In this op-ed, Aliya Hana Hussain, advocacy program manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights, explains her work advocating for men detained in the Guantánamo Bay prison that opened in the wake of 9/11, and the ongoing need to call for its closure since.
On September 11, 2001, I was 17 years old and a high school senior in a northern New Jersey suburb, just outside of New York City. Many of my classmates and friends’ parents commuted to work in skyscrapers in the city every day. That day, we all sat for hours, eyes glued to the television. Much of that day was a blur, but there are a few things I remember clearly. I was able to get in touch with my mother at a friend’s house after school, and though I had no reason to think that they weren’t safe, being able to hear her voice was such a relief. My most vivid memory was going to the Catholic church in the evening. It was just around the corner from my school, in the center of town. I was scared, confused, and overwhelmed. Tears streamed down my face as I stood there with my friends during the service. I didn’t even question whether, as a Muslim, I should be standing there. In that moment, it was where I belonged, mourning with my friends and my community, as we prayed for peace and the safe return for all of the loved ones still missing.
Little could I have understood how much that day would drive the course of the next 17 years, and how much the question of whether one is Muslim would come to matter in the United States — to me and everyone else.
Days after the attacks, the U.S. government swiftly embraced a suite of anti-Muslim rhetoric, laws, and policies, abroad and at home. The Guantánamo prison, opened on a military base in a corner of Cuba, became the site of horrific abuse of Muslims. President George W. Bush opened the prison as part of his efforts to “fight terror” after 9/11. In total, Guantánamo has held nearly 800 prisoners, all Muslim, and the overwhelming majority never charged with a crime. In 2010, I joined the staff of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which had begun challenging these abuses perpetrated in the name of “national security” after 9/11, including the unlawful detention of men and boys at Guantánamo. Now, as an advocate to close the prison, I work to defend the basic human rights and dignity of our clients and people like them, like myself: Muslims.
Fahd Ghazy was also 17 years old when 9/11 happened, and when he was picked up by local police forces in Pakistan at a time when the U.S. military reportedly paid cash rewards to people for turning over anyone who seemed out of place. He was then sent to Guantánamo in early 2002. We were both in our late 20s when we met in a small meeting room in Guantánamo’s Camp Echo in 2012. He was shackled to the floor. I was sitting across from him and next to his lawyer, my colleague.
Fahd’s fluent English caught me by surprise. So did his smile, gentleness, and curiosity. It was such a stark contrast to the cold, sterile cell we were sitting in, and to his circumstances. Fahd was a son, brother, husband, and a young father to a beautiful daughter, who he had not seen since she was a newborn. He had been cleared for release by the Bush administration in 2007 and then again by President Obama in 2009. Three years later, as I introduced myself, he was still in Guantánamo, his family still a world away awaiting his safe return.
Unlike meetings with other clients, we didn’t need an Arabic interpreter to exchange hellos. There were no barriers between us. I shared a bit about who I was — my liberal arts college experience, my work at social justice legal organizations, my newborn niece — but I became self-conscious as I spoke. Everything that I said, all that I thought best defined who I was, had happened in the time that he had been at Guantánamo. We were the same age. In that decade, I had prospered. He had languished; his life stolen from him at an offshore military prison in Cuba.
📸: Getty Images
