in the regular cell searches, they should not have been able to do that. So right away, on may eighteenth, bagnal ordered a facility wide search.

Cell searches happened all the time at one hano, but not like this. Every single cell, every single person, some four hundred and sixty anes at that point. Now, all hands on deck reports vary about what they found. But one garta remembers, they discovered a bunch of people he thinks that was in the low teens, had secreted pills .

in mattresses. That's probably the prom place in the folds of, know, the very edges of a sheet. Know where the thing goes around like the him.

yeah, up inside the him.

I mean, you take out a few stitches stick. Actually they would. So back up.

one guy had a stash of pills hidden in his prosthetic leg.

So yeah, we found quite a bit.

Again, detainees were used to having their cells test, but this time on, garta made a risky call. He directed his personnel to search all cards, too, in case contraband was hiding inside the pages of the spine. He knew that would cause tension, complaints about personal disrespecting or destructing the coron religion.

The previous antonio commander had ordered an investigation into allegations in an effort to separate rumor from justified fury. IT was such a sensitive issue, the camp ig instituted a rule that only muslim staff interpreters are the camp's new cultural adviser were allowed to touch IT. Obviously, detainees weren't happy about having hand over their current that day, but bug na said nobody made two biggest thing until they got to camp four.

We told them gonna en. They didn't like that, and so started to getting around the end.

Rowdy in camp ford was not supposed to happen ever camp for was the communal camp. Their showcase is where a bum garner could bring distinguish visitors and boast. See, even though the geneva conventions don't apply here, we still treat these men humanly.

The detainees live together in open dorm, ten beds to block k. They got to wear White clothing. They could play soccer and basketball.

They could pray together and eat together. One former detainee told us you could save leftovers for a couple days and then invite friends over for brunch. Admission to camp for dependent on good behavior.

IT was a reward for compliance, but just because you follow the americans rules, IT did not follow that you necessarily trusted the americans. We talked to half a dozen detainees who are in camp for that day in may, and they told us they had the distinct impression the americans were up to something. This didn't feel like a Normal search. IT felt more like a deliberate provocation, possibly for some dark purpose. They couldn't safer.

One day, the guards .

came to us in a weird way. They started talking loud. They started hitting doors. They wanted to take the holy book that's moody.

Fy, I had a idea, originally algerian, later from saravia, where he lives now, would grab IT by by the covers. And they would shake IT in a disrespectful way, the way you couldn't do IT to any regular book. Again, only muslim person.

I was supposed to touch the cards that was the rule, and 邦 garner had suspended IT。 Most stuff, he said he tried to broken an agreement with the guards, whereby he would search the current himself, but he didn't hold. And then, as bump government would say, would start to get in route, even the afghan prisoners who had a reputation for lying low, even they got route at the prospect of the kron under attack.

So they told him, and we will fight, or you can kill us, become signify when IT comes to the quora.

that Samuel hudge from sudan, a .

journalist, and use.

You tell us this hyperactivity going on with yelling at us, screaming and back at us. And the government, the guards at all, evacuated out of the areas that they not only patrol.

Camford was not only the most permissive camp for the guards. IT was also potentially the most dangerous camp because detainees could congregate in their dorms and outside the upper was getting out of hand. Bum garner tried to shut .

IT down lamely. And then I began to personally issue in orders to him. I would not want to see footage. And I was, I was ticked off, get back in your, get back in your way, calm down.

Just all kinds of trying to bring order to IT, which that really, I don't know why I thought that was ever going to help, but I did. I thought they would listen to the corneal. They could careless, actually got ta matter of thing.

What happened next has been described in reports as a disturbance, a fight, a riot. Details differ, but most of the documentation i've read settles nor or less on the same story. That afternoon, bumgarner decided IT was time to call in the Q R F, the quick reaction force, a team at tent soldiers equipped with right controlled year sarchin.

Joe hickman was in charge of the cure of that day. He said they had been called up before, but always the mere sight of them had called whatever was stern. They never had to actually engage with detainees. Most of the time, they SAT around board in their hut, watching movies on DVD or whole seasons of the office. The force feeding chairs were stored in there too, hickman said.

He sometimes take a nap in one of them, but mae teens, when they huddled LED over the camp for hicklin, said they could hear people yelling and banging and breaking stuff in all the different buildings which ring a large central yard. About two hundred navy guards were staged there, waiting the cure of team lined up outside the door of one particularly agitated block. Zoo black.

There's a whole wind up protocol they supposed to go through before they physically enter and and close space. But that got short circuit. When a guard started yelling about yet another suicide, a navy .

guard yelled, who was stand by the story, said, the tane isn't here. Hanging himself is hanging in itself. And he opened the door real fast, and we ve ran in.

The navy guard was mistaken. No one was hanging himself inside. Instead, hig man says what he in his Q, R, F, T. Encountered when they rushed in was an expertly slicked up floor, an ambush.

and we sled all over the place, and we were getting bomb bar IT with with fees and in urine.

like IT had been .

stockpiled. Yes, they were waiting for us. Natural al truth was that they would give the tennis so soup the power up for laundry.

That's mother mohammad nabi ommen, who'd been a taliban and official. He told us he was in the dorm when the Q, R, F came bursting in, and he said the detainees were throwing these containers of surf soap at the guards, and the soap was spilling out onto the floor, mixing the liquid from the tear gas.

Where did the ground? So when they wanted to into the room, and more forward, they would slip on this ground and fall.

This is the truth about decision.

Again, there is some disagreement, especially between the americans and the detainees, about some of the fine points here. Omari said there was no rules to learn them in, no ambush, no advanced expression gathering. He said they were reacting in the moment to being attacked.

But everyone involved degrees. They got pretty vicious. So the prisoners started to break stuff like the light fixtures and stuff the light fixtures in the water bottles. The prisoners started throwing IT at the guards.

Friend used everything that would come in their hands, whatever that was, fans, bottles, beating sticks. We took a tony stick from him, and we hit some american with that. They had the upper hand first .

that's joe hickman again .

they were beat us. Um and you know when you got people caged up for years, they fight like animals. They fight at a different level than my eighteen year old kids are just graduate high school and worked at mcDonalds part time before they went in a military. These guys are fighting .

after about five or ten minutes. Hickman man says he gave the order to fire, and they did nonlethal hard pellets, though hiker says they use them at a potentially lethal range. Who was the first time weapons had been fired at detainees at antonio. Hickman says he hit a detainee in the chest with a rubber grenade. He remembers laughing, was chemically to see a body go flying like that, he said, which he feels kind of bad about now.

But in the moment IT was payback.

violence was always in the area, antonio, but this was something else. A straight up fight right on the open, ten against ten soldiers versus detainees is shot.

And the day would never made public. But the day of the riot, morale was never higher that Steve temas.

the navy officer in charge of the guard force in the discipline camps, two and three, they'd all been called over to camp .

forward to help because we got to kick their asses and get away with IT. After all that, B. S.

We had to take from them and that's the goon true. And and the they don't we never would have said IT like that. And they probably even to this, they don't like wouldn't like us to put IT like that. But I if you asked any guard that was involved in that, that's what it'll tell you. We finally had our day.

You pick man in his team pushed the detainees out of zou block to where navy guards were waiting in the courtyard.

Well, they start mother giving up and we're thrown about the door than those navy guys outside are literally just beaten .

the .

shit out of them as they are going out. They were getting coughed and then place all face down in the dirt outside. They're put in risk bands on them and then they're just beat them up.

Response, meaning like flex cupps or what yeah okay and beat IT like hitting them.

hitting them .

yeah and no.

nobody is doing anything. Some they were thrown them back to us. They were swing the kicking away.

Take him down vacuously. Nobody was gravely injured that day. A couple of the guards were banged up, but not as badly as some of the prisoners, especially the ones who had been shot with plastic pellets.

I know my uniform was covered in blood after we were done, and the clinic know the take IT off, though, in one of their biological, and then hose off and go get a fresh in of one, go back to work.

Some of the detainees told us they like to fight too. That was a good day.

So when I asked about my friend, they were so happy after that. So I feel like they had kind of like their freedom.

Also, the fight was righteous. They were protecting the oran to end the.

Bum garner could understand that they had IT so good over there in camp for why they thrown IT away, why they tell the place apart. He dealt with the may eighteenth tobacco, not as an existential problem, but as a disciplinary one. That night, camped four was empty out completely, all those supposedly compliant detainees sent to punishment blocks. From now on, fewer people would be allowed to congregate at any one time and asked for suicide prevention. Bomb garda focused on overdosing medical staff only to distribute medications, not guards, but onesta bang, garner said he felt like he had things back under control.

I I feel pretty comfortable saying, and I at that point, after just a few days, you can tell about, you know, the activity, see in the camps on the morning briefs, and you just rado traffic that you hear, the camps are pretty quiet. They're sort of back to Normal. Yeah, I I didn't keep my, I end in my failure. My tinkles warned up like there was something out there was about to happen.

Maybe bomb gardeners tend ticals weren't activated, but the tentacles of prisoner unrest, those tentacles were activated and pRobing quietly for escape. That's after the break. Hey, it's john chase and mara from wire cutters, the product recommendation service from the new york times.

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I want one for my garden ideas. Comments had the N Y times dot com slash holiday guide. Three weeks after the violence in may is when the worst thing about the worst year would happen due ninety two thousand six. That night, the joint task force commander, admiral Harry Harris, hosted the camp's top officers at a dinner party, a rare break for bum garner.

And IT was sort like, IT has been a tough last few weeks, and so is like IT was. The o six is in above sort of rest. Smoke cigarets with the boss.

He d like to smoke cigarettes. So sit now on. He's like a little dick looking out over guantanamo actual by itself beautiful, relaxed evening that sticks with me so bad then. That while all this is building up in the camps, I am sitting probably for the first time, at only time. What happened in my time on there, I am actually sitting relaxed at animal al's house.

After the party broke up in, people wandered home to their quarters, phones in pager started buzzing. Several detainees had been found unresponsive in their cells. In alpa block of camp one, about fifty yards from bumper n's office.

The men had been discovered one by one, starting a little after twelve thirty am. First the guy and sell eight. Then in cell, twelve, another than a third, and sell five.

According to government records, their names were yser. As a harmony from saudi ababa, he was twenty two. Money alu tai, also sauty age thirty. An allier dollar arman from yemen, he was twenty seven.

All three had been found by guards hanging at the back of their cells near their sins, which they're evidently stepped off of in such a ways to suspend themselves. They concealed themselves by attaching shets or blankets, the ceiling in front of the sink, their hands were tied, and each other piece of paper in the pocket. A couple of short, furious sentences written in arabic.

By the time bomb garner arrived, the camp was in a state. The guards were frantic. One said he comforted a colleague and then picked in a trash can.

Medical personnel were working on the three men that they all appeared to be pass saving. Within an hour of bunglers arrival, they were pronounced dead. This was very bad for the prison.

That's where bomb garners had went. No detainees had died since the camp opened. And now three in one night. This is bad for us.

for me, how we playing, we'd let this happen. For me, that's what I was on. How did this happen?

The immediate answer seemed to be run of the million competence. The guards were supposed to be walking the tear every three minutes, making sure to see skin and movement from each detainee in each cell. But there's one guard later admitted to investigators.

IT gets old and boring, and IT turned out two guards and gone to chow at the same time, which was against the rules. Eventually, admin. Harris would conclude that prison personnel violated six procedures that night, some of which might have contributed to the detainee's ability to kill themselves. I can't tell you which six because reduction, in any case, by dawn, washington was waiting within .

four hours of that happening. We're on the telephone in a conference table with the White house .

wanting to know what the hell happened. Bung garden knew full well that question had an uncomfortable cousin whose fault was this? He also knew they all knew they were listing toward A P.

R. nightmare. One bomb garner, most feared the narrative that people were killing themselves at wantonness.

O because IT was such a hell hole. Just a month earlier, the U. N. Committee against torture had issued a report saying the prison violated human rights law, should be shut down.

The eu parliament had also called for its clothing, in part because of the inhumane conditions of confinement. Now the germans, the gains the british were reiterating, close IT down. The U.

S. Government, though, in an abundance of confidence, span its weakness into a strength. These deads didn't reflect badly on one animal.

Just the opposite. These deaths justified one tanami hours after the conference call, with the big, bigger in dc admin. Harris went big.

He told CNN the suicides were proof that these men were still in the fight, a continual threat to the united states. They are smart. They're creative.

They are committed. They've no regard for human life, neither hours nor their own. I believe this was not an active desperation, but rather an active assets, trc warfare waged against us, asymmetrical warfare, meaning the widely adopted strategies.

Girl fighters or terrorists used to attack a bigger, stronger enemy. That was the government story about the suicides. They were an act of war for his part one.

Garta told me he didn't cotton to the asymmetrical warfare language, but he was certain the depth were coordinated and that they were calculated to harm, not necessarily the united states, but to harm for one thing. He knew all the men on that particular block, alpha block of camp one. He said they were all instigators, manipulators, as he called them hand in the back of the room types.

I'm confident that whole tear, that whole so black and knew this was gonna en and they had to, they participated IT to make that happen um IT was all about fulfilling the prophet y the prophets.

that if three men died, they'll be freed. They're killed themselves for the good of the group to keep guantanamo. In the nightly news on the front page.

I am one hundred present, convinced that those three people committed themselves to dying for their calls to get all in quotation. The brothers released from guang tma to get set back home. There is no doubt, mama, that was the purpose for those.

They were dying for the calls in jail. They certainly didn't die out of any depressed I can make IT anymore. No, that makes no sense at all for the three one to do a simultaneity, don't plan suicide. Des, you, that's not the way you do.

Bug, na believed other more powerful detainees alki. A guys had either planned the suicide or at the very least, approved them. And he thought IT was possible that lawyers for the detainees might be encouraging the detainees to protest or passing information to their clients.

Now, these same attack, ys, along with human rights activists, we're pushing a different narrative about the suicide. The prisoners had died from despair, they said, from hopelessness after years of abuse and no clear legal or administrative path towards release. A U.

N. Spokesman said the suicides were, quote, not completely unexpected. Unquote ams c international, straight up blame the bush administration for the deaths.

Eventually, inevitably, yet another story emerged about what had happened to the three men. Some people began wondering aloud whether they're, in fact, killed. Maybe these weren't suicides at all.

Maybe they are homicides. My name is that haron.

I A harmony, a former general and saudi police, and the father of the Youngest man who died yser as a, he openly chAllenged the U. S. Government's account of what happened to his son.

In a remarkably polite video statement, he employed the president and the courts and the american people to the investigate. I never believe this story. There are many signs and pieces of evidence I show.

This story is false. And these individuals were killed at grant animal. There are once some warehouse about their deaths. Even if the guards were phoning IT in that night, for instance, how could these hangings have gone unnoticed for so long?

A couple of immense bodies were showing the beginnings of rigger modest when guards cut them down, which takes about two hours to start to set in the logs the guards made of their rounds that night were a little off. Someone seems to have falsified a headcount about an hour before the first detainee was found hanging. But with investigators asked the guards about IT, they all claimed, implausibly, not to know who wrote the entry.

In twenty ten, harper's magazine published an award winning investigation into the guantanamo suicides with the word suicides in scare quotes. And IT was intriguing. The reporter's main source was introduced as a whistle blower.

Joe hick men, the former sergeant in charge of the Q R F team that fought the detainees in camp for hick gman, said some personnel were acting oddly that night, and that while he was on duty in a guard tower, he is on unmarked White van coming and going from camp one, which appeared to him to be secretly moving individual prisoners to info hicklin s. hypotheses. Maybe another agency, perhaps the C.

I. A, had taken the man for secret meetings, and things got out a hand and they died, and then they were strung up to look like suicides. Hig men went a book about IT to this day.

He thinks there's a conspiracy to hide the truth of that night. And some of the detainees, including some of the former guantanamo prisoners we spoke to, they also refused to believe the men hang themselves. They just don't see how or why they could have done IT.

The americans must have killed them somehow. These three competing explanations for the suicides, warfare or misery or homicide, never seem to fade. People still talk about the deaths with a mystery, but there is information, a lot of IT, that, to me, offers the most persuasive answer to the question of what happened. Information that lives inside the paper trail these men left while they were still alive. That's after the break.

It's Melissa from new york times cooking, and i'm in the kitchen with some of our team nica ricarda. What are you making for thanksgiving this year? I'm making the chee hassle back potato time, beaching layers of finally cut potatoes very easy.

But it's a real jv c what you are actually doing, a mush welling ten puff pastry wrapped around this delicious savory mushroom felling are you as standing, if not more so than a turkey. No matter what kind of thanksgiving cooking, you can find the recipes. You N Y T cooking that com slash thankful skiving.

okay. So of the three stories about what killed the men in camp, one desperation, a symmetrical warfare or homicide, i'm gna set aside the homicide idea because no evidence has surfaced to support IT after all these years. And many good reporters we've spoken to told us they did take the idea seriously, tried to substantiate IT, but they weren't able to.

And then just the size of the cover up would be talking about all those people falsified witness statements and investigative documents, and that one person has cracked in twenty years. This seems unlikely. So to me, that leaves two options, desperation or warfare.

And if we're weighing the truth of those stories, we do have convincing evidence. Bureaucratically speaking, I know the most about the ami man allia della AMD, because I have his medical and behavioral al records left over from an unsuccessful lawsuit filed on behalf of his, and yes, as a harangue s. Fathers, oxman arrived in guantanamo in june of two thousand two.

He was twenty two years old, or possibly thirty three years old. The U. S. Never seems to pin down his birthday or his real name for that matter, but most of his guantanamo o records say he was twenty two. He'd worked selling close at the soup and tie yemen in his hometown.

He had a thick black beard and was married to a Young woman named the story he told the U. S. Was that he was studying at a university in pakistan when he got arrested during a RAID at the guest swarry was living the U.

S. Study was lying, that the studying was a cover story and that augment was maybe amid to high level alki a Operative and had possibly travelled with college. Shake mohammed, people said they saw him in afghanistan in kahan. He said he'd never been there.

I have no idea whether he was made to high level alki ta, but from the records, IT seems like he was amid to high level pain in the guard forces as he spits on someone, there is a cup pee on someone, sexually harasses female guards now. And then early in two thousand four, he gets earth to a couple of times once for refusal for reservation, meaning an interrogation session. None of which made him exceptional at guantanamo, but it's pretty clear from the guard logs, OK man was never OK at guantanamo.

He wasn't inclined to settle down or waited out whatever IT was. He was a tiniest register in january two thousand four, a guards season, climbing the fence at the back of the rack area, trying to see what's on the other side. The guard tells them to come down before the tower guard spot.

Tom oka tells the guard, I want the inventory to shoot me so I can be with ella. please. M. P, please. If he had a reputation at one tanami, IT was for hunger striking during the camp's very first hunger strike in two thousand, two army joins in. They after revive him with oxygen.

When he passes out, he joins the hunger strike again in july of two thousand five, not long after bunner ders arrival, he is one of the guys who stops for a couple of days when bombing garner and shackle ammar, work out a deal. And he is one of the guys who gets angry when that deal falls apart, believes the americans have, trick them, lie to them, breaks his toilet and his light fixture goes back on hunger strike. In this time, he never really stops that fall of two thousand five as bomb garner is struggling to contain the hunger strike.

Ocma ends up in the detainee clinic a few times. He's so weak he can barely talk. He arrived at guantanamo waging about one hundred and seventy seven pounds by december twenty fifth. He's down one hundred and twenty four and a half pounds by Christmas.

He's hospitalized with the monie a and accepts scare at the very end of december two thousand and five, a few weeks after the first force feeding chairs were shift to the island. Medical personnel write this note in his file. Quote, patient states that he wanted to commit suicide because he does not want to be a prisoner anymore, and he lost hope.

In quote, ocma will not stop hunger striking. They prescribed him so after, by january tenth, he waited only one hundred and twenty two pounds they strap up into the feeding chair. This is how bum garners period of peace.

Looks for augment dozens and dozens of pages of meticulous ce feeding documentation, exact time, exact amount of liquid nutrition, the width of the tube, the lighter cae percentage, which nostro they snick IT down, whether he resist or not, whether he gets sick after twice a day, they're strapping him in the chair. The process is so hero wing. Most of the hungry strikers quit within a few weeks, but document doesn't.

By mid february, he's one of only three men still on hunger strike. And the inside of his nose is infected. And so inflame, the nurse can get a tube down.

They put IT down his throat. Instead, he's got other medical complaints as well. Itchiness his year hurts to specular pain.

His knees were bashed during an earth in n he tells them now his nee pain is constant, but he is gaining weight one hundred and thirty eight pounds, one hundred and fifty pounds in his cell. He's allowed to keep a couple dozen pictures of his hometown, ib. Yen, a crazy, beautiful city surrounded by Green hills and water falls.

All the while, the behavioral health team is checking in on him, and all the while he's waving them off. A typical encounter, I am good. Everything is good.

Are you from psych? Oh, no, I have nothing to say. I know your questions and you know my answers.

Have a good day. OK. Md keeps getting the feeding tube for another month. After that, five months total of force feeding until lunchtime on june second, two thousand six. A guard walks by active cell, and instead of writing the usual one word description in oculus activity log, sitting, standing, sleeping, praying, the guard rights, eating in all caps with three explanation points, oguma had voluntarily eat the meal. His hunger strike was over.

By this time, he waste one hundred and sixty three pounds is not clear if he's been sneaking food on the side somehow, or if the force feeding caused him to gain back the way. But he physically healthy. After a couple days, they determine he's ready to get off Oscar block in the discipline camp and move over the alpha block in camp one on june seventh, two days before he kills himself.

A behavioral al health staff are comes by OK meters in good spirits, the report says, states that he has no mean thoughts of hurting others or himself. He's not seeing ghosts or genes in his cell, not hearing voices. So that's how prison personnel saw augment.

But the clearest picture of what argument himself was thinking and feeling comes from his own writing, which is part of the military investigative record. He, in the other man, left blood's brief beneath tos explanations. My name is ali of dollar augment ater a salami.

I'm twenty seven years old, married my country y's yumen, and I memorized the coron. Praise and gratitude goes to ala. Omen begins.

I don't know how I start my story. However, I know how I could end IT. He writes A U. S. Greed and support for repressive regimes in middle east, including iraq, in israel, of his treatment in custody, the earths and the tear gas and the humiliation they decorated, our religion, our bodies and private parts.

He says he gave up his hunger strike just a few days back in order to quote, safeguard myself against the american's oppression. And, I mean, final linux ment without return, god willing. I've remained repressed inside a very cold metal box.

They call IT a solitary cell. I ve come out of this box, and my intention was to put an end to these ordeals. I'm not desperate, and I swear to all not afraid.

The date on the letter is june seventh, two thousand and six. The same day he tells his behavioral health staffer his feeling just fine in two days before his suicide. In another letter adjusts to maham's nation, to the entire muslim world. He says, IT again, don't ever think I have been afflicted with desperation.

He hopes that perhaps by doing what he's gonna do, IT revives the hearts and awakens the endeavouring in he signs off with the telephone number in yemen, but in other, more personal letters, also dated june seventh, he sounds terribly sad to my dearest brother. He reminisces asks that he let people know what happened at home at the shop, as that he take good care of my parents and forgive me, ask my parents to for forgiveness to my family and the beloved ones. He Wrights about pooty and obedience, and also his over being separated from them to my dear wife.

He hasn't seen her for five years. He writes of longing and devotion and a gleaming moon and silk and the smell of roses and sweet and fresh water. The other men left writing, too.

The author, as a honey's letters, are thematically and stylistically similar to oxmain. But theyve a little more fire. More were raised fist. More talk of A U. S.

LED conspiracy to keep them indefinitely detained, more gas sty detail his letters two were all dated within days of his death from the third man money alums by there's only one letter in the records did a june eighth. As you all know, the situation in this prison is worsening. He asks all IT to release the other prisoners from captivity to diminish the infidels. His letter concludes, forgive me.

We asked the former prisoners. We spoke to what they remembered about the three men who died of. Matera shi, the Morgan chef who spent five years in guantanamo, told a story about yester as a horny R. C. I was often on the discipline blocks, he said, and that's .

the last place, he said yser, he was just opened and Young me until all they .

were on the harshest, most restrictive black .

november b. Eighteen or maybe IT was .

the other way around, he can't quite remember. But they were both afflicted by the puni shing cold of the air conditioning arsh. He said he couldn't stand IT freezing all night and decided to block the A C event in the ceiling of a cell. But in november, black, there's nothing in yourselves, no material to work with. So he resolved to use his food, scarce as I was, angry as he was.

So in the end I would chew, chew, chew, and then suck IT, and then remove IT. And they will stick IT to the vent broke event.

which worked. He didn't know IT at the time, but IT turned out yser in the opposite cell, also blocking his ceiling vent with food.

We were doing the same thing, but we, we, we didn't tell one another about IT. So one night I could hear the soldiers bringing a house, water house. They got him out of his sale. And I was watching all this for a clock, and you removed him.

They liberated his A C event by blasting IT with water, archie's said. He remembered the guards were so Young early twenty years, like gas r and they seem to be having such a good time, which I can picture Young soldiers with a waterholes and a project.

And to, he said, was, was, was flooded and then, and he was shackled in the mid of the corridor. And then he put him back in his sale like a swimming pool. And he said to him, have a good night.

Soon after that, air city said yser was moved. Probably the camp won alpha block. If I had a hazard, a guess an air sheet was moved into yesser cell. And that cell, he said, had an especially big A C van, just huge. He could not bear to walk under IT.

Only then I realized what he was facing, only realized that that what he was going .

through a shi said he spent about three weeks in that frigid sell on november black before he too was moved out. We didn't a week.

We got the news that free details week tiled OK .

matter C D doesn't have any first hand knowledge of what happened in camp one that night. It's not impossible the men were killed, he says, but he also believes its possible they were driven to suicide because of the harshness. The feeding chairs november black bomb garners innovations bum garners antonio.

So where the men Marks was this a coordinated political tactic, or were the hopeless prisoners sounds to me as if they were both, judging from document letters, especially ogen had thought this through. He was done suffering, done with the entry force feedings, but also he hoped his death would mean something, maybe even inspire something. Guantanamo commanders never figured out exactly how the suicides had been planned or Carried out, so there was no intelligence fix they could grab onto all they could try to do in response to this loss of control, bomb gardener said, was to try to be .

assert IT. IT was not just be nice IT was control shut IT down. The experiment with kindness is not working.

Before the suicides, the camp administration had planned for about three quarters of the detainees to move into more progressive living arrangements. Now they flip that percentage. The big new camp six, designed to be like the now empty camp for would be all single cells, maximum security theyd put steel mission closures along the second floor walkways so no one could jump.

The new recreation yard was carved into individual enclosed pens. Animal Harris began using a new phrase and interviews with the press. I don't think there's such a thing as a medium security terrorist, mike bomb.

Garner came to believe he was personally responsible for the three suicides, not because his policies were too harsh, because they were too soft, head relaxed, the S O P in camp one, so that when yr, as a harangue, was seen washing his own blanket in his cell and then hanging IT up to dry, that was allowed in the extra stuff they were permitted to keep in their selves, the clothing, the water bottles, the sown area. On alpha block a cell, you could use a needle and thread the dim lights so you couldn't easily see the back of the cell, plus the no flashlights and detainee's faces. Role for guards.

So it's not to disturb detainees sleep. All of that helped the detainees pull off their suicides, and all of that carrots planted by bomb garner. What he learned from the suicides was that you can't negotiate with terrorists in trying to comply with certain aspects of the geneva conventions.

But gartner thought he'd went too far tard. Accommodating the detainees is, and the detainees had manipulated his linc. That's what some of his superiors had warned about and some of his subordinate had growth about early on.

And now I saw they were right november block, that most miserable discipline block instituted where your hair and beard would get shown, where you could not talk nothing in your celli accept immerse alist event blasting cold air. That's what really worked, he said. That's what created .

compliance at that. The only way that you deal with the, the, the people in guanta was from a position of strength, from musician of power, from I am in charge to be successful, I am in charge you is going to be my way, i'm in charge.

Conferred with the prisoners endorsing ing their reasonable requests, allowing reasonable concessions, he said the detainees must have pig them as weak.

You show any weakness whatsoever and where i'm going to give to you one each and you give this type of freedom to b that's totally forgot. I mean, that freedom I don't that totally forgotten that you ever did that may that concession. Now the bar has moved away down the road again.

They were always reached for the next thing. And anything you did form they didn't really recognize that was not everything that you would expect. Appreciation, people say, but how do you expect from the gas? know?

I mean, it's not trust word, some of bitch a well, would you expect? I mean, they're terrorist, just know as we thought, would you expect? Um but I didn't relieve some of my trade ers people, people who said I thought there was a degree.

a degree of mutual respect or at least a degree of fair play. Bum garner had a stunning faith that if he gave their prisoners some privileges, they'd be grateful they'd hold up their end of a one sided bargain. Instead, in burger or eyes, they did the worst thing. They killed themselves and try to destroy antonio. And that's why he said, at guantanamo, you can't fully employ the geneva conventions which spell out not only the obligations of the capture but of the captives how they should .

behave that's the element of why you know the conventions can hold in a camp because there's no obligation on those being hailed, no recognition of all the the commission.

If they don't play by the rules, then we can either the precise thinking that created the massive of guantanamo in the first place, because there had been rules, maybe not perfect rules, but still good rules, that the united states spurn at one tanami gardens designed to curtail humanises worst impulses to violence and revenge domination. That's what the geneva conventions were.

And the convention against torture international agreements, the united states not only endorsed and adopted, but helped write for some of the prisoners. The worst thing about guantanamo wasn't so much that the us. Wasn't playing by the rules.

That's what the documentary edi explained to us. He said the worst thing was that the U. S. Seem to think IT was playing by the rules.

You know, the worst thing that you can imagine is when your right are being violated and when you are tortured and abuse and brutalized by someone who's regarded as someone who respect you as someone who doesn't believe in torture. So when you are tortured by someone who doesn't believe in tortured, it's really, really scared because you don't know what comes next and how best is gonna get. Because how people doing this to me, you know, that makes you think that is going to get worse and worse. And was.

Immediately after the suicide, 邦 garner was in trouble， not for the suicide, he was investigated what's called the spill. A reporter from the charley observer happened to be visiting guantanamo, doing a story on bomb garner when the suicide occurred, and bomb garner's bosses were concerned he'd possibly disclosed classified information to the reporter. The accusation was weak, quickly fell away, and in any case, one garta considered a pretext.

He's certain what really pissed off his command were some intimate ate comments he made in the days following the suicide des captured by that reporter the most damn thing. He quoted bumgarner sane in honor of our three dead brothers, and then biting into a pork chop sandwich. 邦 garta was suspended from his duties and sent to his quarters pending in inquiry。

I was based on her house arrest. I don't if they called IT, but that's based what I was. Just go sit by yourself in the house.

Bum garner was floored. The three desks from the prominent had happened, and he thought, for sure they are gonna close IT the publicity, the politics would overwhelm guantanamo and shut IT down. And IT would be his fault he couldn't comprehend how quickly his .

star had fAllen. Was but I this, if I committed a capital crime, here I was, you know, just hours before. No respected. I thought about people and doing the right thing, doing I for god and country and oin the next second i'm like on the fb has most wanted st at least that boy I filed.

And when you have said out also age eight and winning a citizenship of art, I mean, I was always the good cities, always I was the go, almost like I do good, but I never got in trouble. I was always the right that, you know, stickler a rule following and to know that i'm being an accused of breaking the law, that i've been involved in something that is wrong, that I failed, that we've LED the nation because he was I heard to talk about IT. We're not going any by dad.

I mean, it's that was our mission that was part of the mission now is going escape. No, I was going to do. Those are the things that you just don't allow to happen.

and. There was the best of my life being on that was the absolute rock bottom of my life, that period with nothing come anywhere your close. But I know .

something for you. So sorry.

I didn't make any act, but I was close. I was very close, very, very, very, very close. I was as close as you could be without doing that.

Life was over for me. I even IT was horble. I can't tell you how long I was. Can you begin to tell how long I was?

After about a week, bomb gardener was cleared, the military found he hadn't spilled anything to the reporter, and shortly after that, his command, guantanamo, was over. And he rotated out lot, a tory citation ation in hand. His career continued, but his rank didn't rise. He retired from the army in twenty ten.

A quota to the story of the worst year guantanamo's favorite reporter, billow Riley of fox news, had toward the camp on je two thousand six the same day just pointed anny as a suicide. Tonight the media drumbeat continues about gulangyu omo bed so far, the new york boston globe, the clever and playing dealer, the new star, a ledger, U. S.

A. A day. And all the newspapers of I either criticize, get more, or call for IT, be shut down. This segment ran a few days afterwards, left the island before the suicide took place. He gotten a special tour exposed to as much as possible bum gardener at his elbow. In a sit down interview, a Riley had asked bomb gardener about the fight that had erupted a month earlier in cap.

for you surprised you get sure to kill you guys. Solution while they will. These folks, they hate us.

It's a strange like you take me hours, try to explain to, they hate us. They hate americans. I mean, I see IT every day. I see that look in their eyes that I cannot explain. IT is a crazy look when you're doing with them. They will tell you in a hard so I I care to rise IT everybody that comes through here make no some mistake about IT they will cut your throat and heart to be make no mistake about one .

gartner told me he knew rally wanted to sound bite and so exaggerated a little gave the people what they wanted.

What about all these poor Bakers and barbers who do rounded up and through in here for no reason? I'm looking for her. I'm looking for are out there is somewhere .

I reckon .

that's what the human rights Price tells me. I tell you, I wish know again, those that come here see IT walk IT. Yeah, leave with a different opinion.

These folks are not what folks paint in the media there. Not at all. These are not good guys. I stake my reputation in my life is a current military police know this, that we have enter buts .

when we appreciate the hospitality of the joint .

task force guantanamo. And right back with some religious.

gartner had been worried that pressure from liberals and bad press would close one tonio. But in hindsight, it's obviously had nothing to worry about, because this aside, trc drug beat was always stronger. The one pounding up the message to any and all waivers.

Americans don't believe the human rights lawyers. The noise sayers, guantanamo is vital to our national security. When a realist story was over, one garta told me he escorted him off the island.

and I remember driving him back. We're taking him over to put him on boat to take across. He said to me, is a kernel, don't worry about them.

This place is not going to close. I said, i'm very differential. Yes, sir.

Ah, hi. You know that he got, i'm not going. Let IT happy.

In the end, bomb garner took this terrible year of hunger, striking and fighting and suicides harder than guantanamo itself. The prison has survived the worst. Maybe I could survive anything. It's almost quite now to think the government was cording the press back in bomber nurse day, telling them to come on down and see for themselves because skip ahead fifteen years and the P, R, goal was to make antonio disappear. That's next time.

Serials produced by Jessica iceberg, dana chavez and me. Our editor is july snyder, additional reporting by correa, career fact checking by then fAiling music supervision, sound design and mixing by feb wang, original score by Sophia daily alassane editing help from jaguar and iron glass are contributing.

Editors are Carol rosenberg and rosina ally, additional research by emerging o america, fog and sami use of I translation by mohamed raza, a hip za nail hajo A T rahn dana elisa han, ham wilford and obama thon additional production from Daniel gmt and kati mingo. Our standards editor is Susan westling legal review from alaman suma and mia gandi. The art for our show comes from public delco, and max gouter, supervising producer for serial productions, is indeed ubu. Our executive assistant is mac Miller. Sam dollar is deputy managing editor of the new york times, special thanks to many super vil mansa dii, mohammed l fci, fresh tatia, mark denbigh parki, cory ripple and leith.