Heart-ache: Gitmo prisoners’ lives filled with “infinite tedium and loneliness”

The difference between them and your average self-employed New York apartment dweller? The two hours of daily recreation. Heh.

Mamut, an ethnic Uighur from China captured in Pakistan, spends all but two hours a day isolated in his cell. He eats and prays by himself. His only recreation comes in a concrete courtyard surrounded by high walls, separated from other prisoners by a chain-link fence.

The U.S. government says the unit provides detainees with more private and comfortable quarters.

But Mamut and other Uighur prisoners complain their days are now filled with “infinite tedium and loneliness,” said Sabin Willett, an attorney for the men, in an affidavit filed in a Washington court.

“All expressed a desperate desire for sunlight, fresh air and someone to speak to,” Willett wrote after a January visit to the prison, located on the U.S. military base in southeastern Cuba, where the U.S. holds nearly 400 men suspected of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban…

A guard at Camp 6, an Army sergeant whose name cannot be disclosed under military rules, insisted that the prisoners prefer the new air-conditioned cells and the privacy.

“It’s kind of like having their own apartment,” he said.

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