My Guantanamo Diary

The base is divided into two areas -- the leeward side and the windward side -- by the 2 1/2 -mile-wide Guantanamo Bay. The main base is on the windward side, which is where the detention camps are built. Habeas counsel are lodged on the leeward side, at the combined bachelor quarters, or CBQ, for $20 a day.

There is cable TV, a phone, dial-up Internet, a small kitchen and maid service. Each room has four twin beds. On my first trip, I debated whether to sleep in a different bed each night.

Gitmo is a strange place, but soon after arriving, you find yourself adjusting to its clockwork military rhythm. Every morning begins at 7:30. It's usually bright and sunny. The Jamaican gardener, Bartley, is always yelling something or other. Everyone meets at the concrete tables at the front of the CBQ to wait for the bus, which leaves at exactly 7:41 a.m. It takes us to the ferry and pulls in at 7:51 a.m., just as the ferry is docking. At precisely 8:20 a.m., we're dropped off on the windward side, where we're always greeted by one of three military escorts who hand out our habeas badges. Next stop is Starbucks and the food court to pick up food for the detainees and to have breakfast. Then on to Camp Echo, the special section of the base where meetings with detainees are held.

The only part of the Gitmo experience that doesn't run with military precision are these meetings. More often than not, there's a delay in bringing the prisoners over to Camp Echo. Once, we had to wait five hours on the bus. This frustrates the attorneys, given the weeks of work they've spent preparing. Not to mention that the ice cream we bring turns to soup.

As we leave our meeting with Mousovi, I pull the heavy shawl off my head. Primo, our military escort, is standing outside the fenced compound, taking deep drags off a Marlboro Red. We pile onto the bus, and Peter picks up a large manila envelope, seals his stack of handwritten notes inside and writes "1154" on the outside. The notes will be sent to Washington for classification review.

Primo drives us and another group of attorneys to the Navy Exchange. Adjacent to this large supermarket are a Subway, a gift shop and ATMs. Across the street there's a KFC and a McDonald's. At the exchange, we pick up a stack of porterhouse steaks, charcoal, potatoes, chips, lots of beer and assorted wines. Everyone barbecues for dinner, because other than the Clipper Club, a small greasy spoon that serves fried hot dogs and pizza, there's nothing to eat where we're based.

Over steak dinner, I comment on how nice our military escorts are. They joke and laugh with us. Primo gives me pointers on shooting pool in the CBQ lobby. Everyone brings them beer and cigarettes. I think I had expected them to be more aloof, even hostile.

But Tom Wilner, a partner in the Washington office of Shearman & Sterling LLP, quickly retorts: "Yeah, they're nice. But this whole place is evil -- and the face of evil often appears friendly."

His words hit me hard. Tom is one of the most passionate lawyers working at Guantanamo Bay. He gets angry talking about the conditions under which the detainees live. Most are held in isolation in cells separated by thick steel mesh or concrete walls. Every man eats every meal alone in his small cell. The prisoners are allowed out of their cells three times a week for about 15 minutes to exercise, often in the middle of the night, so many don't see sunlight for months at a time.

Tom and his firm got involved representing 12 Kuwaiti detainees in March 2002, after a group of families contacted him. At first, like most of the lawyers here, Tom took up the cause because of the legal principles at stake. But after he finally met the detainees in January 2005, his attitude changed. Suddenly he was fighting for real people. "Most of these guys," he says, "were totally innocent and simply swept up by mistake."

I think of Ali Shah Mousovi when he says that. Even the presiding officer at Mousovi's hearing declared that he found it "difficult to believe" that the United States had imprisoned Mousovi and flown him "all the way to Cuba." Yet here he sits.

One of the things Tom hates most is having to tell his clients that a close relative has died while they've been detained. But he has had to do so countless times: Fouad al-Rabiah's father and brother died; Omar Amin's father died; Nasser al-Mutairi's father died; Saad al-Azmi's father died; Khaled al-Mutairi's father died; Fawzi al-Odah's grandmother died.