Student tortured for TV
Behind Bars: Chris Guelff pictured during the programme
AN OXFORD undergraduate has described how he was subjected to physical torture and mental abuse as part of a forthcoming Channel Four TV show that aims to recreate the conditions faced by detainees at the American military camp Guantanamo Bay. Chris Guelff, a third year PPEist at Magdalen College, underwent nearly 48 hours of sensory deprivation, starvation and physical and emotional degradation. He was one of seven volunteers whose experiences will be screened early next month.
Channel Four hopes The Guantanamo Guidebook, presented by Jon Snow, will raise awareness of the practices deployed at the US base in Cuba and encourage public debate on the issue. Guelff, speaking exclusively to The Oxford Student, has detailed how TV producers created a frighteningly realistic mock-up of Guantanamo Bay in an East London warehouse before unleashing a programme of sustained ‘torture- lite' on the show's male participants.
Volunteers were assigned personas and knew nothing about each other when they were ‘captured'. After being picked to take part in the show, Guelff was instructed to hand cash over to an unidentified representative of the fictional ‘Aid for Refugees in Palestine' (ARP) on a boat on the River Thames. He was secretly photographed doing so.
Soon after, whilst filling in a routine questionnaire from the programme-makers, he suddenly had a bag thrust over his head before being led off to a ‘processing room'. Like the real detainees in Guantanamo, Guelff was stripped and had all of his possessions confiscated. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and flip-flops before being hooded and forced to wear gloves and earmuffs to ensure sensory deprivation. He was then led into a room and ordered to march up and down.
Channel Four claims that the methods used in the experiment were based on declassified internal documents from the highest levels of the US government, approved by Donald Rumsfeld. “We just had to keep marching”, explained Guelff. “I did everything I could to pass the time. I tried to count steps. All the time I could hear other prisoners being brought in but there was no contact. The guards didn't beat us but they were shoving us around. There was no access to a toilet.
“Of course the whole idea was to put us in the most inhumane and degrading situation possible. Eventually I had to wet myself on national TV. If anybody tried to sit down and stop marching they were dragged up. I thought I'd been marching for about 45 minutes; later I found out it was four hours.” The ‘prisoners' were then thrown into a van and driven to a new location, all the while blindfolded. On arrival they were bundled into their cells: “The sudden flood of artificial light was painful.
We found ourselves in cages with nothing more than a plank for a bed and a bucket. The room was unheated."
Channel Four hired out Team Delta – a professional unit of former military Intelligence and Special Forces officers – to play this role. The interrogators forced detainees to perform pushups and other physical challenges – including the socalled ‘stress position', whereby captives were made to stand for extended periods of time with their hands in the air. “The most depressing thing of all was the rotation of the guards.
You would do 150 sit-ups for a guard and then a new one would arrive and demand the same again. The whole process degraded us to such an extent that I ceased to feel like a person and just became a number.” The individuals being held were offered little in the way of food. Guelff was given one army ration but was instructed to eat it in just four minutes. Immediately afterwards he was ordered to do more sit-ups, prompting him to throw up.
“My body basically survived the entire two days on a single Mars bar”, he recalled. “The interrogators were excellent at their job. I tried to adopt a tactic of challenging their right to hold me, but as the youngest person in the camp I played right into their hands.
After admitting he had debated for the Oxford Union, and after the ARP representative – his ‘partner in crime' – confessed to the interrogators, the guards deemed Guelff dangerous and un-cooperative, and singled him out for special attention. “They had seen the photos of the cash being handed over so they knew I was lying. They were determined to hit me hard and were building up to it for hours with little comments. Suddenly four guys charged in to the cell, lifted me up and carried me off.
Guelff was taken to a cold room and completely stripped – an event that he hopes will be pixellated during transmission. After being hooded and shaved, he was left with nothing to do but sit in darkness and listen to white noise. “It sounded like a woman's scream. The word ‘inhuman' kept getting played backwards. It was dehumanising, unnerving and all the while I was desperately cold. I found out later I was borderline hypothermic.
While the interrogators debated their next move, Guelff decided enough was enough. “I was at the end of my tether,” he acknowledged. “By my estimation there were only about ten hours to go before the experiment ended, but to go on would have been masochism. I later found out that if I'd stayed, the next techniques they would have used would have been a full body shave. Feeling the nicks all over my scalp from when they shaved my head, I'm glad my scrotum wasn't subjected to the same treatment.
Guelff remains acutely embarrassed that he didn't last until the end, but in fact he endured the conditions better than many others. One of the group of volunteers (which included three Muslims, a triathlete, Britain's Thai Kick Box champion and the country's ‘best fireman') contracted hypothermia within the first few hours of the experiment. The range of torture methods used by the interrogators was diverse.
One volunteer had gay pornography planted in his cell in an attempt to humiliate him in front of the other prisoners. Guelff believes he suffered the worst abuse, although he doesn't regret the experience: “Politics is too dependent on soundbites. People accept what is happening in Cuba because they believe it makes them safer. Hopefully this programme will put more of a spotlight on what's being done in our name, by the people we voted for.
Guelff insists what he was subjected to was nothing compared to what the real Guantanamo detainees face daily: “The two things that were on my side as a prisoner – the fact that the guards couldn't beat me and the fact that I could leave at any time – the real prisoners don't have. There are legitimate reasons for holding and interrogating suspects, but some of these people have been in Guantanamo for three years now.
What kind of information can they be usefully providing? The prisoners in Cuba must be basket cases by now. “I don't care what the UN conventions say about holding non-combatants, or the legal arguments for the detentions – we should do it better. I wasn't totally naïve going into this experiment; I accepted that detentions were necessary and I knew what some of the conditions were like. But now I've got a more visceral understanding of what goes on and my opinions have changed.
A spokesman for Channel Four told The Oxford Student the programme was important in provoking public debate: “The Bush administration argues that these methods are essential to protect democracy. Human rights lawyers say they are torture. Now viewers can decide if they are ever justified in the war on terror.” The Guantanamo Guidebook airs on Tuesday 1st March at 11pm
17th Feb 2005