The insanity of Guantánamo

Despite U.S. claims of humane treatment, a new report reveals that prisoners -- even some long ago cleared to leave -- are spiraling into hallucinations, despair and suicide.

"I feel like I'm being buried alive," said Ahmed Belbacha, a 39-year-old Algerian who has been in Guantánamo since March 2002. He has been cleared to leave the prison camp for over a year, but he can't.

Algeria isn't accepting detainees back home, but even it were, Belbacha is so fearful of being tortured there that he has asked the U.S. federal courts to block his return. But there is no other country willing to take him, and he remains stuck in Guantánamo -- locked in his windowless cell 22 hours a day, with little more than a Koran and single other book to occupy his time.

In December, Belbacha reportedly tried to commit suicide and was moved to the mental health facility. He was stripped naked, dressed in a green plastic rip-proof suicide smock, and placed in an individual cell under constant monitoring --Guantánamo's suicide watch. He says he was given absolutely nothing else in his cell -- no toothbrush, no soap, no books, nothing he could somehow use to injure himself.

Each morning a member of the mental health staff reportedly came by and asked the same set of questions: Do you want to hurt yourself? Do you want to hurt anyone else? Are you sleeping well? Are you eating well?

Close to two months later, he apparently had answered all the questions correctly and was moved back to another windowless cell.

More than half of the 270 detainees currently at Guantánamo -- including many who are slated for release or transfer -- are housed in high-security facilities akin to U.S. "supermax" prisons. They spend all but two hours a day in small cells with no natural light or fresh air. Their meals are slipped through a slot in the door, and they are given little more than a single book and the Koran to occupy their time. Even their limited "recreation" time -- which is sometimes provided in the middle of the night -- generally takes place in single cell cages so that detainees can't physically interact with one another. None of these detainees have been allowed visits by family members, and very few have been able to make phone calls home. More