The Guantanamo prison in a London theatre

In a London theatre, 12 actors are reproducing life in the 
controversial US detention camp in Guantanamo (Cuba), via a play 
based on the testimony of former prisoners.

In Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, actors from 
London's Tricycle Theatre are playing the parts of prisoners, 
their families and politicians like US Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld.

"We are staging a play that uses transcriptions of interviews 
with the British prisoners, their families, former prisoners who 
have come home, their lawyers and soldiers on Guantanamo", 
explained theatre director Nicolas Kent.

"There is not a single word in the play that was not pronounced 
by the people we interviewed. Nothing was invented by us", he 
added.

Other information comes from the letters received by prisoners' 
families. "I don't know what crime I am suspected of, nor why my 
wife and children have to go on suffering", wrote Moazzam Begg, 
36, a British citizen imprisoned in Guantanamo.

Another five British prisoners from the camp on the US naval base 
were repatriated in mid-March after having spent two years in 
prison without a trial or being charged with anything. After 
their arrival in Britain, they were freed, without having a 
single charge brought against them.

Another four Britons are still being held in the camp, together 
with approximately 600 other prisoners from 40 different 
countries, most of them detained during the war against 
Afghanistan at the end of 2001, after the September 11 attacks.

The US Government does not recognise them as prisoners of war, 
defined by the Geneva Convention, in spite of repeated criticism 
by human rights organisations.

The US Supreme Court decided to deliberate the question of the 
legality of these indefinite detentions for the first time on 
April 20, and will make a ruling on the matter before the end of 
June. In particular, it will have to decide whether the 
Guantanamo prisoners have the right to appeal to the US courts to 
challenge their imprisonment or prison conditions.

"Up until now, the reaction from the public has been very strong. 
Some spectators cry when they hear the testimony. They think it's 
terrible, abominable", Kent commented.

The director, who has previously staged works about the Nuremberg 
trials and the racist murder of a young Black man in London in 
1993, added that his objective was also to show the inanity of 
efforts made by the British Government to help the Guantanamo 
prisoners.

The government "provides (legal) representation for those who 
have citizenship, but not for those who don't, even if they have 
resided in the country for 16, 17, 18 or 20 years", he said.

Kent cited the case of a prisoner from Iraq who had been living 
in Britain for 19 years, but whom the British Government has 
refused to attend.

"Before the war in Iraq, the British authorities had told him 
that he should be represented by the Saddam Hussein regime. What 
cynicism!"

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Granma