Detainee 063: serialized interrogation and torture log of Mohamed al-Kahtani

qahtani.jpg

063.jpgdetainee063.com: "This is the interrogation log of Mohammed al-Qahtani. It is being published in real time: each entry will appear exactly seven years after it was first recorded. The interrogation took place at Guantanamo Bay."

That is him in the photo above. He is still imprisoned in Guantanamo. The serialized logs are not for the faint of heart. By way of background, al-Qahtani was the first "war on terror detainee" the United States admitted to having tortured. Snip:

Over the course of the fifty days, Al-Qahtani, Detainee 063, is questioned by teams of interrogators working in shifts, typically for twenty hours a day. While individual entries of the log are sometimes brutal and unpleasant to read, what is particularly disturbing about the treatment Al-Qahtani receives is its relentlessness. By publishing the log in real time, this site is intended as a kind of re-enactment – to show how mistreatment which might not appear immediately as terrible as, for example, waterboarding, can nonetheless come to amount to nothing short of torture, how by being prolonged and unceasing it can become unbearable.

More about the project here. Apart from the brutality, it just gets really weird. Some of the entries go, "Played Christina Aguilera music," or,

Control began "birthday party" and placed party hat on detainee. Detainee offered birthday cake – refused. Interrogators and guards sing "God bless America". Detainee became very angry.

The entries are also available through an RSS feed and a Twitter account. To those of you in the US, remember that your tax dollars paid for every word of it. (thanks, Susannah Breslin)