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- - Gitmo American Gulag (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/101903-gitmo-american-gulag.html)

Ustwo

03-06-2006 09:52 PM

Gitmo American Gulag

Or maybe it ain't so bad....

Quote:

Fearing militants or even their own governments, some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations do not want to go home, according to transcripts of hearings at the U.S. prison in Cuba.

Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria and Syria are also among the countries to which detainees do not want to return. The inmates have told military tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent back.

President Bush has said the United States transfers detainees to other countries only when it receives assurances that they will not be tortured. Critics say such assurances are useless. The U.S. has released or transferred 267 prisoners and has announced plans to do the same with at least 123 more in the future.

Inmates have told military tribunals they worry about reprisals from militants who will suspect them of cooperating with U.S. authorities in its war on terror. Others say their own governments may target them for reasons that have nothing to do with why they were taken to Guantanamo Bay in the first place.

A man from Syria who was detained along with his father pleaded with the tribunal for help getting them political asylum _ in any country that will take them.

"You've been saying 'terrorists, terrorists.' If we return, whether we did something or not, there's no such things as human rights. We will be killed immediately," he said. "You know this very well."

It is impossible to know how many of the detainees, most held for years now without being charged, fear going home. The U.S. military does not comment on individual cases, and the detainees generally are not in a position to offer any evidence of persecution as they plead their cases before the tribunals.

A Saudi identified only as Yasim, who said he attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and was jailed in his country for selling drugs, told the tribunal that after being repeatedly interrogated at Guantanamo, he fears his fellow prisoners as well as others back in Saudi Arabia.

"I can't go back to my country. I have been threatened to be killed by many people," he said, according to the transcripts, which the Pentagon released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

A detainee from Uzbekistan told the tribunals in December 2004 that his father and uncles were jailed for their Muslim faith in his native country and said he fears the rest of his family would be tortured if he returned.

The prisoner shrugged off the threat to his own safety in Uzbekistan, where the government has clamped down on Islamic groups which are not sanctioned by the state.

"I'm not afraid to die. We all belong to Allah and we shall return to him," he said.

This Uzbek's fate is unknown, as is that of almost every other detainee whose names are no longer blacked out when they appear in the hearing transcripts. The Bush administration has not said who has been held in the prison it opened in January 2002, and does not announce when or where individual detainees are released.

What the Pentagon has said is that 187 prisoners have been released, and 80 others have been transferred to prisons in more than a dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Russia, Bahrain and Pakistan. An unknown number of these prisoners were later released, but many languish in other jails, again without charges, let alone trials.

"We have no authority to tell another government what they are going to do with a detainee," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico told the AP a year ago when asked about dozens of Pakistani prisoners transferred home for continued detention.

The personal threats that detainees may face after leaving Guantanamo Bay pose a human rights challenge to the United States, which has stopped bringing new prisoners to the camp and is under international pressure to close it altogether.

"This policy of handing over prisoners to countries that the U.S. challenges on their human rights abuses is a sham and it opens the United States to charges of hypocrisy around the world," said Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has sought passage of a bill that would ban the U.S. from sending prisoners to other countries to face torture.

In the case of one group of prisoners, Muslims from western China known as Uighurs, the U.S. has struggled to find a solution.

A military tribunal has determined that five are "no longer enemy combatants" and can be released from Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. agrees they could face persecution back in China but so far has not found a third country to take them.

For now, the Uighurs are being kept at Camp Iguana, a privileged section of the prison with televisions, stereos and a view of the Caribbean.

A Uighur told a military tribunal that he feared going back to China so much, he considered trying to convince the panel that he was guilty, according to a hearing transcript.

"If I am sent back to China, they will torture me really bad," said the man, whose name did not appear in the transcript. "They will use dogs. They will pull out my nails."

Two of the Uighurs are appealing a federal judge's rejection of their request to be released in the United States, where a family in the Washington suburbs has offered to take them in.

"Home is China, and in China you disappear into a dungeon and no one ever hears from you again," said their lawyer, Sabin Willett. "These guys are not a risk to anyone. They should be released here."

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/06/D8G6CJV03.html

I post this in hopes that we all remember where the real enemies of freedom are located, and why we do what we do in this conflict. At our worst, the US government is a bunch of boyscouts compared to our enemies.

Paq	03-06-2006 10:18 PM

Quote:

"You've been saying 'terrorists, terrorists.' If we return, whether we did something or not, there's no such things as human rights. We will be killed immediately," he said. "You know this very well."

yeah, so we don't really accuse them, but say they are terrorists or there on suspicion...and then they are sent home and killed bc of the suspicion...

That is almost as bad as doing it ourselves since we would know the outcome of just the mere accusation.

So yeah, once you accuse them of something like that or even suggest they are involved, i'm sure many of them would rather have asylum somewhere else other than return home to be killed for something they may or may not have done..

Then, to blame that country for killing someone you put in harm's way...despicable, purely despicable.

ratbastid

03-07-2006 05:41 AM

I don't see how people being afraid of being killed when they return home refutes the accusations of human rights violations leveled against the Guantanamo Bay detainers. Doesn't make any sense at all. You might as well claim that one plus lamp equals ground hog.

"I don't want to go home" equals "This is a wonderful place to be" on cruise ships and carribean islands, not prisons where you've been detained for four years without being charged with anything.

... You big moonbat, you.

samcol

03-07-2006 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Exactly. This doesn't vindicate anything that has happened there.

highthief

03-07-2006 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Yeah, I'm not sure what the "logic" of the original post was either. Very bizarre.

BigBen

03-07-2006 07:24 AM

He was just saying that there are places in this world that you will be killed for suggestion and innuendo.

That places like the countries described are really bad places, and America needs to keep fighting the good fight.

WOah, wait a second... Did I just come to the defence of Ustwo?

:hmm: :hmm: :hmm:

tecoyah

03-07-2006 07:39 AM

The post does point out an intertesting side effect of these prisons, though irrellevant to the obvious questions these detentions bring up, it is one I had not considered. I just dont know if it makes the situation slightly worse....or slightly better in my mind. I am sure there are a few people who are alive today because they are held in prison, does this in any way justify the imprisonment....likely not.
There are many reasons that can be used to place the prisons in a better light...ie:

information gathering
risk management
political leverage
threat assesment
or even just a tool in this "War on Terror"

But to attempt to claim the use of prisons as a means to protect the prisoners from persecution....seems a bit desperate in my opinion.

stevo

03-07-2006 07:48 AM

The point is, if Gitmo is as bad as a soviet gulag, why are detainees trying to prove they are guilty? If it is as bad as a soviet gulag, why don't they want to go home to die? If it was as bad as a soviet gulag and I was there, I would rather go home and die than be tourtured to death slowly over the next 20 years. The point of the story is to show that gitmo is not the gulag it is portrayed to be by anmesty international and the left-wing cooks in washington.

My favorite part is the description of the detainement of the chinese Uighurs.

Quote:

For now, the Uighurs are being kept at Camp Iguana, a privileged section of the prison with televisions, stereos and a view of the Caribbean.

sounds to me that when we find out they are not a threat and not an enemy they are treated rather nicely. kind of like a resort. Hell, there are days at work when I think I would rather be sitting on a caribbean island, relaxing, watching some TV with a view of the sea, but thats just me.

highthief

03-07-2006 08:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo

My favorite part is the description of the detainement of the chinese Uighurs. sounds to me that when we find out they are not a threat and not an enemy they are treated rather nicely. kind of like a resort. Hell, there are days at work when I think I would rather be sitting on a caribbean island, relaxing, watching some TV with a view of the sea, but thats just me.

Personally, I'd rather be doing what I set out to do in life, or be with my family, than stare at the ocean, but that's just me.

The point is some of these people are innocent and when they go back, their lives will be in danger because it may be that people back home will think they are collaborators, regardless of whether they are or not, regardless of whether they are terrorists or not.

Cable television doesn't make that all go away.

roachboy

03-07-2006 09:04 AM

Quote:

February 22, 2006
Reports Find Tenuous Terror Ties at Guantanamo

by William Fisher

Last June, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, "If you think of the people down there [at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba], these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb-makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."

Yet two recent reports, based on the Defense Department's own documentation, reach conclusions that are dramatically different than Rumsfeld's. And amid the millions of words journalists have written about Guantanamo Bay during the past few years, the mainstream press has largely ignored these new reports.

One report [.pdf], prepared by a team headed by Mark Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and who is a lawyer for two of the Guantanamo detainees, found that more than half of the terror suspects being held have not been accused of committing hostile acts against the United States or its allies.

Compiled from declassified Defense Department evaluations of the more than 500 detainees at the Cuba facility, the report says just 8 percent are listed as fighters for a terrorist group, while 30 percent are considered members of a terrorist group and the remaining 60 percent were just "associated with" terrorists.

The evaluations were completed as part of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals conducted during 2004 to determine if the prisoners were being correctly held as enemy combatants. So far just 10 of the detainees have been formally charged with crimes and are headed for military tribunals.

According to the report, 55 percent of the detainees are informally accused of committing a hostile act. But the Defense Department's descriptions of their actions range from a high-ranking Taliban member who tortured and killed Afghan natives to people who possessed rifles, used a guesthouse, or wore olive drab clothing.

The report also found that about one-third of the detainees were linked to al Qaeda; 22 percent to the Taliban; 28 percent to both; and 7 percent to either one or the other, but not specified.

Lolita C. Baldor of the Associated Press filed a story on the report on Feb. 7. But few U.S. newspapers have run the story.

The Defense Department documents, which are publicly available, were declassified versions of evaluations that contain additional information about each detainee. Those additional details were not made public. The Pentagon had no comment on the report for the AP, which has filed a lawsuit seeking the release of the classified versions of the documents.

"The government has detained these individuals for more than four years, without a trial or judicial hearing, and has had unfettered access to each detainee for that time," said the Denbeaux report.

Of the approximately 760 prisoners brought to Guantanamo since 2002, the military has released 180 and transferred 76 to the custody of other countries.

The second report, written by Corine Hegland for the fiercely nonpartisan National Journal (NJ), was based on a review conducted by the magazine of files on 132 prisoners who have asked the courts for help, and a thorough reading of heavily censored transcripts from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals conducted in Guantanamo for 314 prisoners.

Its conclusion: Most of the "enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo ? for four years now ? are simply not "the worst of the worst" of the terrorist world:

"[S]ome, perhaps many, are guilty only of being foreigners in Afghanistan or Pakistan at the wrong time. And much of the evidence ? even the classified evidence ? gathered by the Defense Department against these men is flimsy, second-, third-, fourth- or 12th-hand. It's based largely on admissions by the detainees themselves or on coerced, or worse, interrogations of their fellow inmates, some of whom have been proved to be liars."

NJ reported, "Notwithstanding Rumsfeld's description, the majority of them were not caught by American soldiers on the battlefield. They came into American custody from third parties, mostly from Pakistan, some after targeted raids there, most after a dragnet for Arabs after 9/11."

It added, "Much of the evidence against the detainees is weak. One prisoner at Guantanamo, for example, has made accusations against more than 60 of his fellow inmates; that's more than 10 percent of Guantanamo's entire prison population."

The men in the orange jumpsuits, President George W. Bush said, were terrorists. But according to the magazine, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) didn't see it that way:

"By the fall of 2002, it was common knowledge around CIA circles that fewer than 10 percent of Guantanamo's prisoners were high-value terrorist operatives, according to Michael Scheuer who headed the agency's bin Laden unit through 1999 and resigned in 2004."

Even as the CIA was deciding that most of the prisoners at Guantanamo didn't have much to say, Pentagon officials were getting frustrated with how little the detainees were saying. So they ramped up the pressure and gave interrogators more license, according to the magazine.

By June 2004 conditions were so bad at Guantanamo that the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only civilian group allowed to meet with detainees, sent a furious confidential report to the White House charging that the entire system in Cuba was "devised to break the will of prisoners at Guantanamo," making them "wholly dependent on their interrogators" through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions," according to a Defense Department report leaked to the New York Times.

The report called the operations "tantamount to torture." Pentagon officials, meanwhile, were citing the "safe, humane, and professional detention operation at Guantanamo that is providing valuable information in the war on terrorism." And members of Congress were touting the prison's excellent cuisine.

Gabor Rona, international legal director for Human Rights First, told IPS, "If most of these guys are not al Qaeda, i.e., are vanilla-flavored civilians or mere Taliban foot soldiers, then it gives the lie to the single mantra that the administration has left when attempting to defend itself against allegations of abuse in Gitmo: that the 'terrorists' are trained to make false allegations of abuse."

Rona said it reminds him of a story he sees as emblematic of the legal process at Guantanamo. "The story is about a guy who, after relentless interrogation, finally admitted to knowing Osama ?'Yes, OK, I know him, I've seen him on al-Jazeera' ? upon which basis the Combatant Status Review Tribunal was informed that 'the individual admits to knowing bin Laden.' And upon this information, he was adjudicated an 'enemy combatant.'"

Some reports disputing the Bush administration's versions of conditions at Guantanamo have received widespread coverage in the U.S. press.

Amnesty International created a media firestorm with a report in which it referred to the prison as a "Gulag." Also widely covered was the recent report from investigators for the United Nations Human Rights Commission, recommending that Guantanamo be closed down

source: http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=8585

i post this mostly because the website version has links to the reports that shape it.
you know, the kind of information that enables a reader to see if the claims being made in a given article are rational or not, are propoganda or not, that sort of thing.

same with this, from a pitt legal blog:

Quote:

Pentagon releases names of Guantanamo detainees
Jaime Jansen at 5:51 PM ET

[JURIST] The US Department of Defense late Friday released the names of Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act [text; summary] request filed by the Associated Press and later pressed in a lawsuit [AP report]. The names appear in transcripts of Combatant Status Review Tribunal [DOD materials] proceedings in which military panels reviewed whether detainees were properly classed as "enemy combantant". It is not clear whether absolutely all detainees - including possible secret "ghost detainees" held by the US - are referenced in the over 5000 pages of documentation. Transcripts previously released to AP had the names of detainees blacked out, although some detainees' names and nationalities became officially known [JURIST report] in April from filings in federal court [AP documents list] challenging their detentions. AP has more.

Last week, a federal judge ordered [JURIST report] DOD to release the names by March 3. The Washington Post has independently compiled an unofficial list of the names of approximately 450 detainees.

6:54 PM ET - A Department of Defense press release quotes a "senior official speaking on background":
"We removed the information from the transcripts that identified the detainees," the official said. "Detainee personal information was removed ... because of concern of potential harm to detainees if the documents were made public."

In some cases, detainees made incriminating statements about other detainees or about others in their home countries. In others, detainees made statements that could be taken by enemy forces as "disloyal acts" against them, and in other transcripts detainees indicated that they had cooperated with U.S. forces, acts that could be held against them in their countries.

These situations and others "could result in retaliation against the detainee from other detainees at Guantanamo or against their families in their home countries," the official said.
The documents released Friday, relating to some 317 of the 490 detainees currently held at Guantanamo, are available via the Defense Department's Freedom of Information Act website and, directly, here.

source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchas...guantanamo.php

use the linked sites to access the various source information--read through some of it and maybe then you'll get a sense of the absurdity---bordering on the obscene--of the usage of these (at best) anecdotal tidbits (which is all that is presented in the article that ustwo decided, for whatever reason, to bite and post here) in an attempt to rationalize the facility at guantanomo.

again, dont just read the quoted articles--go the the webversions, look at the source material--perform the operations required to check information----do what ustwo, self-evidently, did not do.

it'd be nice, for once, to have an informed discussion of this (ro almost anything) that does not simply fall into a tedious rehearsal of what various individuals would prefer to believe as a function of their (arbitrary or not, who knows) prior political committments.

ratbastid

03-07-2006 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo

But what are they still doing there if they're not a threat and not an enemy? You're not trying to tell me that detaining innocent people isn't a human rights violation, are you?

I'll tell you what they're doing down there: sucking up taxpayer dollars. George Bush and his Big Government Spendpublican buddies housing non-enemy non-threats in the lap of luxury! There's your war on terror!

/tongue-in-cheek. I confess: I love it when the tables turn. :thumbsup:

stevo

03-07-2006 10:19 AM

huh?

The article I read said

Quote:

A military tribunal has determined that five are "no longer enemy combatants" and can be released from Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. agrees they could face persecution back in China but so far has not found a third country to take them.

So my guess would be staying alive.

Marvelous Marv

03-07-2006 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

So where do we release them, and how much taxpayer money should we slip them for their trouble?

Ustwo

03-08-2006 09:22 AM

A list of the horrible american torture at Gitmo....

I warn you, do not read this if you are of a faint heart.

Quote:

inally, and in all honesty, it's my duty to add that another former detainee, Feroz Abbasi, is not nearly as happy with the treatment that he received. In lengthy handwritten statements, included with the newly-released documents, Mr. Abbasi - who "left Britain to either join the Taliban or fight for Allah in [Indian-occupied] Kashmir", being driven by "pure hate" for Americans - details the extent of the torture to which he was subjected.

The list of abuses (set 5, page 14) makes for unpleasant reading, to say the least - but the whole thing must be included, for the sake of completeness.

During his time in Guantanamo, Mr. Abbasi (writing in the third person) alleges that he was:

* subject to [unspecified] "mental stress and pressure"
* "willfully misdirected ... to pray north"
* deprived of "comfort items"
* subjected to an [apparently failed] "attempt to withdraw Qur'an"
* able to hear two guards having sex, while they "assumed he was asleep"
* distracted from his prayer by the "sharp intake of breath" of a female MP who'd been "sexually fondled".
* offered a plate of pork
* the object of a conspiracy "to keep detainee ignorant of detainee's allotted Tuesday recreation"
* subjected to a "partially successful" attempt to administer injections "under the guise of immunisation", designed to "unhinge detainee's mental and emotional stability"

While all of these acts are undeniably horrifying, being on a par with the worst excesses of Torquemada, even their totality pales in comparison with the most extreme of the tortures to which Mr. Abbasi was subjected.

Of course, countless abuses have been committed against war prisoners throughout the ages - no one denies that. But, while not downplaying their suffering, it must be admitted that even the most unfortunate of these victims can only breathe a sigh of relief that he was not subject to what Mr. Abbasi was forced to endure when he:

* had his peanut butter eaten by a guard "right in front of him".

stevo

03-08-2006 09:38 AM

Oh, the horror.

Seaver

03-08-2006 10:02 AM

Wow... and they used the comparison to Concentration Camps and Gulags...

... wow...

These are people who chop off innocent women's heads... people who dont pay their parking fines get worse treatment here.

roachboy

03-08-2006 01:51 PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/ ...guantanamo.pdf

i dont suppose that a 54 page report from the un human rights commission outlining the range of abuses alleged to have occurred at guantamono would be the kind of information that the folk lined up behind ustwo's last troll/post would read.

54 pages is alot.
and it might expose you to actual information.

btw--if the link does not work, do a google search for guantanomo human rights abuses. it is the first item.

it is also, sadly, par for the course that conservatives in this space would prefer arbitrary, unattributed factoids to anything approaching a systematic understanding of the range of problems guantanomo poses if the arbitrary isolated factoids conform to their preferences.

this thread is ridiculous.....a waste of time, mine and everyone else's.

ObieX

03-08-2006 06:23 PM

Yea you all have to keep in mind that many of these people have been locked up for YEARS now. Many of them are innocent. Their lives are completely ruined by now. How many of these people have families back home who they could not take care of? How many people have lost their homes simply because they cant pay for them anymore cuz they're stuck in cuba for years for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The being *tortured* and *raped* is just the icing on the cake i suppose.

Mojo_PeiPei

03-08-2006 10:40 PM

Is that the UN that has no access to the facilities right RB?

Cause if that's the case, which it is, they would only have the word of people who have either been released, or lawyers of said detainee's. What is the legal standing of word by second party people? Hear say? I can't imagine any people in Gitmo having an agenda. No that can't be possible.

Wait a second, I am vaguely remembering some incident about alleged desecration of the Quran by America MP's.... oh wait that's right it was actually a detainee, who actually managed to stir up quite a bit of trouble regarding the whole situation. Say didn't the insatiable need to show the American government, oh wait it was the detainee's, desecration, lead to deaths of people around the world?

Wait that could never happen. Because Al Qaeda isn't well versed in the art of propaganda.., wait a second, here is a little tidbit the old google hooked up for me, Manchester Doucments anybody, those documents that were seized from Al Qaeda operatives? A terrorists "how to guide".

It's all in PDF form so I guess you'll have to trust me that the link is legit...
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihadmanual.html

This would be the section regarding detention.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihad18chap1.html

How in a million years would Al Qaeda ever figure that citing mistreatment would garner them support, or at the very least anti-American sentiment, the tired liberal "America is evil and torturing babies while sodomizing baby seals" line.

Puh-leaze.

host	03-09-2006 03:14 AM

Sorry to bring news that your "smokinggun" was discredited last year in the UK "ricin terrorists" trial. I wrote about it in a <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=1751493&highlight=ricin#post1751493">TFP thread</a> that you posted to, but you apparently didn't read the news articles that I linked to... in April, 2005, when it happened...it was well reported in the UK and in the US. The "manual" that you cite, was exposed as a US DOJ misinformation "OP". It was apparently actually compiled in the '80's, possibly by one of our own intelligence agencies....

Quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/st...585130,00.html
<b>The ricin ring that never was</b>

Yesterday's trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a 'poison attack' on London

Duncan Campbell
Thursday April 14, 2005

......The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an <b>"al-Qaida manual"</b> into the case. The manual - called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad - had been <b>found on a raid in Manchester in 2000.</b> It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial for the first attack on the World Trade Centre. But it wasn't an al-Qaida manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001, and the contents were rushed on to the net to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act.

To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s and the period of the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner's Handbook, by Maxwell Hutchkinson.

We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.

· Duncan Campbell is an investigative writer and a scientific expert witness on computers and telecommunications. He is author of War Plan UK and is not the Guardian journalist of the same name.

Mojo_PeiPei, you may come back with a response that "there are two manuals"...it is confusing. When the BS that you want to embrace comes from the UK or US intelligence and/or law enforcement communities as the "sole source", Who TF knows...? One thing to consider is that the "manual" that was discredited in a $50 million British prosecution, was reportedly found in "Manchester in 2000", was "named" by Ashcroft's DOJ in 2001, and was presented as evidence in a criminal trial in a US Federal Court in 2001.

The Ricin reciped in the "manual" has been convincingly discredited, and the "manual" is organized in a very similar way to the <a href="http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=98">SOA manuals</a> at the FT. Benning School. They've since changed the acronym to <a href="http://www.soaw.org/new/">"WHINSEC"</a> and it's still a terrorist training school, and "we" run it for the benefit of training security forces of repressive Latin American regimes.

Quote:

http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=851
U.S. Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture

Saturday, September 21st 1996

Dana Priest, Washington Post

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer

U.S. Army intelligence manuals used to train Latin American military officers at an Army school from 1982 to 1991 advocated executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion against insurgents, Pentagon documents released yesterday show.

Used in courses at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, the manual says that to recruit and control informants, counterintelligence agents could use “fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions and the use of truth serum,” according to a secret Defense Department summary of the manuals compiled during a 1992 investigation of the instructional material and also released yesterday.

A summary of the investigation and four pages of brief, translated excerpts from the seven Spanish-language manuals were released last night by the Defense Department, which recently has taken to making controversial information available in the evenings, after the deadlines of the prime-time network television news programs.

The Army School of the Americas, long located in Panama by moved in 1984 to Fort Benning, Ga., has trained nearly 60,000 military and police officers from Latin America and the United States since 1946.......

...and Mojo_PeiPei....it's my country, too...and sometimes....I'm ashamed to be an American....I envy you your "uncluttered" POV, but I've always been one to ask too many questions. My eyes are bloodshot from keepin' 'em "wide open".

Quote:

http://www.soaw.org/new/pressrelease.php?id=104
For Immediate Release: <b>February 1st, 2006</b>
Contact: Christy Pardew, 202.903.7257, media(at)soaw.org

<b>Thirty-one Nonviolent Activists Sentenced to Prison in Columbus, Georgia

Two protestors over 80 years old headed to prison for actions opposing controversial Army training school</b>

Columbus, GA – This week a federal judge in Columbus, Georgia sentenced 31 human rights activists to prison. Two of these individuals are over 80 years old; one is 19. The sentences come less than a week after a military jury in Colorado decided not to jail an Army interrogator even though they found him guilty of negligent homicide in the torture and killing of an Iraqi detainee. The 32 defendants were charged with trespass after peacefully walking onto the Fort Benning military base in protest of a controversial Army training school located there, and each person faced a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Those arrested were among 19,000 who gathered in November outside the gates of Fort Benning to demand a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy and the closure of the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC). The demonstration was the 16th annual one organized by School of the Americas Watch, a faith- and conscience-based organization working to close the school.

“For eight years, I have been studying this issue and listening to the stories of those most affected by the School of the Americas,” said Delmar Schwaller, an 81-year-old World War II veteran and active community volunteer sentenced to two months in prison. “My prison sentence doesn’t change my feelings about my action. I know this was the right thing to do.”

The SOA/ WHINSEC made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place. New research confirms that the school continues to support known human rights abusers. Despite having been investigated by the United Nations for ordering the shooting of 16 indigenous peasants in El Salvador, Col. Francisco del Cid Diaz returned to SOA/ WHINSEC in 2003.

Judge Faircloth is known for handing down stiff sentences to opponents of the SOA/ WHINSEC. Since protests against the SOA/ WHINSEC began more than a decade ago, 183 people have served a total of over 81 years in prison for engaging in nonviolent resistance in a broad-based campaign to close the school........

Finally, your Quran "take" is inaccurate, according to numerous June 2005 reports, including this one, from Foxnews...(where do you "get" your news, anyway?)

Quote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158577,00.html
Pentagon: Urine Touched Koran at Gitmo
Saturday, June 04, 2005
WASHINGTON — U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee's Koran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim holy book was splashed with urine. In other newly disclosed incidents, a detainee's Koran was deliberately kicked and another's was stepped on.......
....Hood said he found no other record of this detainee mentioning any Koran mishandling. The detainee has since been released.

In the March incident, as described in the report, the guard had left his observation post to go outside to urinate. The wind blew his urine through an air vent into the cell block. The guard's supervisor reprimanded him and assigned him to gate guard duty, where he had no contact with detainees, for the rest of his assignment at Guantanamo Bay.

In another of the confirmed cases, a contract interrogator stepped on a detainee's Koran in July 2003 and then apologized. "The interrogator was later terminated for a pattern of unacceptable behavior, an inability to follow direct guidance and poor leadership," the Hood report said.

Hood also said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Korans. "These included using a Koran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Koran, attempting to flush a Koran down the toilet and urinating on the Koran," Hood's report said. It offered no possible explanation for the detainees' motives.

In the most recent of those 15 cases, a detainee on Feb. 18 allegedly ripped up his Koran and handed it to a guard, stating that he had given up on being a Muslim. Several guards witnessed this, Hood reported.

<b>Last week, Hood disclosed he had confirmed five cases of mishandling of the Koran, but he refused to provide details.</b> Allegations of Koran desecration at Guantanamo Bay have led to anti-American passions in many Muslim nations, although Pentagon officials have insisted that the problems were relatively minor and that U.S. commanders have gone to great lengths to enable detainees to practice their religion in captivity.

The former commander at Gitmo, does not seem like an officer who prizes the truth or supports, in an honest and forthright manner, the troops who followed his orders:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011102502.html
<b>General Asserts Right On Self-Incrimination In Iraq Abuse Cases</b>

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006; Page A01

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.

The move by Miller -- who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib -- is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers......

....Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington expert in military law, said that Miller's decision is "consistent with his being concerned that he may have some exposure to worry about." Fidell added: <b>"It's very unusual for senior officers to invoke their Article 31 rights. The culture in the military tends to encourage cooperation rather than the opposite."</b>

Miller has long been in the spotlight of the Abu Ghraib abuse investigations, largely because he was sent to the Iraq prison in August and September 2003 with the goal of streamlining its intelligence-gathering operations, using Guantanamo Bay, commonly called "Gitmo," as a model. Officers at Abu Ghraib have said that Miller wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the facility, and that harsh tactics migrated from the Cuba facility via "Tiger Teams" that Miller sent to Iraq as trainers.....

Mojo_PeiPei, as an aside, my wife and I have a son who serves on active duty in an elite US Military unit. His mother and I are intensly proud of him. We have even more reason to "stay informed", because of the service of this fine young man. Our soldier told me last summer, that "liberals like me (host)", are interfering with the military recruiting effort, because of our beliefs and our rhetoric. Facing several more years of active duty, I don't know if his POV is a curse or a blessing. He is a devoutly religious, intensely patriotic, and idealistic early twentysomething. He is, however, misinformed. I draw the line by not disclosing even half of what I post on these threads, to our soldier. The lies, false motives, and corruption of our failed, anti-constitutional leadership and congressional representatives is itself, almost too much to bear. The added pain that is a consequence of this, is the division in my own family that I suspect is mostly due to "catapulting the propaganda". I regret that I am not able to keep my entire family out of the way of "it" when it lands!

blade02

03-09-2006 06:26 AM

Maybe the fact that these guys were running around shooting guns at our soldiers has something to do wth the fact that they're in there. This is why I personally advocate a "take no prisoners" policy so that people dont get their panties in a twist over puting people in prison. No prisoners, no media coverage, no problem.

Mojo_PeiPei

03-09-2006 11:41 AM

Alright I think I got it Host, the ricin recipe was manufactured by the FBI, right?

Although extremely lame, it doesn't detract from my post, and the excerpt of the "manual" for which I posted, unless I am wrong and the whole thing was manufactured, but in reading the articles it seems to only allude to the Ricin.

At any rate my point was, these Al Qaeda dudes aren't stupid, and they know they can create a favourable shit storm by alleging abuse, which I know exists, but by and large is as harsh nor as common as people here would like to think.

roachboy

03-09-2006 11:47 AM

mojo: since you appear to consider views of american actions in creating and filling with bodies a legal black hole to be a function of whether you imagine the "war on terror" to be coherent or not, then i suspect that there is no point in debating the matter. you will dismiss all information that runs counter to your predispositions.
so enjoy walking through a hall of mirrors.
it must be pleasant there--contact with information pertaining to the world is obviously not the motivation for staying----so i assume it brings pleasure---and who am i to interrupt that?

Mojo_PeiPei

03-09-2006 11:59 AM

It's not so much that I dismiss anything, I just don't buy into your delusions. I don't give two shits what other nations, what world bodies say about the actions of my government, I only care that my governments actions are legal. What makes them, or even you so right? It's because you dislike America and therefore anything we do must be inherently wrong, inherently illegal, or inherently immoral. Wait a second, the Bush World is beaming more rhetoric into my head...

It's simply baffling to me people mode of thought in approaching this whole situation, for some reason you think America is the only country with an agenda, an evil self serving agenda.

But mostly my posts are in presenting factual evidence against liberal talking point claims about some great erosion of civil liberties by Bush administration.

powerclown

03-09-2006 01:04 PM

Some people will whine and bitch about sunshine causing skin cancer, too. It just never ends...

Regarding the SOA and the conversation above, this is yet another case-study of a legitimate security operation, in this case anti-insurgency training, where the "progressives" here and everywhere like to scream and howl about "illegality" and "human-rights abuses". What about the illegality and human rights abuses of planning and implementing a bloody overthrow of your elected government?

These are people being trained to deal with INSURGENT GUERILLAS for chrissake. I would hazard a guess that these nice gentlemen aren't quite the law-abiding schoolboys that the progressives would imagine them to be. But hey, whenever it's big bad Uncle Sam trying to make it in the real world, doing the evil work of, say, trying to keep elected governments intact, then it's time to once again assemble in the streets and bark at the moon.

ubertuber

03-09-2006 01:50 PM

** Mod Note **

I suggest an immediate de-escalation of tone in this thread - it is a problem when we're getting so personal in our attacks and objections. Continuation WILL result in time-outs.

If you can't think of a more rational and respectful way to express your thoughts, hit the back button.

jwoody

03-10-2006 06:23 AM

Last night, I watched a very interesting ducmentary/film about three British muslims held Guantanamo Bay Prison.

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=154608

It's a mixture of actual detainees telling their story to camera and actors.. um.. acting it out.

Ustwo

03-10-2006 06:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwoody

Quote:

What the three actually have to say is rarely heeded, while manipulative lies, brutalisation, beatings, stress positions, and months of solitary confinement are regularly employed to persuade them of the interrogators' point of view. Of course such abuses will come as little surprise to anyone reading the newspapers, but to see them re-enacted (albeit with a certain restraint), and to hear the victims' personal accounts, has a much greater impact than the written word, putting paid to America's claims that the treatment of so-called 'enemy combatants' is, as Donald Rumsfeld puts it, "humane and appropriate and consistent with the Geneva Convention for the most part."

Haha gotta love that non-biased reporting. Remember you can always trust what a prisoner tells you :)

host	03-10-2006 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Haha gotta love that non-biased reporting. Remember you can always trust what a prisoner tells you :)

Is it all really as "cut and dry", as your taunting, smug, commentary makes it out to be? I don't think so.....

Earlier...on this very same page, I posted documentation that:

<b>[1]</b> Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, formerly in charge of Gitmo prison, and then influenced conditions and interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, "took the 5th" on the witness stand, a rare move from a senior officer to avoid the risk of incriminating himself, when questioned about his soldiers using dogs to intimidate prisioners.

<b>[2]</b> I provided information that calls into question the validity of the "Al Qaeda" training manual; the fact that a British court did not find that it was convincingly authentic, and the reasonable possibility that our own DOJ, "named" the manual, since it apparently does not mention "Al Qaeda" in any of the contents of translations that have been released to the public.
In this post http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...2&postcount=56
even though <b>stevo</b> emphasizes this same manual to make his point...he include this link to the contents of the manual, itself:
http://cryptome.org/alq-terr-man.htm
Scrolling down, just a few lines, is displayed:

Quote:

.....Several commentators have observed that this manual appears to be a compilation of material drawn from various military, intelligence and law enforcement manuals for internal security, guerilla and covert operations around the globe, and thus is <b>not unique for its alleged sponsorship by Al Qaeda -- which is not mentioned in the manual.</b> Most of these manuals make use of each other's offerings and are studied and emulated worldwide by internal security, military, intelligence and commercial organizations for offensive and defensive purposes. For more on "terrorism manuals," search Google on the term.......

......<b>It is not yet clear whether any of these manuals are authentic, or are fabrications for disinformation and propaganda,</b> as described in The Creation and Dissemination of All Forms of Information in Support of Psychological Operations (PSYOP) in Time of Military Conflict.

Comments for publication (or not) welcome; send to: jya@pipeline.com

A reader suggests comparing with manuals of the School of the Americas:

http://www.soaw.org/soam.html [dead link; material available through Archive.org:]

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://....org/soam.html

That's what the page on the link that stevo posted, says about the "Al Qaeda" manual, but the research that I posted seems to do nothing to influence stevo, or the other proponent of "the manual". Mojo_PeiPei.

Ustwo gives us another undocumented, "party line" talking point, quoted above, as if it was fact. Why can't we give more weight to the material at the link that jwoody pointed us, to? Aren't the former prisoners, folks who were unjustly and/or mistakenly held at Gitmo? If not, why were they released if they were terrorists?

<b>[3]</b> I also posted this link http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158577,00.html to a "news" report on display on Cheney endorsed, Fox "news" that states, despite all earlier denials to the contrary, that there were five incidences of "Quran Abuse" by US personnel at Gitmo prison, and that one incident involved "pissing" on the Quran, in a scenario as inadvertant and comically conceded to by our own military officer in his report, as a student's story that "my dog ate my homework".

Though most of the above was posted right on this page, Ustwo, does not hesitate to post his "one line" absolute, showing us that he is unphased...there is nothing to discuss, nothing to counter. For the rest of you who are open to considering other ideas, consider this critique of the "party line" as to the use of the "Al Qaeda" manual to stifle discussion about reports from Gitmo and Abu Ghraib prisoners. Consider that there are historic reports of other "manuals"....

Quote:

http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08132005.html
August 13 / 14, 2005
The Anti-Empire Report
The al-Dubya Training Manual

By WILLIAM BLUM

"It is important to note that al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations."

This is now the official and frequent response of White House, Pentagon, and State Department spokespersons when confronted with charges of American "abuse" (read: torture) of prisoners, and is being repeated by many supporters of the war scattered around the Internet.

It can thus be noted that White House, Pentagon, and State Department training manuals emphasize the tactic of saying "It is important to note that al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations," when confronted with charges of American torture of prisoners for which the spokespersons have no other defense.

<b>It is equally important to note that these sundry spokespersons never actually offer a precise quotation from any terrorist training manuals, of al Qaeda or not.</b> The one instance I've been able to find of US government officials referring to a specific terrorist training manual in the context of torture, is a referral to the so-called "Manchester Manual", a manual found on the computer of a suspected terrorist in Manchester, England in 2000.{1} In the references to torture, in the portions of the manual that have been made public, there is certainly no clear, unambiguous directive for making false allegations of abuse, much less an emphasis on such. The manual, apparently written in the 1980s, says the following about torture: "Each brother who is subjected to interrogation and torture, should state all that he agreed upon with the commander and not deviate from it." ... "Security personnel in our countries arrest brothers and obtain the needed information through interrogation and torture."...

........Inasmuch as only selected portions of the manual have been made public by the Bush and Blair administrations it can not be determined in what way the deleted sections might put the White House/Pentagon/State mantra into question....

If the "Al Qaeda" manual, named by our DOJ in 2001, after it was found in a Manchester, UK raid in 2000, was "written in the 1980's", doesn't contain the term "Al Qaeda" anywhere in the translation that the DOJ provides to the public, why is it so often accepted and provided as "ammunition", even on these threads.....almost exclusively by Bush supporting, conservatives?

Quote:

Justice denied?
A Palestinian activist linked to the Islamic Jihad marks one year of imprisonment based on secret evidence.
The Tampa Tribune
May 17, 1998
Author: Michael Fechter; of The Tampa Tribune
Estimated printed pages: 9

TAMPA - On Tuesday, Mazen Al-Najjar will mark his first anniversary in the Manatee County Jail.
The charge? Nothing.

The evidence? It's secret.

........In an affidavit used to obtain a search warrant in November 1995, INS Special Agent William West said the fronts helped bring terrorists into the United States and raise money for them.

West provided similar testimony during deportation hearings for Al-Najjar, describing him as a mid-level operative conducting the daily business needed to give the fronts credibility.

Al-Najjar and Al-Arian have said they merely ran a think tank studying Palestinian issues, which required them to have Islamic Jihad-related papers in their offices. They have said their scholarship didn't reveal they were working with two Jihad leaders, Basheer Nafi and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. The Tampa Tribune sought comment from Al-Arian for this story, but he declined.

West began investigating the ICP and WISE after The Tribune reported some of these connections in a 1995 series, "Ties to Terrorists." The series showed ICP and WISE were one entity; while ICP publicly focused on charity work, its annual conferences featured leaders from Islamic Jihad and other Middle Eastern militant groups.

ICP also distributed "Islam and Palestine," a newsletter featuring Jihad communiques and interviews with its leaders. Published in Cyprus, the newsletter carried a Tampa post office box as a return address.

It, "to a considerable degree, reflect[ed] the Islamic Jihad's point of view," wrote Palestinian author Ziad Abu Amr in his book "Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza."

<b>A training manual, "The Jihad Fighter During Interrogation and Torture," alternately identified as serving Islamic Jihad and Hamas operatives, also was printed in Cyprus and financed through a post office box in Tampa, said the 1990 book "Intifadah.".........</b>

hmmmm....a 1998 newsreport of another "Jihad" manual ????

And...a link to my last post with reports that call the authenticity of the "Al Qaeda" manual into question:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...71#post2023071

Ustwo

04-08-2006 09:07 AM

The horrors of this American Gulag continue to be brought to light.

I only hope the men responsible for this get what is comming to them.

Quote:

Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. “I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great,” said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood.

Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island. During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times - a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah’s answer was always the same - “I don’t know anything about these people” - these sessions were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay.

On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah, was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail, was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn’t now.

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah’s. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family’s mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. “Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don’t have anything against them,” he said. “If my father didn’t need me, I would want to live in America.”

Asadullah is even more sure of this. “Americans are great people, better than anyone else,” he said, when found at his elder brother’s tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. “Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer — or an American soldier.”

Anything that makes young boys turn to pro-american must be very, very evil.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...163436,00.html

nezmot

04-08-2006 10:04 AM

The thing is Ustwo, is that the whole Gulag stamp has been placed on the camp because these people have been held, without charge, for over 4 years now. No court. No judicial process. The US has taken these people's liberties. *That's* why it's being called a gulag. And that should be enough. That in itself is illegal. That alone should be enough for the camp to be closed down.

But no, you have to see bloody torture and crippling persecution before you will accept that these people are being held illegally. Is that what you're trying to tell us?

I'm glad that they have been treated with some level of respect and dignity - but I am absolutely sickened that we have been able to remove these people's freedoms without any form of due process. How does that look to the rest of the world? Does it make America look like the land of the free?

A gulag is still a gulag, no matter how nice you are to its inmates. And I thank you for pointing that out so effectively.

host	04-08-2006 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

The horrors of this American Gulag continue to be brought to light.

I only hope the men responsible for this get what is comming to them.

Anything that makes young boys turn to pro-american must be very, very evil.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...163436,00.html

You've replied to my post, after three weeks, with a two year old piece that seems more like evidence of American military war crimes, violations of the Geneva conventions related to the treatment of prisoners, and shameful accounts of child abuse. Holding children for a year without notifying their parents or allowing them to communicate with the outside world, beating them, but segregating them in a protected and more comfortable location than the adult prison cell blocks, after subjecting them to long sessions of intimidating interrogation, does not "vindicate" you, or the U.S. military or the Bush administration.

If this is the best that you can do to attempt to persuade anyone that the U.S. authorties responsible for this, and those who support these policies and activities, have not sunk to new lows, you've helped make my case for me.

If you were a child sold into slavery, forced to perform sex acts on adults, and then captured, beaten by your American captors in a combat zone prison blindfolded, and flown to a seperate, juvenile detention room at Gitmo, and then treated more favorably by less intimidating American guards, and given better food, an ocean view, and two young countrymen as playmates, you would probably make the same glowing comments, after your release and repatriation to your home country.

But.....what favorable point regarding U.S. treatment of prisoners, does your article actually make, irrelevant contrasts, aside?

Quote:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGNH509FC1.DTL

Boy, 12, recounts days as terror inmate
Youngest captive spent 17 months detained, a year at Guantanamo

Sonia Verma, Chronicle Foreign Service

Friday, February 13, 2004

Khuja Angoor, Afghanistan -- A single day forever changed the life of 12-year-old Asadullah Rahman.

Struggling to remember the exact date he was captured by American soldiers, or when he was flown to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the United States holds "enemy combatants" without charges, he presses his fingers to his temples to conjure memories that have grown fuzzy after months in detention.

He was just 10 years old when American soldiers stormed the compound of the local Afghan commander who was holding him captive, he says. They grabbed his gun. There were handcuffs and blindfolds. Since then, he has seen the inside of three separate interrogation rooms.

On Jan. 29, after being released with two other young detainees, he returned to this village in eastern Afghanistan, a three-hour drive along dirt roads from Kabul. He was free but burdened with the uncomfortable distinction of being the youngest person ever jailed in America's war on terror.

"They should have arrested al Qaeda, not me," he said in the first interview since his release. "I was just innocent."

U.S. military officials say that based on medical tests, they believe Asadullah is older than he claims, perhaps 13 to 15. The two other youngsters released with him, who are both 15, say he was about 13 when he was freed.........

.......Asadullah maintains that he was sold into sexual slavery to a local militia leader, one of many in lawless prewar Afghanistan, in nearby Paktia Province.........

......One day, his favorite uncle approached Asadullah with the offer of paid work at the compound of a local gunman known only as Commander Sammoud -- a militia leader with a reputation for terrorizing surrounding villages.

"I was brought there to service the commander's men," Asadullah says in a quiet voice. During the day, he served food and washed dishes. At night, he was asked to do other things he is too ashamed to utter.

<h3>Most of Sammoud's followers escaped, but seven people, including Asadullah and Sammoud, were captured and taken to the U.S. base in Gardez.</h3>

Over the next week he was interrogated several times. What did he know about the Taliban? Why was he carrying guns? Had he shot at an American? Had he ever killed one? Who was he working for?

<h3>"At Gardez, I was beaten. But I wasn't beaten too much. There was some kicking, nothing more."</h3>

From Gardez, he was transferred to Bagram, a U.S. air base near Kabul. Again he was interrogated. Asadullah believes he remained at Bagram for four or five months.

Then he was blindfolded and hooded and taken on a journey by plane that lasted a very long time.

"The Americans told me it was none of my business where I was going," he says.

<b>When he arrived at Guantanamo Bay naval base, he was questioned for hours. At the end of the session, his interrogators asked how old he was. They seemed shocked at his response.

"I was the youngest person they had ever arrested," he says.</b>

<h3>The first sign his family received that Asadullah was alive came in a letter delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross more than a year after he went missing.</h3>

Asadullah's mother retrieves it from the folds of a prayer mat. The letter, written in his native Pashto, is creased and tear-stained and bears the stamp of military clearance.

"All of the greetings from my heart I convey to the family,'' Asadullah wrote. "I keep my hope alive by the grace of Allah. Please send me a letter when you can. Please don't cut the connection, write soon."

<h3>Asadullah and the two other boys who were released lived in a separate compound a two-minute drive from the main prison at Guantanamo Bay. From his bedroom, he could see the ocean.

"We recognize the special needs of juvenile detainees and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding their young lives," Burfeind says. "Every effort was made to provide them a secure environment free from the influences of older detainees."</h3>

During the days, they were allowed to run on the grass inside the compound. Sometimes, the soldiers would play football with them. Asadullah even developed a certain prowess at chess.

"Guantanamo was like home if you compare it to Bagram," he says. "But I wished I was more independent, more free. I wished I was not like a prisoner."

The boys were taught to read and write English. It was the first time they had attended anything resembling school. Asadullah was also given books in Pashto and a copy of the Koran.

"Sometimes we were allowed to watch television. I liked to watch movies," he recalls.

The soldiers assigned to guard them became friends. "They were so kind to us," he says.

Almost a year after he arrived, he was called into the office of a commanding officer and told he was going home. Military officials said the boys had provided useful intelligence but had no further value and were no longer a threat to the United States. He had spent 17 months in U.S. captivity.

Private W, a guard who had become his friend, gave him a football and a chessboard to take back to Afghanistan.

Ustwo

04-08-2006 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

host just to be clear, I didn't reply to your post, and what you wrote following is why I try not to reply.

This thread is to just point out how foolish and false the claims some have made on Gitmo are.

host	04-08-2006 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

....and.....do you claim that you have succeeded in doing that?

My counter argument stood unchallenged, as the last word on this thread, since March 10.

Today is April 8, and you are back....with a March, 2004 article and an extremely sarcastic set of brief comments of your own. Again, is that all you've got?

Your "sig", displayed at the bottom of every post you make, anywhere on TFP, is a quote that you attribute to me, and is your chosen way to "reply" to me....in every one of your posts.

DJ Happy

04-17-2006 06:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

I thought you couldn't trust what a prisoner tells you? Or is that only if they tell you what you don't want to hear?

xepherys

04-17-2006 08:47 AM

I'm shocked that nobody else asked the obvious question... wtf kind of name is "Flex Plexico"?

Mojo_PeiPei

04-17-2006 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nezmot

They have been found in violation of articles of war as International law and ratified congressional law. As such they are subject to military custody, that would equate to their judicial process, as stated in the 5th amendment...

Quote:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Quote:

But no, you have to see bloody torture and crippling persecution before you will accept that these people are being held illegally. Is that what you're trying to tell us?

I'm glad that they have been treated with some level of respect and dignity - but I am absolutely sickened that we have been able to remove these people's freedoms without any form of due process. How does that look to the rest of the world? Does it make America look like the land of the free?

A gulag is still a gulag, no matter how nice you are to its inmates. And I thank you for pointing that out so effectively.

In short I think you are misrepresenting at least in a true legal capacity what the 5th amendment of due process really is.

On top of that they are allowed council and the Red Cross has access to them as is required by the only important law in this case, American law. Also the same American Law I speak has until this point upheld the "gulags" as passed on in such decisions as Rasul V. Bush or Hamdi v Rumsfeld; the detentions are legal so long as they are charged and are put through the tribunals.

ubertuber

04-17-2006 09:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojo

Unless they had a hearing, they weren't found in a legal sense. They were found in the colloquial sense: "We found this guy in the desert and it seemed like he was up to bad guy stuff." Have there been hearings that I haven't heard about?

Quote:

Mojo, I think you're misinterpreting the bit you bolded. People can be held without indictment if they are in our land or naval forces or militia, and in actual service in time of war or public danger. I don't think this translates to irregulars fighting in an opposing force. I can't think of why it would.

Mojo_PeiPei

04-17-2006 09:35 AM

Why would it be if they are in our land or naval forces? Our law applies not just to American citizens, but extra-national (that makes sense right?) citizens at every level, even due process, all you need be is subject to American custody. At the same time our military operates with their own seperate laws not of civil/common tradition, since any combatant is in the custody of the military, being held in violation of military law, why wouldn't they be held and subject to said laws? This also has something to do with Presidential Executive power, it has been widely held as constitutional for the President to hold tribunals in instances of violation of military/international law, why would Gitmo be any different? Again every action taken thus far , could change come june/july, has been found legal by the courts (well at least the big issues, there have been some smaller more trivial things ruled on).

ubertuber

04-17-2006 09:45 AM

Stressing here that I'm not an expert...

I'd think it would be different because "in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger" the trial is normally forgone for courts martial or discipline/punishment decided by the appropriate commanding officer. These sorts of things are covered by the UCMJ. Given that the UCMJ doesn't apply to American citizens, I can't think of why it would apply to foreign citizens who aren't part of a military organization. After all, we've been told time and again that these guys can't be treated like POWs because they aren't part of a foreign military.

In the case of executive tribunals, I think we're missing a couple of elements - most notably any sort of motion towards a tribunal. I'm treading softly here because me not knowing of something isn't the same as it not existing. I haven't seen anything to suggest that there is a plan beyond keeping people at Gitmo indefinitely. The whole issue of having council seems moot if there won't be a chance to respond to charges made.

Can you clarify?

Mojo_PeiPei

04-17-2006 10:03 AM

The courts have passed on in their recent decisions that the only way for the detentions to stand is if there are status designation trials, and then from there putting anyone held through the tribunal process.

As far as your point regarding the 5th amendment, I don't know 100%; I wasn't asserting that UCMJ applies to citizens, Ex parte Milligan is the precedent stating it cannot, I was just trying to point out due process doesn't equate to a court room with a jury of Joe Sixpacks presiding.

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