…with respect Beagle, you seem to completely miss the point.
From this thread…
Abassin Sayed was an inmate number 671 at Guantanamo Bay. He was released after thirteen months of captivity. According to Sayed, he was driving his Taxi in Gardez when he was stopped at an Afgani run roadblock. Although he protested his innocence at the time, he was turned over to American forces and transported to Cuba. Among other claims by Sayed, he says that those running the road block received “bounty payments” for everybody turned over to the American Forces.
Lights were kept on for 24 hours a day at Guantanamo. When Sayed had problems with his knees, he was told to exercise them by the military doctor, when he did those exercises he was put into solitary confinement for five days. He was interrogated eleven times, for periods of six to seven hours at a time. Then, after thirteen months of captivity, was released.
As a result of the incarceration, he has problems with his eyes, his skin, and his knees. He was unable to financially support his family for the time he was in captivity. He was never declared “innocent” by the American authorities, however he was made to sign papers promising that he would never to engage with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, or harm the United States. He was given no monetary compensation for his time in captivity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/2968458.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/insideguantanamo.txt
…Sayed’s case was one of the most publicised cases primarily because his father lobbyed for his release almost immediately on his inncarceration-a luxury many others didn’t have. In this older article (December 2002, since the article was written, many of those detained may have been released), we can see a profile of many of those that got shipped to Cuba:
(registration may be required… )
…so it appears that some people ended up at Guantanamo because of “clerical errors” that were too hard to fix.
United States Senator Cornwyn said that “I’m satisfied that the 660 at Guantanamo Bay are among the baddest of the bad.” It appeared that at least some of those 660 were bakers, farmers, businessman, lower level militia, and taxi drivers.
…and countary to popular belief, not all of the prisoners Guantanamo were captured in Afghanistan. Four British men were arrested in Gambia, questioned for 27 days with no access to lawyers or the British High Commission, before two of them were shipped off to Bagram. Another British detainee was taken from his bed in Pakistan. Five men in Bosnia, who were due to be released due to [BOLD] lack of evidence [/BOLD] over a plot to blow up British and American embassies, were instead released to American Forces and taken to Guantanamo, despite a ruling from the Bosnian Human Rights Commission. cite
…and then we have the rewards schemes, introduced early last year.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/12/guantanamo.rewards.ap/
…how reliable can information be when it is the result of what is essentially, a bribe? How many innocent people, who refuse to co-operate because either they claim innocence, or they honestly don’t have any information to give up, fall into the “un-co-operative” category?
…while I would love to ask these questions to the administration, the current adminsitration seek to only speak in rhetoric. A few choice quotes…
“Our interest is in not trying them and letting them out,” he said. “Our interest is in — during this global war on terror — keeping them off the streets, and so that’s what’s taking place.” Donald Rumsfield
"Sgt KEEFER: These people are not considered prisoners, nor are they treated like prisoners as what we
would treat a military prisoner as.
WHITE: They’re not considered prisoners?
St KEEFER: No sir.
WHITE: What’s being kept for nearly a year and a half?
Sgt KEEFER: Detained personnel sir.
WHITE: That’s categorically different from being a prisoner, is it?
Sgt KEEFER: Yes sir." * extract from Panorama documentary, 5/10/03*
“the only thing we know for certain is that these are bad people and we look forward to working with the Blair government to deal with the issue”. “Let me just say, these were illegal combatants. They were picked up off the battlefield aiding and abetting the Taliban”. President Bush, July 18 2003 (I have also, unwittingly, proven this last statement to be untrue)
So to sum up, people are detained, without trial for all manor of reasons, plucked from all manor of places, detained with no idea whether or not they will gain release, in an environment where the lights are on twenty four hours a day, where people are encouraged to “co-operate” through bribes, where the prisoners are under constant threat of the death penalty, and you want me to apologise for questioning any of this?
…the police and the justice system follow a certain code of practice for very good reasons. Suspects are read their rights to ensure that they understand what their rights are. The process is as speedy as possible, so that the evidence is fresh, peoples memories are untainted, and if the suspect is innocent, their life would be disrupted as little as possible. Sleep deprivation and other techniques such as this are not allowed, because the reliability of the evidence produced at the end of the process would be laughed out of court. Yet this is what the United State administration had done to the prisoners at Guantanamo for the** last three years.** My own personal feelings are the administration are holding back on the military tribunals because even in the the controlled setting of a tribunal, any half-way decent army defence lawyer would be able to rip holes in the administrations case.
…so some of the juvenile prisoners-kept seperate from the vast majority of detainees, enjoyed their stay. Good for them. The fact that this doesn’t excuse the massive abuse of human rights that is continuing to take place at Guantanamo seems to have completly gone over your head…
