A FORMER Guantanamo Bay prisoner has marked the 20th anniversary of the notorious detention camp’s opening by urging the government step up pressure on the United States to shut it down.

Thirty-nine men remain locked up at the US military prison camp, which has become a byword for torture and indefinite detention without trial since it opened on January 11 2002. 

Speaking to the Morning Star, former inmate Moazzam Begg said Guantanamo will tarnish the reputation of the US for as long as it remains open. 

The British-Pakistani national was detained for a total of three years at Bagram detention camp in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, on US-occupied Cuban territory, after being captured at his home in Pakistan in 2002. 

US authorities accused him of being an al-Qaida member, but he was released in 2005 by then US president George W Bush without having been charged with any offence.

Mr Begg said today that he had been subjected to torture, held in solitary confinement and witnessed a man being kicked to death by guards while his arms were chained above his head. 

Describing his harrowing experiences, Mr Begg said: “I was made to hear the sounds of a woman screaming in the next cell when I was being interrogated by the CIA and the FBI, who waved pictures of my children in front of my face as I was tied up.”

After a year in Bagram, where he was held in a cell without natural light and denied access to washing facilities, he was taken on a “torturous” 36-hour flight to Guantanamo Bay. 

“I arrived in Guantanamo, which was a cage inside a room, eight foot by six foot, and remained there for the next two years; no charges, no trial, no lawyers, no conviction, no visits, no phone calls, no newspapers, no television, no access to other prisoners, no windows in the cell. 

“There was such a big list of noes that most people would be surprised at, considering we afford these rights to the worst convicted prisoners in our countries.

“I think the biggest aspect of the abuse was not knowing what crime you’ve committed for which you’re paying the ultimate price – your freedom.”

After two years, Mr Begg was released thanks to a campaign by his father that prompted the British government to intervene in the case. 

“Otherwise, I would have been looking at being held there for years, decades even, if not the execution chamber,” he said. 

Since then, Mr Begg has campaigned for the closure of the US prison and against the so-called war on terror as part of his work with advocacy group Cage, of which he is a senior director, which was set up in 2003 to investigate abuses linked to the war on terror. 

Cage today launched a new website to campaign for the camp’s closure and salute the international efforts to free its inmates over two decades.

Several of Mr Begg’s fellow inmates remain at Guantanamo to this day. Speaking about one’s 19-year-old son, Mr Begg said: “He’s still waiting for the date when he can actually see his father – [it] is unbelievable that, in 2022, this can be happening.”

Of the 39 people still held at Guantanamo, only nine have been charged or convicted of crimes. Between 2002 and last year, nine detainees died in custody, two from natural causes and seven reportedly by suicide. None had been charged or convicted of a crime.

“In the end, you have to look at it and ask what was it all for?” Mr Begg said. “Out of the 779 prisoners, 39 still left there, no-one’s been convicted for the involvement in 9/11.”

Human rights groups have expressed frustration at the continued use of the detention facility, 20 years on from when it was first established in the wake of the September 11 attacks. 

The United Nations Human Rights Council declared that two decades of “practising arbitrary detention without trial accompanied by torture or ill treatment is simply unacceptable for any government.”

Mr Begg added that other countries also complicit in the detention and torture of detainees at Guantanamo must also demand its closure. 

“Guantanamo is like the murder on the Orient Express – everyone is guilty, everyone took part in the killing,” he said. 

“Britain has been a chief culprit in facilitating, supporting and helping America in its ‘war on terror’ and Guantanamo has been a part of that, so it should press America to close Guantanamo.”

Mr Begg added that he was only “semi-hopeful” that the site would be closed soon, with plans to build a new court suggesting that the struggle against it will have to continue. 

In the year since US President Joe Biden took office, he has only freed one Guantanamo prisoner.