Risk

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Anne Marie and I spent the first five days in a 4m² cell with no bed. Our cell stank of urine and the walls were stained with blood and shit. In the cell next to us was a guy called Jonah, a man of about 30 with the mental age of a small child. Jonah was caught walking across the coral to Kwajelein at low water to get a hamburger and was sentenced to 15 days in jail. He shared a cell with two drunks and two rapists. What kind of society treats such a vulnerable person in jail like that? It's symbolic of the attitude of the American military toward the local population.

After five days I was transferred to Majuro Island. The penitentiary there is horrendous. When you're from 10,000 miles away it's hard to figure things out. Some guy just pushed you in. There's no bed; the toilet's been blocked for three weeks. It's like nothing you've ever seen before…a dark airless shed with a few corridors and a couple of small rooms off of rooms. Just a bucket for washing which everybody shares; if you wash you run the risk of coming our dirtier.

There were about 50 people there, murderers, rapists, pedophiles…you name it, they did it. Very few of them spoke any English, so in all it was rather bewildering and more than just a little scary.

Nights were obviously the worst. I had no assigned sleeping place and no bed. When the lights went out it was complete darkness. You don't know how much is imagination and how much is genuine threat. It was anybody's guess, it seemed real enough to me at the time. Two people got good kicking while I was there, and there were strange moaning and screaming noises coming from one of the rooms.

I was allowed to have visitors from the ship. Oddly enough, the visits took place outside the jail, out on the street. The temptation to run was very strong, but had I run and been caught I would have done the full three weeks of my sentence. On an island that small where are you going to run to?

After one week of wearing the same clothes my trousers were mouldy and I smelled real bad, and a colony of ants had taken up residence in my hair and elsewhere. On my release it was great to just walk up the road to the dockside, where I threw myself and my very smelly clothes into the sea - it was exhilarating!

I don't regret the action. I'd do it again. The way the Americans use and abuse the people of Ebeye is obscene. Each test costs $100m. The things they could do to transform peoples lives…there people have nothing."