Mansoor Adayfi, the former Guantánamo prisoner, Detainee 441, imprisoned without charge for 14 years and seven months before being released in 2016 to Serbia, though he was from Yemen. The U.S. government labeled him the, quote, “worst of the worst,” yet he was never charged. His memoir is titled Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo. He’s now the Guantánamo Project coordinator at CAGE, an organization that advocates on behalf of victims of the “war on terror.” He’s also the outreach coordinator for Guantánamo Survivors Fund.
He has a new piece for The Guardian. It’s headlined “For all of us detained at Guantánamo, making art was a lifeline. Why won’t Joe Biden let us keep our work?” In it, Mansoor writes, “Last month, the Pentagon partially lifted the Trump administration’s ban on the release of artwork made by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Prisoners will be able to take ‘a practicable quantity of their art’ if they are transferred out of the prison. It’s unclear what ‘practicable’ means, and whether this ambiguous term means prisoners will only be allowed to take a small portion of the artwork they have created during years of captivity,” unquote. Again, the words of Mansoor Adayfi.
Mansoor Adayfi, joining us now from Belgrade, can you lay out what is happening with the artwork over the years and what you’re calling for now under the Biden administration?
MANSOOR ADAYFI: Yeah. Thank you, Amy. You know, the art story is an amazing art [inaudible]. At the beginning, early days at Guantánamo, we weren’t allowed to have any books or pens or paper or anything. So, we started, you know, using the plastic fork to draw on the styrofoam clamshells or cups. Sometimes we used the powder tea that came with the —
— source democracynow.org | Apr 03, 2023