Guantánamo: A day in the life

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Under gray skies all but obscured by an opaque canopy and high concrete walls topped with razor wire, two bearded young men in tan tunics are having "rec time" inside separate chain-link pens. One jogs obsessively back and forth in the 30-foot enclosure; the other is curled like a fetus at the base of a cement block.

It's a dreary winter afternoon, but the scene could be any time of the day or night. The hour for recreation time is one of the few unpredictable features in a day in the life of a detainee.

Visitors to the Guantánamo Bay detention center are allowed few and brief glimpses of the detainees. But in reporting trips over the past three years, details emerge through tours of the camp, conversations with lawyers, chance encounters and the military commission proceedings that offer outsiders their only opportunity to see the prisoners.

Reveille is at 5 a.m., when guards collect the single sheet allotted each detainee. That precaution has been in effect since June 2006, when three prisoners were found dead, hanging from nooses fashioned from their bedding.

Breakfast, like all meals, comes from the Seaside Galley. The Styrofoam containers are ferried to each of the camps three times daily, delivered to each prisoner in his cell by an unseen guard through the "bean hole," a small, covered portal at waist level in the cell's steel door. It is also opened during the five-times-daily Muslim prayer call, the only times prisoners can catch a glimpse of one another.

Detainee Meal Preparation has become part of the tour offered to visitors to Guantánamo. Visitors are told by civilian contractor Sam Scott that each prisoner gets more than 4,000 calories a day, with five meal choices to accommodate vegetarians, the overweight, the toothless and sensitive of stomach.

Prisoners eat their meals in their cells. They seldom leave them.

Each is equipped with a bunk, sink and toilet. Only the most compliant prisoners may keep their toothbrush, toothpaste and soap with them. Those being disciplined or segregated from others must ask for their hygiene items from guards, who monitor their use, then remove them. To guard against a toothbrush being shaved into a shank, the detainees are issued stout plastic rings with bristles attached.

When they do leave their cells, prisoners are shackled and escorted — to and from showers, recreation pens, interrogation interviews and a meeting or two each year with their lawyers.

They leave their cells in the "hard facilities" of Camps 5, 6 and the newly created 7 for no other reason, unless they are found to need medical or dental treatment when corpsmen make periodic rounds.

To limit the number of men outside their cells at a time, recreation hours are staggered around the clock, leaving many to choose between sleeping at 3 a.m. or getting a workout.

No more than two are within speaking distance of each other during rec time and even then are separated by a guard. The men do communicate, though. The guards call it DNN — the Detainee News Network. Accounts of world events are learned from visiting lawyers and somehow passed on through steel doors.

Several prisoners have been caught penciling messages in the books they borrow each week from the visiting library cart, one of the few distractions they are allowed.

More than 2,000 books and magazines in 18 languages are stocked for the prisoners, each vetted for its potential to incite. The Harry Potter series had been the most popular selection before a recent influx of nature and music books.

At the new Camp 7 facility for high-value detainees that military jailers have dubbed "the platinum camp," the book most in demand now is "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," a nearly 20-year-old treatise by Steven R. Covey.

The librarian, who didn't want to be identified, says books are inspected by intelligence agents after each return. Borrowers lose their reading privileges and are disciplined if found passing notes.

Discipline or segregation status mean loss of CIs, or "comfort items." That includes toilet paper — each prisoner is given 15 sheets daily — change of clothing, a mattress, prayer beads, playing cards and a couple of hours' access to pen and paper.

Only at Camp 4, a barrackslike compound with fewer than 50 prisoners, do men take their meals together or congregate in groups. The communal-living camp designed for the most compliant prisoners once teemed with nearly 200 bearded young men kicking soccer balls or playing card games on their cots or at outdoor tables.

Older guards called it the "Hogan's Heroes Camp," after the 1960s TV show about U.S. POWs in World War II Germany. But it was emptied after a May 2006 riot over searchers' mishandling of the holy Quran.

Now repopulated with about 40 men awaiting transfer home, Camp 4's dusty oval sports court is idle and the prisoners' outdoor activities consist mainly of doing laundry.

A schoolroom was added to the predominantly Afghan camp last year to teach the illiterate basic Pashtu and Urdu. Leather-and-steel shackles poke out from the floor beneath each desk where the prisoner's ankle is tethered during classes.

Two video screens were installed at Camp 4 last year with plans to show movies to reward good behavior. The opportunity to make phone calls to family abroad is being considered, says Lt. Col. Ed Bush, a spokesman for the prison and interrogation network.

The solitary life endured by the majority of detainees winds down each evening with the last bean-hole exchange and a final prayer call. A yellow traffic cone marked with a P (for "prayer time") is positioned at the head of the cell block to remind guards to keep the noise down.

The end of a day is signaled at 10 p.m. by the arrival of the bedsheet.

But a Gitmo detainee's day doesn't end with the usual prison ritual of "lights out." Lights are kept on in the cells 24 hours a day, seven days a week for what military jailers say are security reasons. Some prisoners grow their hair long and drape it across their eyes to aid sleeping, as Australian David Hicks, transferred home last year, told his lawyer in explaining his nearly waist-length tresses.

Sleep is probably fitful, with the guards' boots audible every few minutes as they look for "self-harm incidents" or signs of prisoners' "weaponizing" their few belongings.

Another day like the more than 2,000 most have spent here is heralded at 5 a.m. when a guard arrives to retrieve the bedsheet.