[Vision2020] Detainees in Despair

[Paul Rumelhart]

I'm new here, thought I'd drop in on this conversation...

I agree with Nick that we need to get rid of the prison and follow due 
process. We have to think of the possible innocents that have been 
housed there for years who as far as we know did nothing at all. It's 
the miscarriage of justice that angers me personally. If we have 
evidence of crimes we should be prosecuting them in a court of law. If 
we don't, then we don't actually know that they are terrorists and they 
should be set free. We are not at war with the sovereign state of 
"Terror", so these are not prisoners of war - they are criminals that 
need to be prosecuted. Also, I could care less if someone cheers the 
events of 9/11, they're welcome to their opinions.

I also agree with you that there are other concerns just as pressing 
abroad. I think it will be many year before the damage we have caused is 
reversed, if at all.

Paul Rumelhart


Donovan Arnold wrote:

> Nick,
>
> I am glad you are standing up for the terrorists because I just could 
> not bring myself to do it, because they are terrorists. You are right 
> terrorists do have rights too, I just think that resources should be 
> spend elsewhere to counter injustices against those that did not cheer 
> the events of 9/11, like maybe the 5,000 children a day that die due 
> to the political and economic oppression caused by US backed foreign 
> governments.
>
> Best,
>
> _DJA
>
> */nickgier at adelphia.net/* wrote:
>
>
>     Greetings:
>
>     While researching my commentary on torture I came across this. The
>     right to appear before a judge and fule due process is a right
>     that every person deserves. The evidence against these men should
>     be finalized, they should be charged, and this disgraceful prison
>     should be close.
>
>     June 14, 2006, The New York Times
>     Op-Ed Contributor
>     Detainees in Despair
>     By MOURAD BENCHELLALI
>     Lyon, France
>
>     I WAS released from the United States military's prison camp at
>     Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in July 2004. As I was about to board a
>     plane that would take me home to France, the last detainee I saw
>     was a young Yemeni. He was overwhelmed by emotion.
>
>     "In your country, Mourad, there are rights, human rights, and they
>     mean something," he said. "In mine they mean nothing, and no one
>     cares. So when you're free, don't forget what you've been through.
>     Tell people that we are here."
>
>     I now know that this Yemeni was not among the three prisoners who
>     committed suicide at Guantánamo last weekend, but since then his
>     words have been echoing in my head. Although I'm now a free man,
>     the shared pain endlessly takes me back to the camp.
>
>     In the early summer of 2001, when I was 19, I made the mistake of
>     listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I
>     thought was a dream vacation. His friends, he said, were going to
>     look after me. They did — channeling me to what turned out to be
>     a Qaeda training camp. For two months, I was there, trapped in the
>     middle of the desert by fear and my own stupidity.
>
>     As soon as my time was up, I headed home. I was a few miles from
>     the Pakistani border when I learned with horror about the attacks
>     of 9/11. Days later, the border was sealed off, and the only way
>     through to Pakistan and a plane to Europe was across the mountains
>     of the Hindu Kush. I was with a group of people who were all going
>     the same way. No one was armed; most of them, like me, had been
>     lured to Afghanistan by a misguided and mistimed sense of
>     adventure, and were simply trying to make their way home.
>
>     I was seized by the Pakistani Army while having tea at a mosque
>     shortly after I managed to cross the border. A few days later I
>     was delivered to the United States Army: although I didn't know it
>     at the time, I was now labeled an "enemy combatant." It did not
>     matter that I was no one's enemy and had never been on a
>     battlefield, let alone fought or aimed a weapon at anyone.
>
>     After two weeks in the American military base in Kandahar,
>     Afghanistan, I was sent to Guantánamo, where I spent two and a
>     half years. I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering
>     and the torture; but the worst aspect of being at the camp was the
>     despair, the feeling that whatever you say, it will never make a
>     difference.
>
>     You repeat yourself over and over again to interrogators from the
>     military intelligence, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. The first time you
>     hear "Your case is being processed," your heart, seizing on the
>     hopeful possibilities in those words, skips a beat. After months
>     of disappointment, you try to develop an immunity to hope, but
>     hope is an incurable disease.
>
>     I remember once an interrogator warming me up during several
>     sessions for a polygraph test I was going to take, that was,
>     according to him, infallible. After I took the test, I was left
>     alone in the interrogation room; an hour later, the interrogator
>     returned. "Congratulations," he said grimly. "You have passed the
>     test." And he gave me a box of candy.
>
>     In the outside world, I thought, the difference between telling
>     the truth and lying, between committing a crime and not committing
>     it, is the difference between being in jail and being free. In
>     Guantánamo, it is a box of candy.
>
>     I was eventually released and I will go on trial next month in
>     Paris to face charges that I've never denied, that I spent two
>     months in the Qaeda camp. I have a court date, I'm facing a judge,
>     and I have a lawyer, unimaginable luxuries in Guantánamo. I
>     didn't know the three detainees who died, but it is easy for me to
>     see how this daily despair and uncertainty could lead to suicide.
>
>     During my captivity, I saw many acts of individual rebellion, from
>     screaming to hunger strikes and suicide attempts. "They are smart,
>     they are creative, they are committed," said Rear Adm. Harry
>     Harris, who commands the camp. "They have no regard for life,
>     neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of
>     desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."
>
>     I am a quiet Muslim — I've never waged war, let alone an
>     asymmetrical one. I wasn't anti-American before and, miraculously,
>     I haven't become anti-American since. In Guantánamo, I did see
>     some people for whom jihad is life itself, people whose minds are
>     distorted by extremism and whose souls are full of hatred. But the
>     huge majority of the faces I remember — the ones that haunt my
>     nights — are of desperation, suffering, incomprehension turned
>     into silent madness.
>
>     I believe that a small number of the detainees at Guantánamo are
>     guilty of criminal acts, but as analysis of the military's
>     documents on the prisoners has shown, there is no evidence that
>     most of the 465 or so men there have committed hostile acts
>     against the United States or its allies. Even so, what I heard so
>     many times resounding from cage to cage, what I said myself so
>     many times in my moments of complete despondency, was not, "Free
>     us, we are innocent!" but "Judge us for whatever we've done!"
>     There is unlimited cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to
>     free the innocent and unable to punish the guilty.
>
>     Mourad Benchellali has written a book about his experience in a
>     Qaeda camp andat Guantánamo Bay, with Antoine Audouard, who
>     assisted in the writing of this article and translated it from the
>     French.
>
>
>
>
>
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