Hafetz, Jonathan - short clip - SoftTorture
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Transcript
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| - | In addition to being in the interrogations, | 0:00 |
| in addition to all the techniques, | 0:02 | |
| the soft torture that was being applied, | 0:03 | |
| the threats that were made to him, | 0:07 | |
| threats they would make him disappear, | 0:09 | |
| make his family disappear. | 0:10 | |
| The stress positions, the changes in temperature | 0:13 | |
| some of the sleep deprivation, | 0:16 | |
| they forced him to endure. | 0:18 | |
| In addition to that stuff, I mean | 0:19 | |
| there was nothing, he was in just a black hole | 0:21 | |
| with nothing to distract him from his torment. | 0:23 | |
| They refused to allow him to have a book, | 0:26 | |
| a newspaper, to listen to the radio, to watch GV. | 0:28 | |
| I mean, to me, it happens nowhere. | 0:30 | |
| They would feed him, | 0:34 | |
| but they would often feed him cold meals only. | 0:35 | |
| There was a period of time where | 0:38 | |
| he went for a month on what's called a MREs, | 0:39 | |
| or "meals ready to eat." | 0:42 | |
| Stuff that, you know, the troops are given, | 0:43 | |
| I think in combat operations overseas. | 0:45 | |
| They wouldn't give them hot meals. | 0:47 | |
| They took away his recreation | 0:48 | |
| for long periods of time. | 0:50 | |
| He wasn't allowed. | 0:51 | |
| Weeks would go by sometimes I think even more than a month | 0:52 | |
| where he would be denied recreation, denied ability to | 0:54 | |
| even go outside or to see the light of day. | 0:56 | |
| And there was no light that entered his cell. | 0:59 | |
| They actually deliberately blackened over the window. | 1:01 | |
| And we know this from documents. | 1:03 | |
| We were later receiving litigation. | 1:05 | |
| With no light, just be in his cell, you know | 1:07 | |
| 24/7, with nothing. | 1:09 | |
| But the worst thing for Almari | 1:12 | |
| really was the isolation | 1:13 | |
| and the sensory deprivation. | 1:15 | |
| What was unique about his case | 1:17 | |
| is he was held in | 1:19 | |
| complete isolation for six years. | 1:20 | |
| Six years at the brig in South Carolina. | 1:24 | |
| For the first 18 or 17 months | 1:27 | |
| when he was declared an enemy combatant until | 1:30 | |
| June of '03, or sorry, October of '03 | 1:32 | |
| when we got our first visit to see him, | 1:35 | |
| he wasn't even allowed to speak to anybody. | 1:38 | |
| And the guards wouldn't speak to him either, | 1:41 | |
| they were not allowed to talk to him. | 1:43 | |
| The idea was to sort of | 1:46 | |
| cut off all human contact to basically try to | 1:48 | |
| create a sense of hopelessness and despair. | 1:51 | |
| I mean, it was this crueler form | 1:53 | |
| of psychological torture that I've ever seen | 1:54 | |
| or read about. | 1:57 | |
| We have seen, some of the videotapes remained | 1:59 | |
| but what we've seen are there were really two types of | 2:01 | |
| recordings. One were recordings of | 2:03 | |
| the interrogations were some of the most | 2:06 | |
| really egregious con conduct took place. | 2:09 | |
| And those were the ones that were destroyed. | 2:11 | |
| There was also a video camera. | 2:13 | |
| it was basically just a surveillance camera | 2:14 | |
| of Almari and his cell. | 2:16 | |
| Some of that was destroyed as well | 2:18 | |
| but some of that remains. | 2:20 | |
| And that was just basically like the camera that they had | 2:21 | |
| on Almari 24 hours a day, seven days a week. | 2:23 | |
| And so we have seen some of these videos and what | 2:26 | |
| what comes across from those videos is | 2:28 | |
| just the sense of despair and total boredom. | 2:31 | |
| And I say "boredom" in a way that | 2:35 | |
| can drive you crazy. | 2:37 | |
| Almari, just sitting like a caged animal | 2:38 | |
| in a room with nothing to do again | 2:41 | |
| but just stare at the four walls, you know | 2:43 | |
| hour after hour, day after day, year after year. | 2:46 | |
| And I think, you know, if you really can | 2:49 | |
| visualize what that must be like. | 2:51 | |
| I mean, just, I imagine even just spending a day | 2:52 | |
| or two or three days in a room | 2:54 | |
| without anyone to talk to or with nothing to do. | 2:56 |
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