Arendt, Christopher - short clip - VideotapingForcedCellExtractions

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-	Later, when I got into the DOC	0:00
	part of my responsibilities were videotaping these.	0:01
	Everything like this is videotaped	0:04
	for, for transparency purposes.	0:06
	What happens to those films?	0:09
	I don't know who they're transparent to I do not know.	0:10
	Whether or not they could be used	0:13
	if I were to file a complaint.	0:15
	Still.	0:16
	Could I do that?	0:17
	Is that what those films are there for?	0:18
	Is, like, egregious usages of violence,	0:21
	I assume that's what they're there to stop	0:24
	but they're never referenced.	0:25
	I've never heard them referenced.	0:27
	I've never heard anybody speak of them.	0:28
	I've never heard them brought into the legal side of things.	0:30
Interviewer	Where do they go after you film it?	0:34
	Where does that?	0:35
-	They're taped onto little cassettes	0:37
	and then I would file the cassettes into a filing cabinet,	0:38
	and then they would just sit in a filing cabinet.	0:42
	At the beginning of each ERF on the film,	0:44
	it would be, everybody, we would go through	0:46
	and everybody that's in partaking in it would say,	0:50
	I'm the number one man, my name	0:54
	and my social security, today's date.	0:56
	And then the next person would say, I'm number two, my name	0:58
	social security, today's date.	1:01
	So that was their means of accountability.	1:02
	But then the thing that happens with these videotapes	1:06
	is that when there's an ERF,	1:08
	there's like 15 people that come to the, come to the spot.	1:09
	And the, whenever I would go with the camera,	1:13
	I remember the first time I went out	1:16
	and like, my my NCO was like,	1:17
	all right, make sure that, you know	1:20
	you just kind of, you know, be, you know,	1:23
	like kind of forgiving about this.	1:28
	I don't know how to say it exactly how he told me to go	1:30
	into the situation.	1:33
	But basically you were saying, if it gets crazy	1:34
	don't videotape what they're doing, you know, like, so	1:37
	and then I got to the situation,	1:40
	and I'd never been trained on what to do.	1:42
	And I realized that they had shouldered all of these people,	1:45
	the medics and the officers and the platoon sergeants,	1:47
	had shouldered me to the back.	1:50
	And this was, and it was looking like, it's it's	1:52
	this is like crazy block riot situation that's going on.	1:54
	You know, it's a lot of commotion	1:58
	that goes on in those situations.	2:00
	And it's really, like you can't see much during the camera	2:01
	except you see, you know, five dudes doing, you know that.	2:04
	And then, you know, that that's, like, I mean, are,	2:09
	I can't tell you how many times I've videotaped that	2:13
	where it's just like pummeling,	2:15
	people being beep pummeled after, during these things.	2:16
	Where the long, long past you know,	2:20
	and then there's always the little kicks	2:22
	and jabs and stuff too.	2:23
Interviewer	And then what happens after they,	2:26
	they get pummeled?	2:29
-	Either they go to wherever they were supposed to go	2:31
	or whatever was supposed to be taken	2:33
	from them is taken from them.	2:35
	And then they go back into the cell.	2:36
	Their hair is shaved.	2:38
	That's one thing that they do is they take them	2:39
	out into the rec yard and they shave their hair off	2:42
	and then bring them back in.	2:44
	It's kind of like a mark of, mark of the ERF'd	2:47
	is the shaved head, the poorly shaved head.	2:52
	Cause they'll, they'll leave patches	2:54
	of hair all over the place, long strands of beard.	2:56
	They'll, they'll shave at their beards, which is,	3:00
	you know obviously like way against the rules.	3:02

Item Info

Title:

Arendt, Christopher - short clip - VideotapingForcedCellExtractions

Date:

April 30, 2011

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Arendt, Christopher

Role:

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
Prison Guard
Christopher Arendt, male, age 27, was stationed as a guard in Guantanamo for 10 months beginning in January 2004. After finishing his tour in 2008, he gave public testimony about the mistreatment of detainees in Guantanamo.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

2:31:30

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

Unless otherwise noted, copyright is held by Peter Hongisberg. Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, you are free to use and share these materials subject to the following conditions: You must attribute Peter Hongisberg as the rights holder. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. You may not distribute any modifications to the materials. For other uses, including commercial uses, please contact Rubenstein Library at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/ask.

Identifier:

78378549ba5bddf5923ef4c57cf5da5e
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r45m68s54
8100db77-8c2d-421d-811d-8d83530893cb

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r45m68s54

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Arendt, Christopher - short clip - VideotapingForcedCellExtractions

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