Should freed Guantanamo detainees be compensated?

Give UN rights team access to Guantanamo, U.S. urged

MATTHEW PENNINGTON



Associated Press

Islamabad — The United States should follow its disclosure of the names of all Guantanamo Bay detainees by allowing UN rights investigators complete access to the prison, the chairwoman of Pakistan's independent human-rights commission said Tuesday.

Asma Jehangir, who served on a UN panel that recently issued a scathing report on Guantanamo, also demanded compensation for freed detainees and accused Pakistani intelligence of intimidating Pakistani inmates who had been released from the facility in Cuba and repatriated.

Ms. Jehangir said that despite the Pentagon's release of 759 detainee names, nationalities and ages, the lack of information about parentage, addresses or where they were arrested made it very difficult to trace their relatives.

“We want full information. We don't want bits and pieces, and we don't want this game that is played between the U.S. and its so-called allies in the war on terrorism,†she said.

“We want to get to the depths of the human-rights violations so it doesn't happen again in the future.â€

Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, and many of those held in Guantanamo were captured in Pakistan after fleeing neighbouring Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 following a U.S.-led military campaign to avenge the Sept. 11 attacks on America.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment on the release of the list, including some 200 previously undisclosed names of detainees who were moved out of Guantanamo before the summer of 2004, but it was welcomed in neighbouring Afghanistan.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation commission, which helps returning Guantanamo detainees reintegrate into society, said the move would help the agency speed the repatriation of the prisoners. About one-quarter of detainees at Guantanamo have been Afghans, and scores of them are due to be shifted to a prison outside Kabul later this year.

“This will be very useful for us to push for their release,†Sayed Sharif Yousofy said. “We have requested the release of all Afghans in U.S. detention.â€

Hundreds of Afghans are still held in U.S.-run detention facilities in Afghanistan, and the United States is suspected of also detaining people in other countries.
Despite the Pakistani government's continuing efforts to free Pakistanis that remain at Guantanamo, Ms. Jehangir accused it of failing to disclose the names of those who had already been freed and of blocking access to them or their lawyers.

“They (the freed detainees) are being threatened by local intelligence agencies. Their movements are monitored. They can't go to the courts because the courts are monitored as well,†she said.

The Pentagon list includes 65 Pakistanis, most of whom have been released. At least six Pakistanis are still being held at Guantanamo, although a senior Interior Ministry official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said it believes as many as 29 are still in U.S. custody, either at the prison in Cuba or in Afghanistan.

Ms. Jehangir repeated the demand that UN rights investigators be granted “total access†to Guantanamo and that the U.S. government support an international commission led by the world body that would also look into demands for compensation of freed detainees.

In February, the UN panel of five independent experts accused Washington of practices that “amount to torture†at Guantanamo and recommended its closing. It demanded detainees be allowed a fair trial or be freed.
The panel, which had sought access to Guantanamo Bay since 2002, refused a U.S. offer for three experts to visit the camp last November after being told they could not interview detainees.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ May 16 2006, 11:28 AM) [snapback]256261[/snapback]</div>

I "roll my eyes" over your naivety. Another poster put it well in the blurred license plate thread:

"This childish faith and trust in the gov't just floors me (especially THIS gov't).

But I fear and deeply distrust gov't. It puts awesome power into the hands of mere mortal humans who are strangers to me, and who can ruin me without a flicker of conscience as they flex their authortarian muscle. And THIS gov't careering at accelerating speed toward fascism is terrifying to behold.

I've nothing to hide from my neighbors; and EVERYTHING to hide from gov't. And that's true across all history and all gov'ts."

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

I am not at all anti-US. I am against the use of torture. Today is the 40th anniverary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Here is a short interesting account of how a totalitarian state operates. Once the US accepts the use of torture and illegal confinement, can it be that far from a totalitarian state like China in the 1960's?



Eyewitness: Cultural Revolution

Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary since the start of China's bloody Cultural Revolution.

Survivors from the decade-long turmoil recounted their experiences for the BBC's Chinese Service.

Former Red Guard
Son of torture victim
Attempted suicide



SON OF TORTURE VICTIM

My father came back from America in 1948. He was a physician in the United States - a very honest and conscientious doctor.

Because he had been in America, he was accused of being an American spy. What was the evidence? He had a radio. They said it was a radio-transmitter and someone actually saw him sending information.

It was nonsense, of course, but he was then locked into a room. He was interrogated and beaten.

I myself didn't see my father being tortured. But I was told he was covered in a cotton duvet and beaten so that he couldn't see the people doing the beating.

Once a nurse in his hospital shoved a mop into my father's mouth and shouted 'You talk about hygiene - now I will give you a good brush of your teeth!' That was terrible. Could my father bear it? Of course he couldn't .

My father died in 1968. It was suicide, they said - hanging from a radiator. But we can't be certain. He was 60.

I was not by my father's side when he died. My mother didn't tell me. She was worried that if I came back home I would be arrested and tortured. I felt so sad, but what could I do?

My mother was also severely beaten because of my father. It was so bad there was blood in her urine. My mother was defiant but that made them torture her more.

I was about to graduate from university at the time. Because of my father I was sent to a remote county and stayed there for 12 years.

During that time, people were taught to be suspicious of everything, everyone. People saw each other as potential enemies. That had a long lasting damaging effect on Chinese society.

Deng Xiaoping later said that there should be no more political movements. I really support this policy. It's very easy to go to extremes with political movements.

We should now focus on economic development. If we had the policy we have now, my father would not have suffered.

 

How am I "totally off topic"? I am discussing totalitarian states and the use of illegal abduction and torture, often against completely innocent people - the atmosphere of fear and paranoia that makes everyone fear his neigbour as a potential terrorist. Isn't the US just a bit like China was during the cultural revolution? I was not there, but I have friends who lived through it. And if the US accepts the use of torture, hasn't it already lost the war to protect freedom and liberty? As dsunman put it, "Rightards are yapping about freedom and spreading 'democracy' around the world, while we resort to tactics that are as dictatorial as of those whom we are supposed to liberate."

Suppose you (or your wife or son or daughter) were about to board a plane and your name appeared on a list and you are thrown in jail as a suspected terrorist - would you then support the government - after all, it is an honest mistake - you (or your wife or son or daugher) could be a terrorist. I doubt you would be so sanguine then. After all, if it happened to Mr. Arar, it can happen to you, me, anyone.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ May 16 2006, 12:34 PM) [snapback]256310[/snapback]</div>

The government making the list is the same government that coordinated the Katrina relief effort. We all know how well that went. And don't forget, Mr. Arar and most of the Guantanamo prisoners were found to be such dangerous terrorists that they were released . Not charged, not detained, just let go. Why? - they are innocent.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ May 16 2006, 12:38 PM) [snapback]256313[/snapback]</div>

Please answer my question about what you would do if you were detained at an airport by your own government. And if they decided you were lying would it be just fine by you for them to use a little torture? And if so, then exactly where are the precious freedoms and liberties you and neocons are always going on about?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ May 16 2006, 12:52 PM) [snapback]256322[/snapback]</div>

As a suspected terrorist the government could send you to a foreign country under the policy of extraordinary rendition and you would have no right to an attorney or to contact your wife. You could be held indefinately, since the Patriot Act cancelled habeus corpus.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusguy04 @ May 16 2006, 12:53 PM) [snapback]256323[/snapback]</div>

Your quotation: "I reject your reality and substitute my own" is highly appropriate. Just take out the word "your"

"But that will never happen to you because you trust your fellow man right?"

I do not. I only trust a government that fully respects the legal protections for human and civil rights that have been established gradually and with great difficulty over hundreds of years. And such a govenment requires citizens that also recognize the importance of civil rights.