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Scandal of Six Held in Guantanamo Even After Bush Plot Claim Is Dropped
No evidence that men living in Bosnia plotted attack on Sarajevo embassy
In the dying days of the Bush administration, yet another presidential claim in the "war on terror" has been proved false by the withdrawal of the main charge against six Algerians held without trial for nearly seven years at Guantanamo prison camp.
George Bush's assertion in his 2002 State of the Union address -- the same speech in which he wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had tried to import aluminium tubes from Niger -- was that "our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy [in Sarajevo]." Not only has the US government withdrawn that charge against the six Algerians, all of whom had taken citizenship or residence in Bosnia, but lawyers defending the Arabs -- who had already been acquitted of such a plot in a Sarajevo court -- have found that the US threatened to pull its troops out of the Nato peacekeeping force in Bosnia if the men were not handed over. According to testimony presented by the Bosnian Prime Minister, Alija Behman, the deputy US ambassador to Bosnia in 2001, Christopher Hoh, told him that if he did not hand the men to the Americans, "then let God protect Bosnia and Herzegovina".
That such a threat should be made -- and the international High Representative to Bosnia at the time, Wolfgang Petritsch, has also told lawyers it was -- shows for the first time just how ruthless and unprincipled US foreign policy had become in Mr Bush's "war on terror". By withdrawing their military and diplomatic support for the Bosnian peace process, the Americans would have backed out of the Dayton accord which they themselves had negotiated. Then the Bosnian government would have lost its legitimacy and the country might have collapsed back into a civil war which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians and involved mass rape as well as massacre. The people of Bosnia might then have endured "terror" on a scale far greater than the attacks of al-Qa'ida against the United States.
When the Bosnian court was preparing to release their six prisoners, Prime Minister Behman was informed that Mr Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney and the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had been personally briefed and the White House had decided that, if they were freed, US troops in the Nato Stabilisation Force in Bosnia would seize them, using "whatever force is necessary". So, despite a three-month investigation by the Bosnian police, their clearance and a specific demand by the Dayton-established Bosnian Human Rights Chamber that they should not be forced to leave Bosnia, US forces seized all six, shackled and blindfolded them and put them on a plane to Guantanamo.
Mustafa Idir, Mohamed Nechla, Hadj Boudella, Lakhdar Boumedienne, Belkacem Bensayah and Saber Lahmar have remained there since, the only European citizens still in Guanatanamo. Five of their wives are still waiting for them in Bosnia along with 20 of their children, two of whom their fathers have never seen. Their case will be put to a habeas corpus district court hearing in Washington next week -- the six will appear in a live transmission from Guantanamo -- where their lawyers will point out that another critical charge has also been withdrawn by the US government.
The administration has withdrawn evidence given by a federal prisoner, Enaam Arnaout, against Boudella -- that he trained at an al-Qa'ida camp in Afghanistan -- when lawyers were about to discover that the US Justice Department had said five years earlier that an FBI interview with the man was "not reliable".
Even stranger is that the six prisoners are claimed by the US to be "enemy combatants" when -- with the dropping of the embassy bomb-plot charge -- there is no evidence they have ever fought US troops or planned to attack US interests anywhere in the world. Part of the case against Bensayah involved the alleged discovery of a piece of paper at his home, bearing a telephone number for an al-Qa'ida operative, Abu Zubayder. "The Bosnian police couldn't get this number to work in Afghanistan or Pakistan," one of the prisoners' lawyers, Stephen Oleskey, says. "Now we believe an announcement that the paper had been discovered was made before it was 'found'."
Mr Oleskey says Clint Williamson, the US war crimes ambassador, met Bosnia's Prime Minister, Nicola Spiric, this week. "There's only one reason he makes these visits," he said. "To negotiate the return of people in Guantanamo." The White House may intend to save itself further embarrassment by ending the torment of six more apparently innocent young men.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllYet according to some the US still operates under the rule of law,believes suspects are innocent until proven guilty and delivers justice through the humane courts rather then at the barrel of a gun.
These men received better Justice in BOSNIA then they have in the United States.
Perhaps a bunch of real kangaroos could provide more justice … than available here in the USA
Namaste
American Corporations have the best 'justice' that can be bought with taxpayer's money.
This circumstance is indeed obscene, atrocious, outrageous, and reprehensible, for starters. But is it really a "scandal"?
It's obvious to anyone with at least two critically-thinking brain cells to rub together that Amerikan-led Global War on Terror justice is an oxymoron at best. The "guilt" or "innocence" of the detained and imprisoned is a mere afterthought.
It's exactly the "sentence first; verdict afterwards" jurisprudence of the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland.
But there's no widespread clamor from We the People decrying this approach. One can't be certain, but it doesn't seem to be a stone in the everyday shoes of conscience-- it certainly never comes up in quotidian "water cooler" chatter at work.
My guess is that, if presented with this article, co-workers (excluding dyed-in-the-wool wingnuts who identify Fisk as a demonic mountebank) would deplore what seems to be an unpleasant business-- but not something that ordinary people can affect.
Perhaps this will be a challenge to the new "hold (his) feet to the fire" fanaticism that is sweeping the moderate-progressive community in anticipation of an Obama presidency.
"Perhaps this will be a challenge to the new 'hold (his) feet to the fire' fanaticism that is sweeping the moderate-progressive community in anticipation of an Obama presidency."
As Obama knows better than anyone, all that crowd wants to do with his feet is to annoint them with scented oil and kiss them.
We need a real kangeroo court. Inhumane courts would work better than humane ones.
Humane=human
inhumane=nonhuman
who is more peaceful, humans or the rest of the world's species?
Talk about twisted vocabulary.
Hot damn, if this doesn't want to make you want to wave the fucking flag while chanting "USA USA USA", I don't know what will.
Somebody just shoot me.
Once again a good news story, completely dropped by the American mainstream media. Of course putting it in US news media would shame the government. See my comment on the essay: Nonviolence Is the Right Choice – It Works, by Amitabh Pal on CD. (Does that count as a cross post?)
One thing I wonder is what the US plans to do, regardless of who wins the presidential election, with the people who have no country anymore and have been in the Guantanamo gulag, tortured, driven to mental illness... for 7 very long years. Hopefully the Bosnians will return home soon, as I hope that all of them be freed soon, but I have given up hope that they will be unharmed from their stay, considering what has already appeared in the news about the torture practices, I mean “enhanced interrogation”, of the political prisoners, I mean “enemy combatants”.
Long past time for a multi-national war crimes tribunal to address the vast number of crimes that have been committed in our names. If these, and many others, are allowed to stand, there will be far worse crimes in the future. For the sake of us all, and for the sake of civilization itself, these barbarians need to be brought to justice. For the sake of the children of the world, these nihilist criminals MUST see justice for their mindless crimes of vengeance, retribution and of course, profit through plunder. As each new story comes forth, we see just how ruthless and inhuman they have been, and continue to be. Don't fool yourself into thinking this is even close to being over, it is not. The "master race" mentality has infected many in this country, but none so profoundly as those who have enabled and defended the most criminal President in US history.
The small man at the top, as with Hitler, would be nothing without his enablers...for this one has nothing other than the ability to cut brush to call his own. It's a sad time when the President of this country ends up being the most dangerous terrorist on the planet, but god help us all, that is exactly what he is...and there's still much damage he can inflict in the waning days of his power. He still has access to the launch codes, and does anyone who has seen what has gone on for the last 8 years not believe he is salivating to use them on someone...anyone! He's like a spoiled child who's been told he can play with any of the toys in the toy box, JUST NOT THIS ONE TOY...and thus he is mad to play with that one especially. With luck, he won't do it, and in not doing, won't become the greatest mass murderer in history. He's already got a place in the mass murder hall of fame, with his Rape of Iraq, but if he were to launch a pre-emptive strike against, say, Iran, he'd vault directly to the head of the list.
Sioux Rose
GUN TOTING: Doesn't it make you wonder how the Supreme Court Justices that put this THING into power look themselves in the mirror? They are no different from the judges of the inquisition who felt self-righteous about casting others to hell on THIS plane. Tragic to the Nth degree.
So how's that trial going in Italy? You know the one against the USA's CIA operatives for abduction and extraordinary rendition? Is the MSM keeping you informed on that with frequent updates?
A War Crime has been committed (by Bush) and SOMEONE (else) must be punished.
and now we make war on Pakistan - earthquake survivors freezing at one end
and bombs falling at the other. Where will we find our cheap clothes now?
Fisk says:
"That such a threat should be made -- and the international High Representative to Bosnia at the time, Wolfgang Petritsch, has also told lawyers it was -- shows for the first time just how ruthless and unprincipled US foreign policy had become in Mr Bush's "war on terror"."
FALSE. The Bush administration had already illustrated its extreme ruthlessness and unprincipled foreign policy with the launching of the war on the Taliban on Oct. 7, 2001, [after] Bush had clearly stated that the Taliban had had absolutely nothing to do with the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks in the USA. I've also read that the UNSC had refused to authorize this recourse to the U.S. war machine being launched against the Taliban; too!
Fisk follows the above by saying:
"By withdrawing their military and diplomatic support for the Bosnian peace process, the Americans would have backed out of the Dayton accord which they themselves had negotiated."
What's new about that? The U.S. has been breaking international laws and the UN Charter ever since the UN was established and the U.S. played a key role in establishing both of these! This is nothing new about the U.S.; it's also never respected the indigenous peoples of the USA, continentally, as well as in its so-called territories and Hawaii. The Oslo Accord has also been strongly and competently criticized. The Clinton war against former President Slobodan Milosevic and innocent Serbs and Albanians, both of whom lived peacefully and constructively together, was another example of international [U.S. gangsterism and terrorism]; plus was, though not in obvious terms, part of the paving of the path to the GWoT launched, under official title, by the Cheney-Bush cabal. It was paving or continuing to pave entry of the U.S. into eastern Europe and Central Asia; while also contributing to the international heroin trade, which the gangster and terrorist KLA is into. Clinton's administration put such a gangster and terrorist organisation into power in Kosovo, and evidently allowed the kidnappings, for purpose of killings, and massacres of innocent Serbs, which most Serbs were; innocent. Then we have the totally criminal, totalitarian, oppressive sanctions against Haiti and Cuba; and the list goes on. Is there an end to this [long] list of U.S. rogueness upon the ... whole planet?
So it's peculiar that Fisk said what I quoted just above, but the article is otherwise like another reader posted, [good news], and I definitely appreciate the information. He did a qualitative job in this piece, although not unique for him; occasionally not being complete enough, imo, but otherwise providing good articles. I hope these six prisoners will be finally released, as many others in U.S. GWoT prisons also need to be treated, with release; and, ideally, reparations, compensation, too! By far most had done nothing warranting arrest, let alone the far worse that's been done to them.
The [whole] of the two terms of the Bush-Cheney cabal has been nothing other than extreme crimes, full of lies, and so on; it never has ceased, and they've been seriously expanding it into Pakistan. Clinton gave a strong example of leading (as a figurehead president) state gangsterism and terrorism based on lies, but the Bush-Cheney cabal seems to have been even stronger at this. While I believe we can perceive Clinton and Bush as figurehead presidents, at most, Cheney isn't just a figurehead, and Gore was no good as a VP, but Cheney's evidently much worse and far more in control; just that it's not obvious, with him hiding behind the sub-status of VP, rather than P.
"guntotinganglion October 31st, 2008 7:25 pm
Long past time for a multi-national war crimes tribunal to address the vast number of crimes that have been committed in our names."
Call it an [international] war crimes tribunal; many have been for plenty of years now, and they've been absolutely right all along.
==============================
"davidpeace October 31st, 2008 5:27 pm
Once again a good news story, completely dropped by the American mainstream media."
That reminds me of an article I read just yesterday at Uruknet and about a new [media iron curtain] around the USA, which of course involves U.S. "news" media being partial and not reporting important news that we can find from other countries.
"Bush Missing Iraq WMD has Been Found in Iraq and One Million U.S. Soldiers are its Victims",
by PRWeb.com, Oct 29 2008
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48373
Hitler also employed a 'media iron curtain', remember. It's not new of the USA, but I figured to add this other reminder anyway; even if it was far easier for him, given that they didn't have Internet back then, making it very easy for him to make sure that the East Germans got for "news" only what the regime wanted. It just takes more work to establish and maintain the 'media iron curtain' today, but the U.S. "news" media certainly does a lot to contribute, i.e, to aid and abet the "program".
And Hitler had enough people to inspire him, too. From what I recall reading about 'yellow journalism', associated with Hearst, he did this prior to Hitler's regime. I'd double-check the dates, but am only on dial-up and it's not functioning well right now, so won't bother checking the Wikipedia pages on 'yellow journalism' and Hearst.
Interesting. I get the Independent on a daily basis, Monday through Friday, in an email bulletin style not unlike the Common Dreams daily bulletin, and in the past few months especially those bulletins do not include Mr. Fisk's pieces at all. On occasion I am able to read them when they appear in their list of "Most emailed articles", but recently they are rarely featured in the daily collection. What do you think that is about?