] The seemingly interminable questioning had already lasted
] for hours. 'I needed the toilet,' Mubanga said, 'and I
] asked the interrogator to let me go. But he just said,
] "you'll go when I say so". I told him he had five minutes
] to get me to the toilet or I was going to go on the
] floor. He left the room. Finally, I squirmed across the
] floor and did it in the corner, trying to minimise the
] mess. I suppose he was watching through a one-way mirror
] or the CCTV camera. He comes back with a mop and dips it
] in the pool of urine. Then he starts covering me with my
] own waste, like he's using a big paintbrush, working
] methodically, beginning with my feet and ankles and
] working his way up my legs. All the while he's racially
] abusing me, cussing me: "Oh, the poor little negro, the
] poor little nigger." He seemed to think it was funny.'

] Yet Mubanga, though traumatised by his ordeal, believes
] he stayed sane partly because of his growing religious
] faith, and partly because of his rapping. He has a
] provisional title for the album he'd like to record:
] Detainee . He also has a stage name - 10,007, his
] Guantanamo prisoner number. The content of his work is
] strongly political. There were times, Mubanga said, 'that
] I wanted to explode. And when I did, I tried to remember
] Allah, not to use aggression in that way. I never fought
] any of the guards, I never spat at them, or like some
] prisoners did, threw a packet of faeces. A lot of the
] time you go on to autopilot and you just have to tell
] yourself you're still here, it is happening, it is real.
] The golden rule a lot of us had is, if you don't feel
] tired, don't force yourself to sleep, stay active. That's
] why I made myself learn Arabic.

The Observer | How I entered the hellish world of Guantanamo Bay