Florence Aubenas

The Bad Hair Blog blogged Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi are free after 157 days as hostages during which

• * She was held in a cellar that was 13' x 6', and only 5' high, along with as many as a dozen other hostages.
• The cellar was totally dark. There was no light in the cellar. There was no window, and the cellar had no ventilation.
• She was bound and blindfolded all the time she was there
• The hostages were not allowed to speak.
• If they spoke, they were beaten. Ms Aubenas states she was beaten twice for having been accused of speaking.
• Other punishments included having their hands painfully bound behind their back, and the withholding of meals and water.
• Aubenas said that her captors imposed a daily limit of 80 spoken words and 24 paces to go to the bathroom.
• She realised only towards the end of her captivity that she had been kept in the same basement as Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, her Iraqi guide.
• Which brings me to my next point: imagine being a woman, held in a cell with men, during your menses. For five months.
• She spent her days sitting cross-legged on her mattress. She ate with her hands bound.
• Several times she was beaten by her guards because she had moved or because they thought that she had whispered to another hostage taken into the basement.

Compare that to the outrage over Guantánamo, where Mohammed al Qahtani, who is widely believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker, a compatriot of Osama bin Laden and a man who had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks, is held. Mr. al Qahtani, held in an air-conditioned cell with ceilings high enough he can stand up and move, gets three square meals a day, is not bound all the time, and is allowed exercise daily. When things got rough, "interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani’s head when he refused to drink", and made him listen to Christina Aguilera's music, or watch a puppet show. When he became dehydrated because of refusing to drink water, he given an IV drip, given an EKG, transferred to a hospital, a CT scan is performed, and hooked up to a heart monitor.

Last Sunday, for example, Mohammed al Qahtani's meal was orange-glazed chicken, steamed peas and mushrooms, and rice pilaf. See this for the recipe

Hat tip to The Anchoress