David Hicks is an Australian who was imprisoned at Guantanamo Navel Base after being captured in Afghanistan in 2002 and was released in 2007. In this interview he talks about his treatment while being held at GITMO. Among them is torture and medical experimentation.
TO: At what moment in your mind did you begin to realize or understand that you were being tortured?
DH: I was beaten by US forces the first time I saw them and realized straight away that torture was going to be a reality, it was very scary. As I say in my book, I could not help thinking of the saying, "like trying to get blood from a stone," and I was afraid of becoming that stone.
TO: What do you think makes a human being torture another human being?
DH: In Guantanamo torture was driven by anger and frustration. It seemed like a mad fruitless quest to pin crimes on detainees, to extract false confessions, and produce so-called intelligence of value. The guards were desensitized and detainees de-humanized. Soldiers were not allowed to engage us in conversation. They were told to address us by number only and not by name. They were constantly drilled with propaganda about how much we supposedly hated them and wanted them dead and how much they needed to hate us. On occasion, when some groups of soldiers jogged around the camp perimeters I heard them sing lyrics such as, 'you hate us and we hate you.' One time in the privacy of Camp Echo a male soldier broke down when we were alone repeating, "what have I become?‚" after having arrived from an interrogation of a detainee in another camp.
TO: You have written eloquently of your terrible experience with what you say was medical experimentation, calling it the worst and darkest of your experiences there. Have you talked with any other detainees about whether they had similar experiences? How do you think about it now?
DH: When I was injected in the back of the neck I was being held in isolation, so I was unable to discuss what had happened with other detainees. A year passed before I was eventually able to see and communicate with fellow detainees, and I am unable to remember today if I discussed that particular personal experience with them. We did discuss medical experimentation in general however. A detainee with UK citizenship described being injected daily, resulting in one of his testicles becoming swollen and racked with pain. Along with these daily injections he was subjected to mind games by interrogators, medical personnel, and guards whom worked as a team.
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