Moazzam - David Rovics

What it’s like to lose most everything

He was only six, just a few years from the pram

When he discovered all the pain that life could bring

His mother died so young, maybe that’s where it began

But when he grew up he’d travel far and wide

He went off to Bosnia and Afghanistan

For Moazzam there was no «other side»

When the US war began, he was taken in a raid

Held for a year in a windowless cell

He heard the men around him beaten, he heard women flayed

Where they’d take him next, he had no way to tell

Guantanamo Bay, three years in a cage

Three years apart from his young son

Three years of torture at every single stage

No charge, no trial for him or anyone

Moazzam’s only crime was helping people

In places that most others fear to go

Moazzam’s only crime was helping people

And baring secrets some people don’t want you to know

Three years of campaigning for release

Sent home to live 'neath England’s cloudy sky

The screams that ring out in his head can never cease

Left to live his life and wonder why

But the years passed by and the wars they ravaged on

And it wasn’t long before he knew

With the hundreds of thousands dead and gone

He had to find out if there was something he could do

He came back home from burying the dead

And was arrested on a terror law

There was no question in his head

He had to tell the world what he saw

Such as the fact that his government kidnapped men

And sent them to be tortured by Asad

And this is why they’ve arrested him again

And this is why I say in the name of God