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The saga of a Russian Gitmo detainee
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 2005-12-25 |
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