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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| The saga of a Russian Gitmo detainee |
| 2005-12-25 |
| When Fatima Tekayeva heard that her son was about to be returned to Russia from the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she felt an aching fear. Don't do it, she begged anyone who would listen. It's bad there, yes. It's worse here. Please don't send my son home. All the same, the scenario unfolded like a scripted nightmare. Rasul Kudayev was put on a plane back to Russia. Soon, he was released. He came home to the Caucasus region nothing like the broad-shouldered wrestling champion who had gone off to study Islam with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He could barely walk unaided. His eyes were yellow from hepatitis, his heart fluttered, and his head throbbed, family members said. Kudayev would sit up in the kitchen all night, telling his brother how guards at Guantanamo forced him to take medicine that made him sick and left him alternately to freeze and suffocate by opening and closing the ventilation system in a cramped isolation cell. By morning, his stories spent, he would fall asleep. It ended as Tekayeva feared it would. On Oct. 23, a truckload of soldiers showed up outside the family's small house and seized Kudayev, accusing him of having participated in an attack by Islamic militants on police and government targets in Nalchik 10 days earlier. Tekayeva threw her body in front of her son's thin frame. ''Handcuffs, what handcuffs?" she cried. ''He's already had enough handcuffs for a lifetime!" But he disappeared into the feared Department 6 organized crime unit of the Kabardino-Balkaria police. Kudayev, 27, is a veteran of an increasingly borderless campaign against terrorism, in which suspects may be ferried among prisons around the globe without facing trial. He survived an uprising at an Afghan prison, followed by two years at Guantanamo, only to find himself in the hands of Russian police. Several days after local police arrested Kudayev, his lawyer was brought in to witness his confession. ''He looked awful," attorney Irina Komissarova said. ''He couldn't sit or stand straight because of the pain he experienced. He dragged one of his feet and couldn't step down on it. His face was covered with cuts and scabs." Komissarova filed a complaint. Russian authorities responded last month by dismissing her from the case, saying that the complaint made her a witness. But Komissarova has continued to follow developments. Last week, after she alleged that Kudayev had been beaten again, this time so severely that his leg was broken, authorities opened a criminal investigation against her for allegedly revealing investigative secrets. As a boy, Kudayev was not particularly religious, said his brother, Arsen Mokayev. When he was named wrestling champion of the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in 1996, ''my mother would say, 'I wish he were pious. But that's not his way.' " That changed as the North Caucasus felt the effects of unemployment, ethnic resentment, and corruption, as well as Islamic militancy and harsh police tactics spilling over from nearby Chechnya. Kudayev left to study Islam in Saudi Arabia. From there, he made his way to Afghanistan. How, when, and why he went there is unclear. Mokayev said his brother was attempting to flee Afghanistan with men from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere in Central Asia when they were captured by the US-backed Northern Alliance and imprisoned in the ancient Qala-i-Jangy fortress at Mazar-i-Sharif. A three-day uprising at the prison in November 2001 was crushed by Northern Alliance fighters and US airstrikes. About 60 of the more than 500 prisoners survived. Kudayev and many other non-Afghans were handed over to US forces for eventual transfer to Guantanamo. Many of his letters from the prison there had large sections blacked out by censors, Mokayev said. But Kudayev told Tekayeva that he was being fed well and allowed to perform religious rituals. When US authorities sent Kudayev and six others from Guantanamo back to Russia in March 2004, they said they still considered the men a threat and that Russia had pledged to detain and investigate them. Russia filed charges but released the men in late June that year. Family members said Kudayev was haunted by his treatment at the US naval base prison. ''There was constant psychological pressure on him," Mokayev said. ''Imagine a man sitting in a cage for days on end, being constantly watched by another person who keeps writing down everything that the caged man does and ignoring him even when he speaks to him. Never turning off the lights. Just imagine that." Mokayev said his brother told him of being forced to kneel with his hands cuffed to his ankles, being sprayed with a gel that caused a painful rash, then carried out, still shackled, and hosed down with a stream of water. Kudayev and several other prisoners said Guantanamo guards would turn up the air conditioning to the freezing point, then turn it off until breathing became difficult. He was forced to take unidentified pills that gave him chest pains and made his muscles feel like stone. The United States has denied forcing medication or any other abuse at Guantanamo, but as a matter of policy does not comment on individual cases. On Nov. 22, 12 days after his lawyer was dismissed, Kudayev was charged in Russia with terrorism, banditry, attempted murder of a police officer, homicide, and illegal trade in weapons, ammunition, and explosives. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #9 Imagine lying through your teeth as a matter of routine, and having an LA Times reporter lap up every word as if it were gospel truth. Liberals are anti-American propaganda fundamentalists - they believe in the literal truth of any bits of anti-American propaganda they hear. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-12-25 22:45 |
| #8 Mokayev said his brother told him of being forced to kneel with his hands cuffed to his ankles, being sprayed with a gel that caused a painful rash, then carried out, still shackled, and hosed down with a stream of water. It's called taking a bath |
| Posted by: Ptah 2005-12-25 22:33 |
| #7 Boston.com is teh unrepentant hyper-liberal child of teh NYT - should I say any more? They hired Derrick Z Jackson - an affirmative action hire to satisfy the stupid anti-american anti-white caucus |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-12-25 20:23 |
| #6 A tragic, heart wrenching tale of man's inhumanity to man. The legs of a biker, the heart of an artist. |
| Posted by: Leon Clavin 2005-12-25 18:26 |
| #5 "sprayed with a gel that caused a painful rash" "hosed down with a stream of water" Um, I'm thinking soap? Outrageous! Rinse. Repeat. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-12-25 16:01 |
| #4 A tragic, heart wrenching tale of man's inhumanity to man. Reminds me of the time I rolled this bum for his bottle of Mad Dog on the train platform last year... |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-12-25 12:04 |
| #3 He kept clutching at his chest and hollering "This is the big one, Elizabeth!"? |
| Posted by: Fred 2005-12-25 10:26 |
| #2 This story actually reads plausibly - may not BE true, but not impossible if interpreted in a different way. It is quite possible he had hepatitis when he was captured in Afghanistan - it may have shown up on his blood work at Guantanamo Bay even before he was seriously symptomatic. Weakness, headaches, heart palpitations could all flow from the hepatitis, or as side effects of medication given for it. I wouldn't be surprised if the gel sprayed on his legs was also for some medical condition - at least they didn't delouse him Nazi-style. It's tough to see how someone who was used to Russia and Afghanistan could complain about freezing in Guantanamo. His description of 'torture' - uncomfortable positions, 24 hour light, large temperature variations, someone always watching and taking notes - is not far from what Rumsfeld had authorized at one point; it's just a matter of definition whether it qualifies as torture. I don't think it would meet Saddam's threshhold, for instance. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2005-12-25 10:24 |
| #1 He could barely walk unaided. His eyes were yellow from hepatitis, his heart fluttered, and his head throbbed,... Right. I wonder what the eval said upon his departure from Gitmo. This smells of the usual MSM unverified slander. And just how did the reporter know that the subject was suffering from heart flutters? |
| Posted by: Glailing Ulusing4418 2005-12-25 09:26 |