Scott Horton at Harper's provides this telling quote from an AP story on the death of Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi, which gulag officials have classified as an "apparent suicide":A Guantanamo Bay detainee who left his cell to meet with military commanders as prisoner representative never returned, and was instead sent to a psychiatric ward where he died five months later, a former detainee recalled"The U.S. military has refused to say how Saleh allegedly killed himself in the closely watched ward. But the former detainee, Binyam Mohamed, said it wasn't like him to commit suicide. "He was patient and encouraged others to be the same," Mohamed said. "He never viewed suicide as a means to end his despair." Even if it was suicide, Mohamed still classifies the death as "murder, or unlawful killing, whichever way you look at it," saying that the U.S. had caused Saleh to lose hope by locking him up indefinitely without charges.They took him away, held him under the close supervision in a psychiatric ward -- and yet he still managed to magically kill himself by some as-yet undisclosed method. No doubt the "ongoing investigation" -- by the NCIS guys! just like on TV! -- will eventually manage to concoct an explanation plausible enough to satisfy our ever-incurious political and media elites.
But as Horton notes, Saleh was also a victim of an particularly sadistic form of torture that is still being practiced -- openly, unapologetically -- by the Obama Administration's agents in the Guantanamo concentration camp: force-feeding. Horton writes:
The techniques do not comply with the international standards for actual force-feeding, established in the World Medical Association's Malta Declaration of 1991. Instead they have a darker and more distressing progeny. From the use of restraint chairs down to the specific brand of commercial diet supplement used by the doctors, the force-feeding techniques now in use at Guantanamo replicate the methods used by the CIA at black sites under Bush. At the black sites, those methods were not part of any medical regime. Instead, they were a part of a carefully designed torture regime, the very same regime that Obama claims to have abolished in his first executive order.
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Meanwhile, as Egyptians rise up for
freedom, the United States is forcing its puppet satrapy in Afghanistan
to violate its own laws -- in order to keep the Peace Laureate's
Bactrian gulag going. Clive Stafford Smith has the incredible story in the Guardian. (Yes, the British newspaper. What, you thought it would be leading the CBS Evening News?)
[As] the US looks to hand over responsibility for the prisoners in Parwan prison to the Karzai government ... they have come face-to-face with an intractable problem: they are holding 1,400 prisoners without trial. Every week, the number grows; it is predicted to rise to 3,200. Some have been there for many years. Dare we allow them to face Afghan justice?According to the US, few if any of these prisoners would be convicted at a fair trial. They have been detained as a result of intelligence tips -- and hearsay is not admissible in court; and there is no forensic evidence that proves them guilty of any crime."Right now," one unnamed, but clearly unnerved, senior American official said this week, "if we turned them over to the Afghans tomorrow, they'd be in a position, under their laws and their constitution, that they may be released."
In other words, the Afghan legal system would respect their legal rights and, if they were not charged with a crime, they would have to be set free. Ten years ago, this would have been seen as a sign of great progress. Had the Taliban recognised the ancient writ of habeas corpus, and insisted on freedom or a fair trial, we would have been both surprised and delighted.Ten years on, we have taught the world a better way. Among the Afghan rules that concern the Americans is the requirement that a suspect be charged within 72 hours of arrest. He must also be granted a speedy trial -- generally, within two months. The US also worries that a detainee must be tried in the province where he committed his crime.
Compare these "problems" with the rights ascribed to citizens under the US bill of rights, the paradigm that we once hoped to export to the lawless countries of the third world. The US constitution requires that the suspect be charged within 48 hours, and be allowed a speedy trial. The sixth amendment provides that he has a right to be tried "in the state and district" where the crime occurred.
He then tells of the case of yet another child prisoner of the American gulag:
...Hamidullah, a Pakistani kid who is in Parwan. He was just 14 years old when the Americans detained him, and he appears to be wholly innocent of any crime. After several years in which to gather evidence, his American captors recently conceded that they do not even know how old he is. Yet, they have successfully argued that he should be allowed no legal rights.
US officials will not speculate when a handover will occur, but say that a "detentions decree" from Karzai is a critical prerequisite. In other words, before he will be allowed to assume custody of Hamidullah and hundreds of other prisoners, Karzai must commit to dismantling the Afghan rule of law.
Thus is our civilisation exported to the world.
Do remember these stories the next time you are called upon by some earnest progressive to come to the aid of Barack Obama in his hour of political need. This is what they are asking you to support. And this is exactly what you will enable if you give that support.
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