Guantánamo Bay or JTF-GTMO, a Kafka Nightmarish Farce
January 2, 2025•987 words
"What does Obama mean keep working on closing Gitmo? It's a broken promise. Obama said we were gonna close Gitmo the first day he was in office and it never happened." ~ Rush Limbaugh
"We need to shut down this Gitmo prison? Well, don't shut it down - we just need to start an advertising campaign. We need to call it, 'Gitmo, the Muslim resort.' Any resort that treated people like this would have ads all over the 'New York Times' trying to get people to come down and visit for some R&R, for some rest and relaxation." ~ Rush Limbaugh
For over two decades, Ridah Al-Yazidi was ensnared in the surreal purgatory of Guantánamo Bay, a place where logic, justice, and even time itself seemed to dissolve into darkness.
His imprisonment was not merely an injustice; it was a grotesque performance, a theater of the absurd where guilt required no proof, evidence was cloaked in secrecy, and justice was absent. After nearly 23 years, Ridah’s release does not mark redemption but rather exposes the farcical tragedy of a system that imprisons without trial, all while USA pretending as a country of law and order.
Ridah’s tale began in Tunisia, a nation unremarkable in its role as the backdrop for an unremarkable life.
Born into modest circumstances, he eventually sought opportunity across the Mediterranean Sea in Italy. There, he laboured in menial jobs and dabbled in petty crime. Like countless others, his life was shaped by desperation rather than destiny. But history, placed him in Afghanistan in 1999. Drawn into the chaos of that war-torn land, he joined the Taliban’s ranks, not as a zealot or a leader, but as a mere foot soldier, swept along by forces far beyond his understanding.
By 2002, fate delivered him into the hands of the United States, anointing him as one of the first detainees in the USA experiment of lawlessness known as Guantánamo Bay or GITMO.
From the moment he arrived, his captivity took on the character of a Kafka nightmarish farce.
The accusations against him were slim at best, shrouded in the fog of "national security." Ridah admitted his presence on the Taliban’s front lines but denied any role in combat. This mattered little. Branded an "enemy combatant," a term so elastic it could ensnare anyone from a threat to a mere observer, he was labelled to indefinite detention. Innocence, it seemed, was irrelevant. Even though the American Air force carpet bombed and used 2,000 lb. inferno bombs killing thousands of Afghan civilians and so-called foot soldiers; this young man mentioned that he was up in the mountains, hiding and afraid of fighting anyone.
In 2010, an Obama-era task force deemed Ridah eligible for release, alongside 156 other detainees. Yet while many were freed, Ridah remained entangled in bureaucratic red tape. Tunisia hesitated to accept him because at a young adult age he moved to Italy, and his own reluctance to engage with the GITMO system only deepened his plight. Was it geopolitics, procedural incompetence, or simple indifference that left him stranded? The answer lies buried in the absurdities of international relations.
Ridah’s silence was a rebuke to the very system that claimed to decide his fate.
He withdrew from meetings with lawyers and negotiators, retreating into the solitude imposed upon him by a place designed to erase the individual. Guantánamo’s Kafka farcical machinery grinding on, one administration after another passing the buck, while Ridah’s existence became a footnote in the tragicomic saga of a prison that defies resolution.
Finally, in late 2024, Ridah was returned to Tunisia, 15 years after his release was first approved, and slightly over 23 years, imprisoned with no charge and no trial.
But this was no triumph.
What life awaited him? Could fractured family bonds be mended? Could a man stripped of identity and dignity find a way to rebuild after 23 years imprisoned and labelled as an Islamist terrorist, which he was not? Or would he, like so many others, be left to wander through the wreckage of a life stolen by unjust imprisonment?
Guantánamo endures as a grotesque monument to the absurd.
Twenty-six detainees remain, some cleared for release yet still held captive by an indifference so profound of cruelty. Among them are men like Toffiq Al-Bihani, inexplicably denied freedom since 2016, and Muieen Abd Al-Sattar, whose identity remains obscured by bureaucratic neglect. Others languish without legal counsel, their existence too inconvenient to acknowledge.
Guantánamo is no longer a prison, throughout the world GITMO is a symbol of unchecked power and bigotry; telling other countries around the world, you can treat and imprison individuals for no reason if you have power and bigotry to do so.
The CIA and GITMO shadowy practices, arbitrary detentions, and endless limbo prison sentences evoke the medieval rather than the modern. Each detainee held without trial is a living testament to the collapse of justice and contradictions.
The Biden administration faces a closing window to correct this dark inhumane legacy. When the Donald Trump presidency hard-line regime returns, Guantánamo’s grim narrative will cement into permanence, he has promised his supporters, the medieval dungeon and many other American CIA detention centres symbols of torture, rendition and indefinite detention without charge or trial prisons around the world that will continue and will be filled with detainees. For those still imprisoned, each day is another verse in a tragedy without resolution.
Ridah’s story is a parable of state power run insane.
It reveals a system where justice delayed is not merely denied but transfigured into mockery. The ghosts of Guantánamo will haunt history until the last detainee is freed, or until society confronts the failures that birthed such dungeon of hatred and bigotry.