identified themselves as German KSK, special forces, came to interrogate him. Kurnaz hoped they would have to make a report, which would let German authorities and eventually his family know that he was being held at Kandahar. Torture in Guantanamo, Cuba Early one morning Kurnaz was given new orange overalls, and his head was bound in a gas mask, his ears covered with soundproof headphones, and his eyes with thick black diving goggles. His hands were put in mittens. Blindfolded and so tightly handcuffed that circulation was cut off, he was punched in the face, kicked in the genitals, and left on the ground. Some hours later Kurnaz and others were chained together and herded onto a plane. During the long flight, the prisoners were not allowed to sleep: "the soldiers kept hitting us to keep us awake." The feel of bright sun and extreme heat indicated to him that he had arrived in a different country. On the bus ride from the plane to the prison cages, soldiers continued to beat the prisoners and allowed dogs to bite them. Kurnaz was taken to a tent, where his fingerprints and DNA swabs were taken, and afterward he was put in a cage made of chain link fence. Such small metal cages were to be his home for the next five years, most spent in a cage with three and a half by three and a half feet of free space. Kurnaz learned that the difference between Kandahar and Guantanamo was a system deliberately designed to inflict "maximum pressure around the clock," to humiliate and brutalize, but to keep prisoners alive to extract information. According to his account, six prisoners were killed: three suffocated on one night and three more were apparently poisoned with drugged food. (US authorities later claimed all six were suicides.) At Guantanamo, Kurnaz was beaten and sprayed with pepper spray and tear gas repeatedly for such supposed infractions as lying down or standing at the wrong time, touching a fence, talking or staying silent, looking at a guard or failing to look at a guard. He was also beaten during interrogations. A series of interrogators always asked the same questions, did not appear to believe his answers, and when he passed out from exhaustion, they hit him in the face and head as "they couldn't think of any better way to keep me awake." Beatings and leaving