Freed "Enemy Combatant" Chronicles Seizure and Detainment

August 29, 2006

In Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar (New Press), Moazzam Begg details a harrowing story of imprisonment and of perseverance. While at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, located at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Begg -- a Muslim raised in Birmingham, England -- writes that he endured 18 months in solitary confinement, more than 300 interrogations, abuse, and death threats. "Anxiety attacks, recurrent thoughts -- not attempts -- of suicide, despair, hopelessness, were all emotions that lingered and resurfaced often," he recently told Bookselling This Week.

Moazzam Begg

In January 2002, Begg, who was born in England, was living in Pakistan, when he was seized by C.I.A. officers and Pakistani police, who labeled him an "enemy combatant." About a year earlier, Begg and several relatives had moved to Afghanistan to open a school and to perform other humanitarian services, but after U.S. and allied forces attacked Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he and his family moved to Pakistan for safety. The Pentagon believes Begg to be "a sympathizer, a recruiter, and a financier" for terrorists, as reported by the New York Times.

Begg was eventually taken to the U.S. detention center in Kandahar, and then to Bagram Air Base, both in Afghanistan, before being brought to Guantanamo in Cuba. He was one of nine British citizens who were imprisoned in Cuba. Pentagon officials still contend that Begg had trained at three terrorist camps, was linked with various Al Qaeda operatives, and was prepared to fight American-led forces in Afghanistan, but fled when the Taliban began to collapse.

Begg and fellow Briton Feroz Abassi were among the first Guantanamo detainees designated by President Bush in 2003 as eligible for trial by military commissions. However, according to the Times, President Bush set aside their prosecutions in January 2005, against the recommendations of his security advisors, as a favor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was facing harsh criticism at home for his support of the Iraq war.

BTW recently had a chance to talk with Moazzam Begg, via e-mail.

What was especially challenging about writing Enemy Combatant?

Wanting to be just to everyone in my story -- even the ones who weren't to me. It was hard not to be vitriolic whilst reading about developing-abuse allegations in Guantanamo or Iraq, [and] knowing, too, that I would face criticism from my own supporters for allegedly being "too nice" or conciliatory towards my former captors. Also, the fact that it is an autobiography -- not just about the years in U.S. custody. The chapters dealing with earlier life -- including my visits abroad -- were much easier to write. The hardest, most challenging parts were about abuses and the return home.

Why do you think you were abducted? Were you shocked that you were targeted?

I don't know exactly what brought them to me. I know that information was provided by U.K. intelligence, and I was aware, via a friend who called me from the U.K. telling me that MI5 [the British security agency] were coming to Pakistan wanting to meet with me. I even told him to pass on my number to them. I certainly wasn't hiding in Pakistan, and from what I've learned through U.S. interrogators and detainees is that rewards of $5,000 or so were being offered to locals for information and addresses of people new to their localities, or if they were foreign Muslims.

As stated, I knew MI5 wanted to talk. So I assumed they would give me a call and we would meet for lunch or something. But was I shocked about them "coming after me" in the way they did? I think shocked is a gross understatement.

At that point, what were your political beliefs regarding the situations in Afghanistan, the U.S., and the Middle East?

I believed then, as I do now, that the U.S. -- whilst having a legitimate reason to seek justice and prevent attacks like that of 9/11, by invading and occupying Afghanistan had managed to create more enemies as a result than it ever did before. And I think [the U.S.] continues to do so, after having invaded Iraq, too.

You've said that you know other people who were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay who feel they were wrongly accused.

I'd say the word is wrongly "held," since almost all the detainees there have not been accused, or more precisely, charged with anything. Most detainees maintain their innocence of any wrongdoing. But there has never been an arena for any detainee to challenge U.S. military assertions to the contrary.

What were some of the brutality you had to face after being abducted?

This will take too long; I'd rather you refer to the book. Suffice to say that my experiences of brutality in Afghanistan -- Kandahar and Bagram -- at the hands of U.S. military and intelligence were far worse than in Guantanamo. I will also say that, in my experience, there were many soldiers, even some interrogators, who were ordinary, decent people who were confused and appalled at the treatment of detainees.

What was it like, emotionally and physically, to be in solitary confinement?

The hardest thing was not having meaningful communication with my family, not knowing what had become of them for the first six months -- having a child born several months after I was kidnapped. Still, I think solitary gave me an opportunity to converse with guards and learn about them in quite a unique way. Also, I believe it gave me time to reflect and learn patience and perseverance. Ultimately, I think it made me stronger, not weaker.

What long-term injuries, physical and mental, are you still struggling with since being a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay?

Regurgitating my whole story each time someone wants an interview, when I've done it so often quite literally hundreds of times already -- is particularly taxing on my psyche. In a way that's self-imposed: I choose to respond to the media. But it means that I cannot put this episode away. As long as this sort of thing -- illegal detention on the pretext of national security -- continues, and all indications are that it will, I have an unenviable, but necessary job to do. Other than that, I need often to be alone, away from people -- sometimes just in a tiny room. Also, an immense feeling of guilt when meeting the families, especially young children, of the people still detained.

What aspects of Islamic politics did you embrace when you were in your twenties?

The sense of belonging to a wider world came through an affinity for history: ultimately my own. In trying to discover my own identity, I also learned and related to my own cultural and religious heritage. Overt neo-Nazi racism was rampant in the area where I grew up as a teenager. I was acutely aware of what it was capable of ...

The first Gulf War and the later Balkans War were two key pivotal events that forced me to look towards the Muslim world in a way I'd never really done before. Prior to that I was seriously considering joining the British Army. I could not see myself fighting other Muslims.

And how did your views and feelings change, or become more intense, over the years?

I felt, and continue to feel, that the Muslim world -- in recent times -- was in a terrible mess, often due to its own inability to develop. I wanted to help, in my own way, to bring some good to it.

Are there any books about imprisonment that have become important to you?

I read the complete Harry Potter series in Guantanamo -- including The Prisoner of Azkaban, which I enjoyed, but there really was nothing else to read! I have always liked reading about the transformation of Malcolm X in prison, from his autobiography: from hustler to intellectual activist -- despite the perverted view of Islam he initially adopted. I'm especially moved by how he recalls, during a lecture, selling drugs across the road from one of the Harvard faculties, [and] how university professors were unable to counter his logic and arguments. I also enjoy the story of Edmund Dante in The Count of Monte Cristo. It is the story of enduring heartache, and then deliverance, after facing untold injustice: something I can relate to.

Do you plan on writing other books?

Not right now -- unless they take me again, in which case it would be Enemy Combatant II: The Return. But seriously, perhaps a book in the future that takes a very comparative look at how the West viewed Muslims, and concepts like democracy, theocracy, and jihad in the latter part of the 20th century.

What are you doing these days?

Public speaking, book promotion tours, media, working for organizations like Reprieve and Cageprisoners to highlight the issues surrounding Guantanamo and other ghost detention sites like it. --Interview by Jeff Perlah

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