Two Sides One Story: Guantánamo from Both Sides of the Wire
in Scotland on 30/31 January 2009

Poster - Two Sides One Story: Guantanamo from Both Sides of the Wire
30/31 January 2009
Get it here Poster - Two Sides One Story

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Speakers include: Moazzam Begg (ex-Guantánamo detainee, spokesman for Cageprisoners), Christopher Arendt (Ex-Guantanamo guard), Omar Deghayes (ex-Guantánamo detainee).

7:30pm Friday 30 January (doors open 7.00pm), Adelaides, 209 Bath Street, Glasgow , G2 4HZ

2:30pm Saturday 31 Jan, Augustine Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EL

Admission to both meetings is free and unticketed

About the Speakers

Moazzam Begg

Moazzam Beg, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002 on suspicion of links with the Taleban regime or the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Moazzam, like his mother, was born in England; his father in India, under the British Raj. Moazzam grew up in the 1970s attending a local Jewish school, chosen by his father because of its academic reputation.

At 12, Moazzam went to stay with relatives in Pakistan where. He performed charity work in the Asian community and told his parents that he wanted to help alleviate the suffering of fellow Muslims. In June 2001, a year before his arrest, Moazzam Begg left his home in Birmingham and moved with his Palestinian wife and their four young children to a new life in Afghanistan. There they established a school in a remote area and worked on a project to install water pumps.

In December 2001, following the United States-led attack on Afghanistan, Begg told his relatives that he was moving his family back to Pakistan. He described the situation in Afghanistan as "unbearable". The family moved to an apartment in Islamabad to wait out the strikes. They planned to return when the dust had settled. But Moazzam was arrested and the family's funds - about £8,000 - were seized, leaving his wife and the children to fend for themselves in a country where they did not speak the language.

Moazzam was kidnapped in Pakistan by US authorities and then taken to Bagram, where he was held for a year, on suspicion of passing funds to al-Qaeda and later transferred to Camp Delta.

Moazzam Begg was released from Guantanamo on Tuesday 25th January 2005. He arrived back inthe UK at RAF Northolt at 5pm only to be re-arrested under UK Anti-Terrorism Laws. He was taken to Paddington Green station in central London where he was held for questioning. He was released the next day, on Wednesday 26th January.

Christopher Arendt

Chris Arendt grew up in a trailer at the end of a dirt road in the middle of a rural Michigan cornfield. His family was both a poor family and a military family, so it was always assumed that if he wanted to go to college, the only way to pay for it was to join the army. Arendt grew up to be a punk kid, driving hours to music shows around Michigan and sporting a mohawk and anti-authoritarian tendencies, but he signed on with the Michigan National Guard in 2001 to pay for community college tuition.

During times of peace, the National Guard is deployed for domestic issues, such as helping out in floods, and requires its members to work as soldiers only one weekend a month and two weeks a year. Arendt was shocked when he received a phone call in 2004 telling him his National Guard unit had been called up for deployment. He left school and went through a month-long mobilization process at Fort Dix. In January 2004, he was shipped to Guantanamo Bay. It was the first time he had left the country.

Immediately, Arendt found the guard work at Guantanamo Bay to be repulsive. He worked as a guard on Delta Block and felt strongly that the inmates were unnecessarily dehumanized and demonized.

He described his life as a guard for Esquire magazine:

"Every day you walked down the blocks, forty-eight people in two rows of twenty-four cells, and you have no idea what any of them are there for. They’re just sitting in their cells. You give them food, and if they get crazy, you spray them with this terrible oil-based chemical. Then you send these five guys in to beat the shit out of them...

"During the span of a few months, I worked maybe half the time on the blocks. It wasn’t a whole lot of time, but it was really starting to break me down. I couldn’t deal with it. I tied a 550 cord to the ceiling fan that was in my room and I tried to hang myself, but I ripped the fan out of the ceiling. I’ve never been happier about poor construction. That was about two months before we went home."

One of the images that struck Arendt most profoundly in Guantanamo were the styrofoam cups detainees used at meals. Though it was against the rules, prisoners would draw intricate flowers and designs on the styrofoam cups. Arendt would collect the cups and then throw them away.

After several weeks in Delta, Arendt got in trouble for talking with detainees and was transferred to an office job. Working in an office in a situation he found severely stifling and dehumanizing, Arendt struggled to keep sane. He began obsessively folding origami cranes. Since the cranes were not allowed to leave the base, he would fold hundreds and then sweep them all into a trash can.

Arendt's tour of duty in Guantanamo ended in 2005. He returned to school at University of Illinois, Chicago. Arendt majored in philosophy and French but also spent a good deal of time riding a fixed gear bike around the city and working as a busboy at a vegan cafe. In December of 2007, he joined Iraq Veterans Against War and has since worked as an anti-war activist. In 2008, he decided to embark on a 15 -month "tour of duty"as a homeless vet, hitchhiking across the country. He spoke at an Iraq Veterans Against the War event called Winter Soldier, testifying about mistreatment of detainees in Guantanamo. Moazzam Begg saw a recording of his testimony there and invited him to tour the UK with Cageprisoners.

When he returns to the US, Arendt currently plans to live in rural Vermont with a veterans' art collective called Combat Paper, which makes paper from old military uniforms.

Omar Deghayes

Omar Deghayes came to the UK with his mother, sister and brother from Libya in 1986, six years after his father, Amer - a prominent figure in Libyan public life who pioneered trade unions - was assassinated by Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s regime.

Omar travelled to Afghanistan in 2001 to judge the Taliban regime and the first Islamic society of its kind for himself. He married an Afghan woman there and they have a child, Suleiman, who is now four years old. When war broke out, Omar moved his family to Pakistan, fearing for their safety. There he was arrested and transferred to Bagram, which he describes as reminiscent of a Nazi prison camp. He says that there he became so ill he was barely able to eat for 40 days. He was punished for talking to another prisoner by being handcuffed with his hands above his head.

In March 2004 in Guantánamo he was blinded in one eye by soldiers as they put down protests by prisoners who objected to "sexual assaults" - hands being placed up their rectums as part of a search. He was first sprayed with mace and then a finger was plunged into his eye, which had been damaged since childhood.

Omar also alleges that a soldier smeared faeces on his face and that two soldiers kicked and punched him.

Omar was released from Guantanamo to the UK on Tuesday 19th December 2007. Shockingly he was re-arrested under a Spanish extradition warrant. He was bailed on Thursday 21st December 2007. The actress, Vanessa Redgrave, stood surety for his &pounds;40,000 bail.

Supporters of omar Deghayes have spoken at public meetings in Scotland on a number of occasions while campaigning for his release. Omar will be speaking in Scotland for the first time during the Two Sides: One Story tour.