CAMP 7, somewhere in Cuba

This is a mysterious place with some dirty secrets.

Its location had been top secret, with its existence uncovered only in February this year when its top commander Rear Admiral Mark Buzby admitted it in an interview with the Associated Press. It’s a place for bounty-hunted detainees and teenagers, some 60 of them, and some as young as 13. One was just 14 in 2001 when Pakistani authorities seized him and sold him to the United States for a bounty, a fate common among those housed there.

Camp 7 is a place reserved for the al-Qaeda suspects that have been called ‘platinum prisoners.’ This moniker may have come about for various reasons. The title possibly connotes the men’s utmost importance in worth that’s far beyond gold. It can mean the exclusivity of their confines that’s strictly off-limits from the Pentagon’s media tour, as among them are 15 alleged senior al-Qaeda captives called ‘high-value detainees.’ What is certain, though, is that Camp 7 is run by its very own special unit – codenamed Task Force Platinum.

The International Red Cross has condemned the indefinite detention of prisoners there. The United Nations has found that techniques used inside those confines “amount to degrading treatment in violation of the [Geneva Conventions],” and recommended that it be closed “without further delay.” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said it should be shut down because it’s damaging to the world’s opinion of the United States.

In November last year, a ‘primary operations manual’ was published by the government transparency group Wikileaks. Within a week, it had appeared in hundreds of articles listed on the Google search engine.

The detailed how-to-manual indicates several rules such as: some prisoners to be designated as off limits to visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and destroying a Styrofoam cup as a punishable offense “for destruction of government property.”

The SOP also revealed the routine use of isolation, sensory deprivation, and sleep deprivation on detainees in order to weaken them and make them ready for interrogations. These techniques are common methods of torture which, though commonly used, are still regarded as immoral, illegal, and inhuman.

There is one activity in Camp 7 that concerns water. It involves restraining a prisoner on a board with the subject’s head lower than his feet. Water is then poured on the face, triggering a gag reflex and choking the subject. Even the CIA and the Navy SEALS couldn’t stand it when they used it for their own training.

Camp 7, located in a military detention facility enclosed with barbed-wire fences and surrounded by hills with lush cactus growth, exists for the sole purpose of finding out the location, itinerary, and agenda of a purportedly eccentric bearded billionaire bogeyman, whose less than acceptable activities have been costing a whole lot of money to decipher.

It’s somewhere in Guantanamo.