Ex-Guantanamo Guard Facebooks Former Inmates

Facebook may be an energy hog, but there's no doubt that the glut of new social networking sites can be used for social good. (And I don't mean by wasting away hours filling out quizzes on "which 80s rock band am I most like"...)

The latest good news about the potential of Social Networking is about as unlikely a story as it gets: an ex-Guantanamo prison guard "friended" two of his former captives. And the group recently reunited to go over their experiences as captive and captor.

The story begins with Brandon Neely, a US soldier who was posted to Guantanamo at the age of 22, and told that he would be guarding some of the most evil men on Earth. Men who would try to kill him as soon as he turned his back. On arrival, he realized the picture was more nuanced than that. As part of his duties, Neely was posted to guard Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul—British citizens who were picked up in Afghanistan while there ostensibly doing aid work. (The pair confess that their real motivations were more about sightseeing and smoking dope.)

Neely, who had been trained to be suspicious of these men, was surprised to learn how much they had in common. He told the BBC:

It was no different from me sitting at the bar with a friend of mine talking about women or music," says Mr Neely. "He would say, 'you ever listen to Eminem or Dr Dre' and he threw off a little rap and it was just funny. I thought how could it be somebody is here who's doing the same stuff that I do when I'm back home."

Ahmed and Rasul weren't the only detainees who Neely started to have doubts about, and he left Guantanamo 6 months later to be posted to Iraq. But he was haunted by what he had seen at the camp, and was looking for closure. In 2005 he left the military and became a police office, and it was around this time that he joined Facebook:

I was pretty new to Facebook and decided to type in their names to see if their profiles popped up and I came across Shafiq's Facebook page. I decided to send him a little e-mail

Shafiq, in turn, was more than a little surprised:

But the initial contact led to an exchange of emails, and eventually Neely, Ahmed and Rasul agreed to a meeting face-to-face, facilitated by the BBC. The results were filmed in a documentary entitled Guantanamo Reunited.

The resulting footage is far from comfortable viewing. The participants are clearly nervous, and it is hardly a gathering of old friends. But the dialogue is frank and open, and both sides reach out with honesty and integrity. Neely, for his part, tells Ahmed and Rasul that he is deeply sorry for his part in what was done to them, while Ahmed and Rasul respond with gratitude for his honesty, but tell him he has nothing to apologize for—he was there to do a job, and they feel it is the Government that should be apologizing, not him.

Having said that, Neely also confesses to manhandling an elderly prisoner who he thought was attacking him. (It later transpired that the man thought he was about to be executed.) While this confession ups the stakes, and clearly makes both Ahmed and Rasul uncomfortable, they tell the BBC that they can forgive Neely for his actions:

"He's realised what he did was wrong and he's living with it and suffering with it and as long as that he knows what he did was wrong. That's the main thing."

I should be clear, I don't intend this post to be an anti-Guantanamo diatribe or pro-Guantanamo for that matter). Although I have my (strong) opinions, there is enough debate out there on the rights and wrongs of US treatment of alleged "enemy combatants". I actually think this story has even bigger value than that—namely it is about two 'sides' that had every reason to mistrust—and even hate—each other, but instead chose a different path. And I can't think of a better way to improve our world than to choose communication over hatred, honesty over prejudice, and forgiveness over resentment.

I don't want this post to be about the rights and wrongs of Guantanamo. It's well documented that not everyone at the camp was as innocent as Ahmed and Rasul, so I am sure there are people out there who would argue that, on balance, Guantanamo was justified. I would vehemently disagree with them, but that's not the point.

The point here isn't even really about the value of Facebook when I think about it. (Believe it or not, people were "social networking" before the internet. It was called talking.) The real lesson in this story, I think, is that we have choices. Even when we are supposed to be enemies, even when we have good reason to feel anger or resentment, we can choose to build trust instead of suspicion. What could be more positive than that?

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