Freedom cut short

(below is some writing from a detainee, trying to give an account from the inside)

The courtyard has an almost religious significance. Its crude, gravelly surface, upon which football and cricket matches are played, and its stoic tan brick facades, scarce make for an inner sanctum; it is, in its own way, nonetheless, sacrosanct at times. Groups of men, at times cheerful, at times sombre, socialise, play and pace along its nondescript lengths. They smoke, they chat, and they feed the pigeons when the officers are not around to disapprove. The avian company is a bit of comic relief; the birds swoop down to share our rations of bread and biscuits, squabbling amongst themselves not unlike those who toss them their daily crumbs. But, unlike their benefactors, they are free to fly away, free to pursue their lives and loves, and free to perch on the rooftop where they congregate so often, looking down with hungry, accusing eyes. Rats with wings one guy calls them.But it is at other birds that the inmates are more inclined to pay heed, craning their heads skywards to view when they appear. We are a stone's throw from Heathrow, and the jets soar above us like winged leviathans, roaring overhead with a rude disregard for any quiet conversation in the courtyard as they transport their living cargo to parts unknown. British Airways, Continental, Air France, El Al, Uzbek Airlines, the inmates know the exact markings of each as well as Bill Oddie knows his warblers. At times the sight of a particular airline serves to concentrate minds now as much as the sight of the gallows upon those condemned in days goneby. And some of these planes are just such; high tech, high flying birds that are as much the instruments of death as the scaffold. The stairs leading to the plane are not much different than those leading to the scaffold. The victim ascends these, and is not long after back on the ground, from which he ascends no more. Adam Mohamed, before he was led to the stairs of the plane taking him to Darfur, told his captors, who had hoped would be his protectors, that if he were sent back, he would be killed. Many proofs he produced, but these were ignored. His pleas fell on deaf ears. One of those flying machines which ruin so many courtyard conversations swallowed him up and spit him out in Darfur, where he tasted freedom under the bright blue sky of his homeland. No more legal visits, no more refusals, no more nightly lockdowns, he was as free as the pigeons that feast upon our bread. Home, and how sweet it was. Back in the arms of his wife, free to hold in his own arms the children he had not seen for so long. His detention by the British Home Office was a thing of the past. Never again would he have to live behind bars and share his life with strangers. But this utopia was shortlived. He was killed the next day, shot in front of his wife and children.

A similar fate may await my roommate, whose visible evidence of torture was treated with contempt by the interviewer, and whose requests for a Medical Foundation appointment were twice blocked by the Home Office. It is clear that they no more want to hear the evidence than US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter did when Jan Karski told him about Auschwitz in 1943. And so I fear for the young man, who is on the run from the Ergenekon. Will he too, be aboard one of these planes, escorted by four security guards and a medic who will hand him over to his oppressors in Istanbul?