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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Bush Cracks Down on Gitmo Detainees,
Despite Overwhelmin Evidence Most are Not Terrorists
Innnocents Abroad
DAVE LINDORFF, CounterPunch
guantanamo00.photo.default-384x281.jpg
December 19, 2006
The U.S. is holding hundreds of innocent people at its detention
facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Military authorities at Guantanamo have decided to tighten the screws on
detainees because it has been determined that the U.S. has been too kind
and accommodating to them.
If you find those two sentences jarring and contradictory, you're not
alone, yet both were leading news items in today's newspapers. The first
appeared in a page one story in of the Philadelphia Inquirer by
Associated Press reporter Andrew O. Selsky, which said most of the
detainees are innocent of any crime. The second was a page one story in
the New York Times by reporter Tim Golden, who reported on a harsh
crackdown on Guantanamo detainees, including removal of common eating
privileges, inmate soccer games, and incentives for good behavior by
prisoners.
Selsky, who traced what happened to 245 of some 360 Guantanamo detainees
released by the U.S., found that 205 of them, upon arriving in their
countries of origin, were immediately released, after their home
governments determined that they were, after all, not dangerous
terrorists. According to Selsky, all 83 Afghan captives sent back to
Afghanistan were freed after the government there determined that most
had simply been turned over to American forces because of "tribal or
personal rivalries" and to collect ransoms being offered by US forces.
Pakistan released 67 of 70 Pakistani captives returned to that country
after it was determined they too were "innocent."
All 29 detainees repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia,
Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives, were freed within
hours of being sent home by the U.S., which had delivered them bound
hand and food as "dangerous terrorists."
Selsky's report is a damning indictment of the U.S. operation at
Guantanamo, and makes a joke of U.S. claims that the people it is
holding indefinitely and without trial on the naval base there are the
"worst of the worst," and are, in the words of Pentagon officials,
"among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of
the Earth." Golden, meanwhile, reports that these remaining prisoners
face much harsher conditions in the future than they have been enduring
to date. In recent months, the prisoners had been benefiting from a
program of incentives that gave them steady improvements in living
conditions in return for good behavior. Now three quarters of them are
being moved to maximum-security cells.
Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the compound, told Golden
that in his view all the captives are dangerous. He is quoted as saying,
"They're all terrorists; they're all enemy combatants," and concluding,
"I don't think there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist."
Golden notes dryly, without comment, that 100 of those 420 prisoners
still subject to Adm. Harris's tender mercies have actually been cleared
by the military for transfer or release, but are being held while the
State Department tries to arr'nge for their repatriation, and that
shortly after Harris's comment, 15 detainees were sent back to Saudi
Arabia, where the government immediately released them to their
families.
So what the hell is going on here?
One hint is provided by looking at the abusive treatment of Jose
Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber" that the U.S. held without charge
in solitary confinement at a military brig in South Carolina for three
and a half years before conceding that it had no evidence to charge him
with any major crime (he's now facing a charge of providing money to a
charity that may have links to Al Qaeda, but even that case appears
weak). During his base confinement, Padilla was kept in a dark cell,
unable to contact a lawyer or family member. When he was removed for a
trip to the dentist, he was fitted with soundproof earmuffs and his eyes
were covered by blackout goggles, rendering him entirely sensory
deprived. Though he was completely docile and posed no threat, he was
shackled hand and foot as well, despite the presence of four guards
armed with M-16 weapons. Padilla, an American citizen by birth, is now
said to have lost his mind and is unable to even understand why he is in
captivity.
It seems clear from Padilla's over-the-top abusive treatment, and the
increasingly harsh treatment that is being applied to captives at
Guantanamo, that the Pentagon and the Bush administration are not
genuinely trying to protect America from anything, but have simply
devolved into a bunch of deliberate, pathological sadists, who are
desperately trying to break and destroy several hundred people who never
should have been captured in the first place.
The goal may be to try and get these men to break and admit to
manufactured charges that could retroactively justify their illegal
detainment. Thanks to the military tribunal bill that the outgoing
Republican Congress, with the help of treacherous and cowardly
Democrats, passed as one of their final wretched actions, they could
then be executed, or just held incommunicado until death or dementia
renders them no longer threats to the administration's reputation.
Whatever the government's motives for this ongoing horror, Americans
need to wake up and recognize that Guantanamo and the so-called "War on
Terror" have made America--and every one of us Americans--guilty of the
most obscene of war crimes.
There will inevitably come a day of reckoning--a day when we will all be
called to account for our collective crime.
Let us at least be able to say then that we spoke out against what is
being done in our name.
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns
titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Lindorff's new book is "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
source:
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12192006.html
===
US still holding hundreds of suspects
From correspondents in Washington
December 19, 2006 11:28am
THE US was holding several hundred suspected al-Qaeda or Taliban
fighters throughout the world, including about 400 at the Guantanamo Bay
naval base in Cuba, the White House said today.
"The United States continues to detain several hundred Al-Qaeda and
Taliban fighters who are believed to pose a continuing threat to the
United States and its interests," President George W. Bush said in a
report to the US Congress.
"The combat-equipped and combat-support forces deployed to Naval Base,
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the US Southern Command area of operations
since January 2002 continue to conduct secure detention operations for
the approximately 435 enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay," he said.
Because of delays linked to writing the report, it did not take into
account detainees recently removed from the base, and the Pentagon's
figure of 395 held at Guantanamo was "more accurate", according to a
White House official.
The official, who requested anonymity, and Mr Bush's report did not
detail how many people the US was holding worldwide as part of the war
on terrorism it launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In his report, Mr Bush said about 21,000 US forces were deployed in
Afghanistan; 134,000 in Iraq; 1700 in Kosovo and about 100 at NATO's
Sarajevo headquarters.
source:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20951050-5005961,00.html
===
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