Since
sweeping into office pledging to undo all the malign results of the
Bush administration's brutal and ill-conceived "war on terror," Barack
Obama has struggled to make as decisive a point as he did on that first
day, when he pledged to close Guantanamo prison within a year, to ban
the use of torture, and to ensure that the US military abided by the
Geneva Conventions in its treatment of prisoners.
An al-Qaeda associate captured by the CIA and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques said his jailers later told him they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization's hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden, according to newly released excerpts from a 2007 hearing.
"They told me, 'Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,' " said Abu Zubaida, speaking in broken English, according to the new transcript of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
One afternoon last week, four men from central Asia walked into a shop in Bermuda to buy pants.
Refugees
from Chinese communism, these Uighur men were swept up by US forces in
2001. They were sent to Guantanamo. But they were not terrorists and
not our enemies. The military soon realized its mistake and quietly
tried to resettle them abroad. The efforts failed: No one wanted to
brook the Chinese for the sake of a few dissidents whom the United
States would not accept itself.
While everyone was looking at a map, trying to work out exactly where Palau is, following the announcement on Tuesday
that Guantánamo's 17 Uighur prisoners were to be resettled there, it
now transpires that four of the men have been quietly flown to Bermuda
instead.
Let's face it, when it comes to Guantánamo, there's little to laugh
about, unless you're an Islamophobic sadist - in which case, there's
still nothing for the rest of us to laugh about.
Up to 17 ethnic Uighur Muslims are to be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to
the tiny North Pacific island of Palau. The United States has struck the
deal to avoid repatriating the inmates to China, where it is feared they
could be persecuted or executed.
The Chinese government, which has demanded their return, accuses some Uighurs
of leading an Islamist separatist movement in far western China, and Beijing
has pressured countries to reject any pleas for asylum.
WASHINGTON - A Guantanamo Bay detainee indicted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa arrived in New York on Tuesday to face criminal charges.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is the first detainee held at Guantanamo to be transferred to the United States to face criminal prosecution. The Tanzanian national has been held at the camp in Cuba since September 2006.
Ghailani's arrival in New York comes amid mounting tension between Congress and President Obama over the planned closing of Guantanamo.
It was all-too-familiar for those who recall the
run-up to the Iraq war when scary front-page New York Times stories
would be cited by Dick Cheney as proof that we needed to oust Saddam
Hussein ASAP.
It has just been reported that Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih (also
known as Mohammed al-Hanashi), a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, has
died, apparently by committing suicide.
