Nightmare at Camp Bondsteel
Mark Almond Monday 18th February 2002
Djakova, Kosovo, 14 December. US helicopters appear in
the sky; troops raid the school; aid workers are
seized. Mark Almond reveals an episode of terror
President Bush's war on terrorism may not frighten
Osama Bin Laden, but it certainly puts the fear of God
into innocent suspects who get caught in the mill. On
14 December, three Muslim aid workers in Kosovo found
themselves swept up by the global reach of the US
counter-terrorist campaign and were held in solitary
confinement for more than five weeks and interrogated.
A little after midday, US attack helicopters suddenly
swarmed in the sky over the western town of Djakova,
on the border with Albania. Troops from the local
Italian K-For garrison, backed up by Spanish soldiers,
simultaneously raided the offices of three Muslim
charities in the town. Two of them ran classes in
English and computer studies. Children ran in terror
as soldiers rampaged in their town for the first time
since 1999.
As if to recreate the atmosphere of March 1999, the
Nato troops used a Serb-speaking interpreter to bark
their orders at the doorman of one computer school.
Probably they didn't trust an Albanian interpreter not
to tip off their targets for arrest. They need not
have worried: the workers were paralysed by
bewilderment, then fear.
Like the characters in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's
"Arrest", the first chapter of The Gulag Archipelago,
they could not believe that Nato suspected them. It
must be a misunderstanding. It was true that they were
bearded Muslims, but they were all registered with the
United Nations Interim Administration Mission in
Kosovo (Unmik) and their educational and charity work
had been commended by the international powers that
be. Certificates testifying to the fact lined the wall
of one of the offices.
Neither the Italian carabinieri nor the Spanish
soldiers could speak English, to each other or to the
three main suspects. They went through a pre-scripted
routine, ignoring and indeed unable to understand
protestations by their targets that they were willing
to co-operate. The soldiers seemed psyched up for a
confrontation with Bin Laden himself. The local head
of the Global Relief Foundation was thrown to the
ground and roughed up as the Italians and Spaniards
shouted incomprehensible orders at him. Then he was
shackled hand and foot, and blindfolded. Like the two
other suspects, he was dragged into a helicopter that
swept him away.
It seemed like a nightmare abduction out of a
Hollywood conspiracy theory movie pre-11 September.
Each man remembered feeling the cold fear that his
incomprehensible captors intended to throw him to an
anonymous death from the chopper. Each man recalled
thinking that his wife and children would know nothing
of his fate, only that he had disappeared. In fact,
the men were on their way to the main US base in the
Balkans, Camp Bondsteel, the template for the new
steel spine of bases sprouting up deep into central
Asia for the war against terrorism.
Once on the ground and in US custody, the men were
stripped, made to shower and then received medical
attention for their bruises and the chafing of the
Italians' manacles. Each was held separately in a
small wooden hut. After signing a document agreeing to
abide by the sanitary rules of the camp, and not to
commit suicide, their interrogation began.
Prima facie, two of the men were open to suspicion.
They were Iraqi exiles working on contracts for the
Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, which the US
justice department, under John Ashcroft, had just
closed down for allegedly colluding with the al-Qaeda
terrorist network. But it soon became clear that their
interrogators were not interested in the foundation's
activities.
During 38 days in solitary confinement, the men were
interrogated about their suspected role in the suicide
attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour in October
2000.
All three men were questioned in the depths of the
night to test if they were really Egyptians. One of
the Iraqis noticed that one interrogator pronounced
his family name in an Egyptian fashion, but also that
his first name was misspelt on the document
implicating him in the attack on the USS Cole which
his captors presented to him. When he pointed out the
error, he was told: "That does not matter." But the
document was withdrawn after all three detainees
refused to sign it.
As the weeks went by, despair welled up in each man.
The interrogators seemed to lose interest in their
charges, but there was no mention of release - unless
they agreed to co-operate by admitting guilt.
The men's requests to see a lawyer or contact their
families were ignored. As if to rub in their isolated
helplessness, officials from the Europe-wide
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe,
which is supposed to be establishing the rule of law
in Kosovo and protecting human rights, came to see the
men and mocked them by telling them they had the right
to phone a lawyer - but no access to a phone.
Two of the men were Iraqis; they are still too
frightened to agree to their names being published.
But the third suspect's case was still more bizarre.
He is a citizen of an EU country who did not even
speak Arabic, and is so traumatised by his experience
that he fears he can never shake off the suspicion
that he is a terrorist, and does not even wish
reporters to name his nationality.
Early in his detention, a K-For soldier from his
country interrogated him in his own language and told
the Americans the exact place he came from in northern
Europe, but the soldier failed to tell his embassy
about his detention. The man's wife eventually got her
consul, back from a long Christmas break on 11
January, to raise the matter of her husband's
detention. Even after his release later that month,
the diplomat urged him not to complain: after all, he
was free.
However, the men are jobless and the Kosovars have
lost out, too. One thousand fatherless local families
have not received their monthly dole since December.
The computer hard drives at the schools remain
confiscated, as does the £13,000 in cash belonging to
Global Relief, the two Iraqis' employer - so they have
no pay. They fear that they will lose the right to
remain in Kosovo, but deportation back to Iraq would
be a death sentence.
What would Saddam Hussein make of their story? To him,
there can only be one explanation for the two men
spending weeks at a US military base while the
Pentagon was softening up world opinion for an attack
on Iraq. Following the Afghan model of using local
insurgents as ground forces, exiled Iraqis who speak
English would be essential linkmen between Iraqi
rebels and US special forces.
To Saddam Hussein, the idea that anyone accused of
terrorism would ever see the light of day again would
be incredible. However frightening their confinement
in Camp Bondsteel was, the two Iraqis fear that its
real sinister quality is that it marks them out as
specially trained spies. Already, the Iraqi newspaper
Babylon has reported their detention there.
Terrorism is the negation of the rule of law, but
arbitrary arrests and confiscations are not the way to
achieve justice against it. The war against terrorism
is loosening the restraints of due process alarmingly.
A few days before the three Kosovo detainees were
released, six Algerians were deported from Bosnia in
defiance of the local courts to Camp X-Ray in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because the US suspected them,
but would not share its evidence. The crimes of 11
September cannot exculpate arbitrary
counter-terrorism, which antagonises otherwise
law-abiding folk. Whatever lesson Washington may be
trying to teach, it isn't innocence until proven
guilty.
Mark Almond, lecturer in modern history, Oriel
College, Oxford, was in Kosovo for the British
Helsinki Human Rights Group
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