Protesting Gitmo: "Hearts Ruptured with Sadness"

Five years after the first "war on terrorism" prisoners arrived at Guantanamo -- invisible and isolated in their hoods and shackles and orange jumpsuits -- the world community sought to draw attention and sympathy to their plight. From Warsaw to Wichita, from Bahrain to Boise, from Birmingham, Alabama to Birmingham, England, more than one hundred protests joined this month's International Call to Shut Down Guantanamo.

In front of the Federal District Court -- the one that ruled in November that an ailing prisoner at Guantanamo could not gain access to competent (and unbiased) medical attention off base -- the theater began. Police turned the hooded prisoners away. But another 89 people had entered the building earlier in the day and gathered in the atrium to read the names of nearly 400 men who remain imprisoned.

It was a haunting litany of loss and lamentation. I took off my sweater to reveal an orange t-shirt emblazoned with "Shut Down Guantanamo: End Torture" and began to read former Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg's account of arriving at the prison camp.

As we continued our program, the head of the U.S. Marshals Department told us that if we put away our banners and took off our orange t-shirts, we could stay throughout the afternoon. It was an unprecedented offer. But to those committed to bringing the names, cases, and stories of men rendered invisible and unheard by the Bush administration (an injustice largely unchallenged by the U.S. criminal justice system), it was an unacceptable bargain. We kept reading the names -- Saifullah Paracha, Mahbub Rahman, David Hicks, Jumah al Dossari, Abdullah Mohammad Khan.

My hands shook. In my pocket was enough money to get on the subway and an index card with the name "Omar Deghayes, Britain." Many of us standing in the courthouse atrium did not bring our own identification. We were experimenting with how to move beyond symbolism and concretely bring the name and story of a Guantanamo prisoner to the attention of the courts.

At the same time, the mother and brother of Omar Deghayes were in Guantanamo, Cuba, demanding to be let onto the U.S. military base and reunited with Omar. They had come as part of an international delegation that included peace activists, lawyers, the co-director of the film The Road to Guantanamo, and former Guantanamo prisoner Asif Iqbal.

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