‘It’s soul-crushing’: the shocking story of Guantánamo Bay’s ‘forever prisoner’
From “a black site” in Thailand in 2002, CIA officers warned headquarters that their interrogation techniques might result in the death of a prisoner. If that happened, he would be cremated, leaving no trace. But if he survived, could the CIA offer assurance that he would remain in isolation?
It could. Abu Zubaydah, the agency said in a cable, “will never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others” and “should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life”.
So opens The Forever Prisoner, an HBO documentary by Alex Gibney, which tells the story of the first high-value detainee subjected to what the CIA calls enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) and what the rest of the world knows by a simpler, uglier word: torture.
Nearly two decades after that dehumanizing cable, the CIA has proved as good as its word. Zubaydah, never charged with a crime or allowed to challenge his detention, is. The election of Joe Biden has done nothing to signal an end to his purgatory or status as a non-person.
