The charnel house of liberty

Ever since I began to serve sentences of imprisonment three decades ago I have preferred not to know too much about what I’m missing outside. Whenever I do find myself receiving a social visit, crammed in amongst squabbling (or more often dysfunctionally silent) families enjoying their monthly 40 minutes together, I tend to steer the conversation deliberately away from the natural subjects of free men — which was how I came to learn about a somewhat unlikely ‘imam’ ministering to the needs of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo, one Colonel Steve Feehan, ‘born again’ Southern Baptist, who had had this greatness thrust upon him after the previous incumbent, official Muslim chaplain James Mee, had been thrown into prison himself for ‘mishandling’ classified documents.

My visitor, the distinguished human rights author and journalist David Rose, had just returned from one of several visits he has made to Camp Delta. He said: ‘I asked Feehan what he believed would happen to those men who didn’t share his faith, whereupon he turned on me like a vicious wolf, declaring that so far as he was concerned nobody could ever be redeemed without belief in Christ. That much was unequivocally laid down in the Good Book, and if these Muslims chose to disbelieve that, then without doubt they were heading for eternal damnation.’

David left me a copy of the book he’d written about his trips, a book which I devoured in one sitting as soon as I got back to my cell. That slim volume, along with a subsequent more jurisprudentially centred monograph by Joseph Margolies that I reviewed for the Chatham House journal, International Affairs, had already got me thinking how lucky I was to be ensconced in the relatively enlightened clime of Wandsworth, ostensibly the toughest jail in Europe. For set against those of the camps of Guantanamo, the minor inconveniences I have to tolerate pale into insignificance.

Now along comes Clive Stafford Smith, campaigning and often unremunerated lawyer to many Guantanamo detainees, with his interpretation of life behind the wire, which is perhaps surprising, given the shroud of secrecy that has been selectively placed over this interrogation facility since its inception.