This is What Terrorists Did to Me

A must read. It evokes so many different emotions.

I was a federal prison guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. In 2000, I was with a prisoner, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, taking him back to his cell. His cellmate was Khalfan Khamis Mohamed. They were accused of bombing two embassies in Africa in 1998. Later they said that they worked with Osama bin Laden and that they helped set up al Qaeda.

Louis Pepe was a federal prison guard at Manhattan's MCC when he was ambushed and blinded by two terrorism suspects, later linked to Osama bin Laden.

We were back at their cell. It's only me and those two guys. No supervisors. Just the three of us. Somehow, they slipped out of their handcuffs. They sprayed me with some kind of hot sauce. I couldn't see. They pulled me into the cell and hit me — boom, boom. They hit me so much, I swear to God, like a hundred times.

I hit my radio. I thought help would come.

They wanted the keys for the other prisoners, but they couldn't find them. They were in my front pocket.

I used to be big, 300 pounds, and I was laying on them. I gave them my car keys. About halfway through, they used a comb — thick and long, about 10 inches, with a handle. They'd taken the teeth out and sharpened it like a knife. They put it in my left eye. It went three inches into my brain. Nobody came. I kept calling and nothing. I was in there with them for an hour. It was f- - -ed up.

With my blood, they made the sign of the cross on my chest because they thought I was dead. Finally, 12 guards came to my aid. They said they had the wrong keys.

When it was over, I got up and walked down toward the infirmary. I wanted to show them I could do it. I thought I would go to a doctor right away. They kept me at the infirmary. Finally, I was taken to Bellevue. I thought I was dead. I went into a coma.

Read the rest here.