Guantanamo Remains Source of Outrage

A US trooper keeps watch from a guard tower at the detention compound at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, in this Dec. 7, 2006 file photo, reviewed by a U.S. Dept of Defense official. Five years since the first detainees arrived here on Jan. 11, 2002, Guantanamo is a lightning rod for criticism of US President George W. Bush's handling of the war on terror, with Bush meanwhile maintaining that the facility is essential to America's security. (AP Photo/Brennan Llinsley) (Brennan Linsley - AP)

-- A black hood covered his eyes, shackles secured his wrists and legs. He felt lightheaded from two days without food and medication that made him sleep during the long flight. Startled by barking guard dogs, he was shouted at by troops in a language he didn't understand.

"We didn't know where we were or what was going to happen to us," Adil al-Zamil, a former Kuwaiti government clerk who was one of the first to arrive at Guantanamo Bay after the base began receiving terror suspects on Jan. 11, 2002. "We were very, very afraid."

In the early days, dogs were used to intimidate prisoners. Detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation and earsplitting rock and rap music. Some, including al-Zamil, said they were shackled in uncomfortable positions for hours.

Today, five years after the first prisoners arrived at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba, the detention camp commander says those aggressive interrogation tactics are gone.

But world outrage over the detention center has grown. Protests around the world will mark the fifth anniversary Thursday of the arrival of the first 20 prisoners at Guantanamo, including a demonstration on the Cuban side of Guantanamo's gate.

Critics say the camp, where hundreds of men face indefinite incarceration, has damaged U.S. credibility and should close.

"It has become iconic in the Muslim world and the wider world ... for everything that the United States has done wrong in the war on terror," said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

The military says the detention center is vital as ever. Nearly 400 detainees suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban are still held there.

"What we are doing is an important and integral part of the global war on terror," Navy Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, commander of the detention center, told The Associated Press by telephone on Tuesday. "We're keeping enemies of our nation _ enemy combatants, terrorists if you will _ off the battlefield."

Al-Zamil, 44, insisted Tuesday that he had no links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. He says he had traveled to Afghanistan to work for a charity before being taken into custody in Pakistan and turned over to U.S. forces. He was held in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo in what he believes was February or March of 2002.

He and another Kuwaiti, Saad al-Azmi, were forced onto the tarmac in Guantanamo together.

"We were totally cut off from the world. We didn't know what was going on," al-Zamil said by telephone from Kuwait.