Guantanamo Quotes

“It's a good thing I'm not the president, because I would prosecute everybody who was involved in that torture, I would prosecute the people who did it, I would prosecute the people who ordered it and they would all go to jail! Because Torture is against the law!”
― Jesse Ventura

“It was William Penn who said, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.” Brent knew that there was nothing right about this place and the way the prisoners were treated, and he was determined to do whatever he could to change that.”
― Kenneth G. Eade, A Patriot's Act

“I helped negotiate the end to the hunger strike. I asked for better meals and time for rec. We got five extra minutes each week. I wasn't the general they thought I was--I wasn't even a leader--but I had found my role in this place: To feel the pain of others. To stick up for those who were beaten. And to try to make our lives better.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“No one wanted to be a block leader because as soon as interrogators found out about them, they disappeared to interrogations and then to solitary confinement. The professor was smart and told brothers to make someone else block leader and he would advise them.

So they asked me. I wasn't a leader. I wasn't an instigator. I was young and, like most men my age, I was still learning; I was clever, but not wise yet. I was just a simple tribal man who couldn't sit by and watch other men and boys get abused and mistreated.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“I thought about all the moments we had experienced in this place that no one knew about. But I didn't want the world to just know about all the bad things that had happened to us. I wanted them to see who we were and how we had survived through friendship and brotherhood.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“The military prison at Guantanamo was the equivalent of any concentration camp in Nazi Germany, the most shameful example of the cruel and complete abolition of all human rights by the Government, all in the name of the war on terrorism.”
― Kenneth G. Eade

“No no, please please

Please stop it
Is this ‘cause my last name bears the name of the prophet?

I don’t know no Akbar
I don’t know no Ahmad
So why the hell are you tying my hands and tilting my head back?

Me no sign up for this
Cloth warm, over my face

You cut to the chase
Cruciform, torturous ways

I’m biting my lips
Spine chills, trying to be brave

So this is the place
Sign my will, death is my fate”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Letter 19

“I understood that there was a right and a wrong way to treat human beings, even those you thought of as your enemies. My American captors held no such values.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“In the beginning, some brothers could sea the sea if they stood on their sink and looked through their window. In the rec yard, I found that if I lay down on my stomach in the corner, I could tear away a tiny piece of green tarp covering the fence and steal glimpses of a turquoise sea. I told my brothers and soon many of us would lie down and spend our recreation time looking at the sea through that small secret window. Eventually the guards noticed the hole.

"Why can I look at the sea?" I asked the watch commander when he caught me.

"It's for your own safety and security," he said through an interpreter. I suspected he thought Osama bin Laden might land on the beach one day with an al Qaeda army and break us all out. America was supposed to be a smart country, but the things we believed made us question this.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“I remember explaining explaining what I saw to one brother who couldn't see the sea.

"I see an endless body of blue," I said, "with a soul that courses through the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Suez Canal, all the way to the Red Sea and the western coast of Yemen, where in the seaside town of Hudaydah, my father is at the market buying fish for a special meal. And when the tide comes in and the air is heavy with salt, my mind takes me straight to the port city of Aden and weekends I spent there with friends after high school. We'd lie on the beach and imagine our lives and the wives and families we would one day have.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“Bahr sang in Arabic, Pashto, Persian, and English, but even if our brothers or the guards didn't understand the words, his voice was enough to free us all from our caged lives, even if only for a moment. Music and poetry are the soul's languages, and when Bahr sang, all the blocks quieted down so they could listen. His voice and his songs carried with me into solitary confinement, where I listened to Bahr and the sea in my head.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo