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Guantanamo Guard: "The Stuff I Did And The Stuff I Saw Was Just Wrong"

By blueness

Army Specialist Brandon Neely arrived in Guantanamo on January 7, 2002, "while the cages of Camp X-Ray were still being welded."

For the next six months, Neely witnessed "the arrival of the detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, possible isolation regime of the first six children in GTMO, [and] utter lack of preparation for guarding individuals detained during the War on Terror."

Neely has now provided detailed accountings of all of the above to both The Guantanamo Testimonials Project of the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, and to the Associated Press. Brandon Neely has become a one-man truth and reconciliation commission:

I would greatly encourage any other military members who spent time at Guantanamo at any time to tell their story of what they went through, good or bad. It's important that our stories are told. It's history, and the people have the right to know. It's a hard decision to tell your side of the story when you're not sure of how it will be received, but it's the right thing to do.

Neely was born in June 1980 in Fort Benning, Georgia; his father was a career Army man, who retired a master sergeant. Neely approached adulthood in Huntsville, Texas, graduating high school in 1998 "with no plans whatsoever for my future." For the next two years he did little but stock groceries and "hang out."

In June 2000 Neely enlisted in the Army for a five-year hitch as an MP. He'd been interested in "law enforcement" from a very early age:

At the age of 7 or 8, while we were in Fort Knox, Kentucky, I was out back down the hill with a couple other friends playing in the dirt. Suddenly, these 2 MPs came running our way chasing this guy for some reason. One of them stopped and asked us where we lived and took us home. I can remember then saying "One day I would like to be that guy."

On September 11, 2001, Neely was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.

Once I found out that the United States had been attacked by terrorists I was ready for revenge. I was angry. I was ready to go to war. Someone or something had attacked my country, and I believed people needed to be held responsible for this.

On January 6, 2002, Neely was told he'd be going to Guantanamo.

From the outset, Neely and his fellow soldiers were informed that Guantanamo would be a new type of detention facility.

We were told that we would be starting and running a detainee facility, not an EPW (or Enemy Prisoner of War) camp. We were told that a detainee camp had never been ran before, and that this would be the first time in history this had taken place since these people would not fall under the Geneva Convention.

Neely arrived in Guantanamo on January 7. Two days later he was given "a quick tour" of Camp X-Ray.

It was nothing like I had ever seen before. The cells--or cages as I call them--were small. "Something like you would put a dog in," I thought. And, on top of that, it was all outdoors. Except for a small metal roof. The whole camp was rocks. No matter where you stepped you were stepping on rocks.

The only thing I can recall being told about the detainees that would arrive was that they were captured fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. And that they were known terrorists. And that many of them helped in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. We would be coming face-to-face with the worst people the world had to offer. Our mission would be to guard these terrorists so the United States could get more info on attacks and, possibly, stop more terrorist attacks.

As to us, we talked a lot about the detainees before they arrived. About them and what they had probably been involved in. A lot of us, including myself, were pissed off, and many people were out to get revenge for the havoc the United States had been through in recent months by these people.

On January 11, Neely prepared to meet his first detainees:

After waiting a couple hours we got the call that the detainees were at the air strip and being loaded up to bring to the camp. I started getting really nervous; almost scared. I keep thinking "Here it comes; I am fixing to see what a terrorist looks like face-to-face." I remember my escort partner saying over and over "I got your back, man, if anything happens." I could tell he was as nervous as I was. Everyone in the camp that day was nervous and scared; you could literally hear a pin drop moments before that bus full of detainees arrived.

The prisoners arrived in orange suits. Some had orange ski caps. They had goggles on their eyes, earmuffs on their ears, surgical masks on their faces, and black gloves on their arms. They were handcuffed and leg-shackled. They had chains around their waists with a padlock on the back. The handcuffs were attached to the waist chain.

The bus doors opened, the escort teams were lined up right next to the bus to take the detainees off the bus and put them in the holding area. You could hear the Marines screaming at them "Shut the fuck up! You're property of the United States of America now." We were not allowed to step onto the bus. The Marines would push them towards us down the bus stairs and we would catch them. The first person who got off the bus, I will never forget. It was a man with one leg. He was later called Stumpy by everyone. I don't know his name, but he was around 5'7 and at least 250lbs. He was the biggest guy we had for a long time. Grabbed by the escorting MPs, Stumpy was jumping on one leg, MPs screaming at him to walk faster towards the holding area when, from inside the bus, someone threw his prosthetic leg out onto the ground. Myself and my partner were next. The second detainee came off the bus. We grabbed him like we were trained and took him into the holding area, yelling at him to get on his knees and to shut up.

In the course of giving his statement to the CSHRA people, Neely eventually returned to that first day, to confess that he himself had on that day been involved in the abuse of a fellow human being:

Even though I reached out to talk to you about Guantanamo and wanting to tell what it was really like inside the camp at the beginning when I was there, I am not a totally innocent person as far as what happened inside the wire. I am very ashamed to admit it and tell you that I was involved in the very first IRFing incident at Camp X-Ray. I left it out of what happened on Day 1, and I apologize for that. It's just something that I am very ashamed of. Here is what happened.

On the first day we had been taking detainees from the in-processing center to their cages for quite a while when myself and the guy that was my escorting partner grabbed the next detainee to be taken. He was an older man. Probably in his mid to late 50s--short and kind of a husky build. I remember grabbing him and then starting to walk first through the rocks and then through the sally port (a long walk way with gates on both sides) heading towards Alpha Block. Then I noticed he was really tense, shaking really bad, and not wanting to walk or move without being forced to do so. We made our way to Alpha Block to the cage he would be placed in. He was instructed to go to his knees, which he did. My partner then went down and took off his leg shackles. I still had control of his upper body, and I could still feel him tensing up. Once the shackles were off my partner started to take off the hand cuffs. The detainee got really tense and started to pull away. We yelled at him a couple times "Stop moving!" Over and over. Then he stopped moving, and when my partner went to put the key in that first handcuff, the detainee jerked hard to the left towards me. Before I knew it, I threw the detainee to the ground and was on top of him holding his face to the cement floor.

At this time my partner had left the cage. The block NCOIC (or Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge) was on the radio yelling code red which meant emergency on the block. Before I knew, I was being grabbed from behind and pulled out of the cage by the IRF team. They grabbed this man and hog-tied him. He laid there like that for hours that day before he was released from that position.

A couple days later I found out from a detainee who was on that block that the older detainee was just scared and that when we placed him on his knees he thought he was going to be executed. He then went on to tell me that this man had seen some of his friends and family members executed on their knees. I can remember guys coming up to me after it was over that night and said "Man, that was a good job; you got you some."

I did not feel good about what I did. It felt wrong. This man was old enough to be my father, and I had just beaten up on him. I still to this day don't know who was more scared before and during this incident me or the detainee.

I remember seeing him the next day when I walked into camp. His face was all bruised and scraped up. I was young and didn't question anything back then. As I do nowadays. But even then, when I was as pissed off as anyone there, I felt ashamed of what I did. As the years have went on and the more I learn the more guilt I feel. This is one of the incidents from my time at Guantanamo that haunts me.

Neely was not the only American involved in abuse of these newly-arrived prisoners. This is what happened when one prisoner refused the command of a medic that he drink Ensure:

The call was made on the radio for the IRF team . . . The IRF team then started to approach the cage the detainee was in. Since I was on the block I walked on the other side of the cage so I could watch what was going on. Once the IRF team was lined up and got in position to enter the cell the OIC unlocked the lock and pulled it off and opened the cage door. The detainee just stood there, facing the IRF team. BOOM! the Number One Man hit the detainee with shield causing him to fall to the cement floor of the cage. Quickly the whole team was on top of the detainee. I could not see exactly what they were doing. They stood him up and hand-cuffed him to fence in the cage. The person who had the shield held the detainee's head so he could not move. The medic then entered the cage with the can of Ensure. Once he entered the cage he looked up and saw me. He then motioned for me to move over to my left (his right). So I moved over. I did not think anything about it. He then opened the Ensure can, grabbed the detainee by the neck, and started to pour it down his throat. The detainee was attempting to move his head, and he wouldn't swallow any of it. The Ensure just ran down his face all over him.

The medic looked up one quick time and punched the detainee twice on the left side of his face with his right fist. The medic then just turned around and walked out of the cage like nothing happened. The detainee was then un-handcuffed from the cage and laid down on the cement in the cage. He was then hog-tied. He laid in this position for a couple hours.

When the whole incident was over I turned around and noticed the guard tower where the Marines were stationed watching over and realized that the medic had placed me in front of the view of the tower and I had not even realized it.

I later learned through other detainees on the block the reason the man refused the Ensure was that he thought he was being poisoned.

A prisoner who had repeatedly demeaned a female MP as a "bitch" was dealt with in this way:

For punishment, the IRF team was called upon to enter the cage and hog-tie the detainee. The female MP was very upset, yelling "Whip his ass!"

The IRF team, along with the camp OIC, approached the detainee's cage and told him to stop yelling and lay down so he could be restrained. The detainee just stood there, staring at them. The IRF team lined up in position to enter the cage. The OIC unlocked the lock on the cage door and, when this was done, the detainee turned around, went to his knees and placed his hands on the top of his head. The lock was taken off and the cage door was opened. The Number One Man on the IRF team tossed his shield to the side and, with a quick run towards the detainee, hopped in the air and came down on the back of the detainee with his knee (the Number One guy on the IRF team was no small guy). This caused the detainee to fall to the cement floor of the cage with the Number One Man on top of him. Then the whole IRF team was on top of him hitting, punching, and kicking him. It seemed like a long time, but in reality it lasted 15-20 seconds.

While the IRF team was still on top of the detainee someone yelled for the female MP that was called a bitch. She entered the cage and she punched the detainee a couple times in the head and then left the cage. Everyone in the cage stood up and the detainee laid there cuffed-up but motionless and unresponsive. Next thing I saw were medics coming from the medical house with a stretcher. They left the block with the detainee on the stretcher; they took him to a waiting military ambulance and was transported to the main hospital. The IRF team would ride along with the detainee. I went back to work not fully knowing what was wrong or what happened to the detainee.

Later that night, after we had been off for a while, the IRF team came back from the hospital. They would go on and talk about how they hit and punched the detainee and how they held him down so the female MP could hit him a couple times. They went on to talk about the ambulance ride saying no one spoke and it was a very silent ride. One of them even stated the detainee went into cardiac arrest in the ambulance . . . .

Eventually the detainee would return back to the camp from the hospital. About a week or so later I was assigned to work Bravo Block, and the block NCOIC happened to be a member of the IRF team. He was the Number One Man of the day of this incident. When the NCOIC walked onto the block a detainee named Feroz Abbasi yelled "Sergeant, have you come back to finish him off?"

IRF incidents like these were supposed to be filmed. But according to Neely, the "filming" would go like this:

Every time I witnessed an IRFing a camera was present, but one of two things would happen: (1) the camera would never be turned on, or (2) the camera would be on, but pointed straight at the ground. In the incident on Bravo Block I spoke about I found out through talking to people and hearing them joke that the video of the incident was destroyed.

According to Neely, young American MPs, ignorant of and uninstructed by their superiors of the culture and nature of the men they were guarding, could inadvertently, negligently, offend every one of them:

Yes, there were hunger strikes in the early days. Some detainees started out on hunger strike. I believe it was early February when, on Charlie Block, a Koran was thrown to the floor during a cell search. This caused the whole camp to go in a massive uproar, screaming and yelling to the point all MPs came out of the blocks. Due to this incident most of the detainees went on hunger strike. I remember some of the detainees being so weak they could not move and every hour or so if I was on assigned to a block I would try and get a response out of them as some of them were so weak that they looked as if they were dead.

The guard that threw the Koran to the ground was a really good friend of mine, and the same MP I escorted with on the first day the detainees arrived. I talked to him that night about what happened. He swears he didn't throw the Koran to the ground being hateful. He told me he was just doing a cell search--as was to be done every time a detainee left the cage. We were told to search the Korans and that's what he did. And he said that, before thinking about it, he tossed it to the side, hitting the ground. And that's when all hell broke loose in the camp. He was very upset about the whole thing.

Other cultural, racial, and/or religious abuse was more intentional:

Upon arrival, detainees were screamed at throughout the whole process. They were told to shut up, walk faster, and what not. Some guards would call them "Sand Niggers." I never heard that phrase until I was at Guantanamo. Detainees would be told that their country had been nuked and nothing was left, and that their families were dead. I know of some guards even telling detainees they could be executed at any time. This all was being said on the blocks by fellow MPs.

Yes there was loud rock music that was played throughout the camp. Especially in the early days of X-Ray. Over time this seemed to stop, but the National Anthem was played every morning at 0630. Muslim calls to prayer were broadcast after the first week of Camp X-Ray. During call to prayer many times soldiers would mock and laugh at the detainees. Many would also try to sing along to the call for prayer trying to be funny. I also know that sometimes, during call for prayer, water would be given out to the detainees in their bucket, and some would spray the detainees with water during prayer, then stating it was an accident.

According to Neely, prisoners who were clearly mentally ill were nonetheless not removed from Guantanamo. Neely's tale of one prisoner brings a chilling new meaning to the wearyingly common American chant of "We're Number 1!":

There was a mentally ill detainee who arrived to Guantanamo somewhat earlier on in the process. I did not recall his name or detainee number. He arrived during the day, and during this period I had been assigned to nights for a week or so. I was working Charlie Block; just walking around, talking to the other guard on the block. Most of the detainees were laying down or reading their Koran. As we were walking around we noticed this one detainee who was squatted down talking to his self. We walked around and came back again and noticed he was drinking his shampoo out of the bottle. We tried to talk to him, but all he did was jibber-jabber. We notified the block NCOIC and he notified medical, which said it was "just shampoo", and that "it's nothing to worry about." He stayed up all night just walking around talking to himself.

Over time this detainee was to be nicknamed "Number 1," because he used to always scream "I am Number 1!" He never slept but maybe an hour or two a day. It seemed he was loud, always talking to himself. No one understood him--including the detainees. On many occasions we would ask other detainees "What's he saying?" and they would say "I have no clue; something's wrong with him". It was very obvious this man was mentally ill. Other times guards would find him drinking is own urine.

Later on, on Charlie Block, this detainee stripped down naked (which he did on many occasions). When we went to try and tell him to get his clothes on we noticed he had tied a string around his penis very tight; to the point where his penis was turning colors. We tried to tell him to take it off, but he just laughed yelling "Number 1!" Finally, about 20 to 30 minutes later, he took it off, got dressed, and went to sleep. Eventually he would have to be placed in a cage with no one on any sides of him due to the fact he would just stand up and urinate on the person next to him. And it seemed like he didn't even realize he was doing this. When he was taken to showers, he was like a little kid. The water would turn on and he would jump into the middle of the water and start yelling "I am number 1!" It really seemed like he had the mind of a child. It seemed like he was always on an emotional roller-coaster, one minute he's laughing, next he's asleep, 5 minutes later he would be awake, curled up in a ball, in the corner of his cage, crying like a little child.

During the time I spent there, many of the other detainees tried to help him out by telling him when it was time to pray and reading the Koran to him.

Many guards questioned why he was there if he was so mentally ill that it was obvious. We were just told that he was putting on an act, that he wasn't really mentally ill. If he was acting, he sure did fool me and a lot of other people. Including most of the detainees.

When it came time for Neely to leave Guantanamo, there was a caveat:

We were told by the United States Army that, if we did not sign this piece of paper that stated we would not talk to the press, write a book, or make a movie, we could not leave and go back home.

Neely was later deployed to Iraq. When he arrived home, after his twin tours at Guantanamo in Iraq, he was  a riven man. Through recognizing what had become of him, he faced what he had done, connected himself in his hurt to those he had hurt, and determined that what he had done and what he had become he would make available to all the world.

I came home in March of 2004 from a year tour in Iraq to a wife and three beautiful children I did not even know and who didn't even know the man I came home as. It was--and continues to be--a struggle every day of our lives. I went through many times of deep depression which turned into me turning to alcohol to comfort me. It was easier to do this than to deal with what I was feeling inside. I was destroying not only myself but my family as well. I woke up one morning and realized I needed to get my life back in order not just for myself, but my family as well. I left the Army in August of 2005 and was ready to start my new life; just leave the Army and all the good and bad times I had went through behind me. That is easier said than done. There has not been a day that goes by I have not re-lived what I did or saw in Guantanamo or Iraq. It does not get any easier; it just eats you up inside day by day. I have spoken out against the Iraq war and took a stand when I was recalled in 2007 and refused to go back and I decided that I needed to tell my story about Guantanamo as well. How can I as a father tell my children to tell the truth and stand up for what they believe in if I was not willing to do the same?

I often think of the detainees who have been released or continue to be caged there like animals. I don't think people realize these caged individuals' lives have been changed forever. The innocent people who were wrongfully held have lost so much. Some of them have lost family members, jobs, and money. And for what?

 

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 15, 2009 (boomark / email).