Guantanamo Bay Focus - GITMO Grub.

Guantanamo Bay is a holiday camp compared to European prisons. The food is great and the conditions are hygienic, which is more than you can say about French and Spanish prisons.
I have never seen the inside of GITMO, so like you I can only rely on informed sources.
Chief Warrant Officer James Kluck is in charge of feeding the detainees as well as the 1,780 soldiers at GITMO. He does a great job and everyone, including the soldiers, has a problem keeping their waistlines trim.
Everyone gets two hot meals a day, which includes breakfast. In France I was given bread and water every morning. In Spain I was given warm, milky coffee and bread with spam, jam or biscuits. No hot breakfast in either country, regardless the snow and icy winds in winter.
As well as dishes such as Chicken Cordon Bleu and Turkey a la King, there are many other nutritional delights (halal of course), whereas in France I had atrociously cooked horsemeat and in Spain I was served a pig’s ear more than once for my main meal.
I have been served food by fellow inmates with cigarettes dangling from their mouths whilst scratching the crabs in their groins. I have seen runny noses in winter and sweating foreheads in summer dripping across open food containers. Some of these ‘drippers’ have Aids and TB, but who cares? Nobody, because the eyes of the world are focussed on GITMO looking for the slightest hiccup that can be blown out of all proportion by America’s enemies; tree-huggers, politically correct weirdoes and armchair warriors who haven’t yet ventured further than the end of their street.
Some of them will have a pop at me now for writing this, but unlike them, I have a thick skin and I have ventured further than the end of my street.
My first taste of French prisons happened only last year when I, Christopher Chance was arrested and thrown into the Douai Dungeon,(Maison d’arret, 505, Rue de Cuincy, 59507.France), last year.
I was arrested and held for extradition to Spain to complete a prison sentence that began in 2001. I was released from Malaga prison after serving twenty months of a three year sentence for hashish smuggling between Spain and Morocco. Hashish destined for the coffee shops of Amsterdam.
My slick lawyer wangled my release on an appeal scam and I was released on Christmas Eve 2002. A subsequent hearing decided I should return to prison to complete the sentence, but I had returned to England for medical reasons and was having surgery in St. Albans City Hospital when these decisions were made.
I travelled around the world oblivious to the European Arrest Warrant issued by the Spanish.
In 2005 I went to Cyprus for eighteen months to write another book. I returned to England by driving through Greece; Italy, France and then by car ferry across to Dover, passing through the frontiers without a hitch.
After a short Christmas break my wife and I decided to move to France to start another book. On 3rd January last year we drove off the ferry at Calais into the arms of the waiting, armed French police to start a nightmare journey through French and Spanish prisons.
I was separated from my wife who was ordered out of the Calais port and advised to continue her journey alone because I was going to Spain.
I was then taken to holding cells near Bologne-Sur-Mer, where I was stripped naked for an orifice search. I was then put in a cold, filthy cell where I remained on the concrete floor with a dirty blanket for 36 hours.
On 5th January 07 I was taken to the Douai Dungeon, a 17th century prison famous for its busy guillotine, where I was again stripped naked for another orifice search. For the next 15 days I was fed bread and water every morning for breakfast. In all this time I was allowed only three showers.
I was put in a cell with the infamous French surgeon, Doctor Jean Beclet who sliced his wife to death with a meat cleaver in her chemist shop in Douai as customers ran screaming in terror. I slept badly in this cell with the homicidal doctor lying in the bunk opposite me.
On 10th January I was taken in leg-irons and manacles to the Douai courts where I was paraded in full view of shoppers across the square and into the courts. Papers for extradition were signed and I was returned to the Douai Dungeon where again I was stripped naked and searched by my escorts who had never left my side throughout the day.
On 16th January I was again trussed in leg-irons and manacles for the journey to Fresnes prison, France’s harshest prison where I was again stripped naked and searched. I was fed bread and water every morning and locked in solitary confinement for three days and nights in a cold, dirty cell.
During my time in French prisons I was verbally abused constantly by my jailers and each time I was moved, even from cell to cell I was stripped naked and intimately searched by prison officers with a penchant for rolling back foreskins and gawping up backsides. I started each day with a breakfast of bread and water. I was never allowed to supplement my other dismal meals with cakes or biscuits from the prison shop.
On 19th January I was heavily manacled and taken to Orly airport with four armed guards, who on arrival at Orly were joined by two legionnaires armed with machine-guns. I was escorted through the busy airport concourse with weapons trained on me as shocked tourists moved out of the way, some taking pictures probably thinking I was bin Laden in disguise.
I was handed over to my Spanish escorts for the flight to Madrid. I had never committed a crime in France, I was held merely for extradition.
I had lost several pounds in weight and I was to lose much more by the time I left my Spanish jailers. Meanwhile, the GITMO inmates have each gained an average of 13lbs, thanks to Chief Warrant Officer James Kluck and the American Administration.
A more in-depth account of life inside Spanish prisons can be read in my books: ‘The Lone Brit on 13’ and ‘Carabanchel’; two books penned in the chaos of prison, surrounded by necrophiliacs, paedophiles, cannibals, rapists and murderers.
I am now out on parole from Daroca prison in Spain and I am attending my first book signing at Borders book store in Liverpool this weekend 4th and 5th October.
Because the eyes of the world are on GITMO, it is my opinion that the inmates are well fed in hygienic conditions, something amiss in French and Spanish prisons. There seems not to be much in the way of complaints from the GITMO inmates regarding food.
Not surprisingly, it is the French and Spanish who are most vociferous about how prisoners are treated at GITMO. Perhaps they should focus more on the hygienic conditions and the quality of the food at GITMO as a guide to putting their own prisons fit for human habitation.