Anodyne
Thursday, August 09, 2007
 
Inside Room 101

"Some detainees held by the C.I.A. claimed that their cells were bombarded with deafening sound twenty-fours hours a day for weeks, and even months. One detainee, Binyam Mohamed, who is now in Guantánamo, told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that speakers blared music into his cell while he was handcuffed. Detainees recalled the sound as ranging from ghoulish laughter, 'like the soundtrack from a horror film,' to ear-splitting rap anthems. Stafford Smith said that his client found the psychological torture more intolerable than the physical abuse that he said he had been previously subjected to in Morocco, where, he said, local intelligence agents had sliced him with a razor blade. 'The C.I.A. worked people day and night for months,' Stafford Smith quoted Binyam Mohamed as saying. 'Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off.'

Professor Kassem said his Yemeni client, Kazimi, had told him that, during his incarceration in the Dark Prison, he attempted suicide three times, by ramming his head into the walls. 'He did it until he lost consciousness,' Kassem said. 'Then they stitched him back up. So he did it again. The next time, he woke up, he was chained, and they’d given him tranquillizers. He asked to go to the bathroom, and then he did it again.' This last time, Kazimi was given more tranquillizers, and chained in a more confining manner."


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