4: Leaking Guantanamo (Shereen Fernandez)

Guantanamo Bay prison leaks. Parts of it are overgrown with weeds. And yet, as of today, 36 detainees still remain imprisoned within its leaking walls. How did the United States of America come to erect this gruesome, derelict, but still operational prison on Cuban soil? In this episode, Shereen Fernandez, tells the story of how the crimes of Guantanamo Bay prison are part of a longer history of American imperialism and racial exclusion.

As we will hear, it is also a story of the true crimes of capitalism and privatisation. We’ll learn how big corporations like Kellogg Brown & Root and Mitchell Jessen and Associates have raked in profits off of the detainees' suffering, sustaining GTMO in a state of total disrepair and piloting enhanced interrogation techniques on its prisoners’ bodies. The former detainee Moazzem Begg, and the academic Lisa Hajjar, paint Shereen a vivid portrait of what it is like to be within Guantanamo, making an irrefutable case for why this criminal prison must be shut down.

Useful links

CAGE: https://www.cage.ngo/

Further Reading

Mohamedou Ould Slahi. “The Mauritanian” (originally published as Guantánamo Diary), (London: Little, Brown, 2015).

Mansoor Adayfi. “Don't Forget Us Here,” (London: Hachette Books, 2021).

Nikòl Payen. “Lavalas: The Flood after the Flood,” Calaloo 25: 3 (2000), pp. 759-771.

Joseph Hickman. “Murder at Camp Delta,” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016).

Additional Notes:

*Additional Voices: Maia Holtermann-Entwistle, Chantelle Lewis and Tissot Regis