US believed many held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent

[Happy Face 29]

Files obtained by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks have revealed that the US believed many of those held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives.

 

The files, published in US and European newspapers, are assessments of all 780 people ever held at the facility.

 

They show that about 220 were classed as dangerous terrorists, but 150 were innocent Afghans and Pakistanis.

 

The latest documents have been published on Wikileaks,the Guardian, the New York Times and in other newspapers, although it was not clear whether the papers had co-operated with Wikileaks in their release. The Times said they received the files through "another source".

 

The Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) also give details of alleged plots, revealed under interrogation, against US and European targets.

 

They included unverified claims that al-Qaeda had hidden a nuclear weapon in Europe for detonation should Osama Bin laden be captured.

 

Other alleged plots include plans to put cyanide into the air conditioning systems of US public buildings and attempts by al-Qaeda to recruit workers at London's Heathrow Airport.

 

But the files give little information on the allegations of harsh treatment and interrogation techniques at the camp.

 

The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Washington says many of the details have been heard before in various forms, but never from an official US source.

 

Mistaken identity

There are now just under 180 detainees at the US naval base in Cuba. Most are deemed to pose a high risk threat to the US if released without adequate supervision.

 

But the files show that US military analysts considered only 220 of those ever detained at Guantanamo to be dangerous extremists.

 

They include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.

 

Another 380 detainees were deemed to be low-ranking guerrillas.

 

At least 150 people were revealed to be innocent Afghans or Pakistanis - including drivers, farmers and chefs - rounded up during intelligence gathering operations in the aftermath of 9/11.

 

The detainees were then held for years owing to mistaken identity or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the memos say. In many cases, US commanders concluded there was "no reason recorded for transfer".

 

Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese cameraman for al-Jazeera, was held for six years, partly so he could be questioned about the Arabic news network

Abdul Badr Mannan, an author, was considered high risk, but his files states US officials may have been "misled" by the Pakistani security services

Mukhibullo Abdukarimovich Umarov, a Tajik man, was arrested in Karachi in 2002 and spent almost two years at Guantanamo before being released - his assessment says the reasons for detaining him were "undetermined"

Haji Faiz Mohammed was arrested in Afghanistan aged 70 and is described as having senile dementia - his file states there is "no reason on record" for being transferred

Naqib Ullah, aged about 14 when he was arrested, spent a year in Guantanamo but his file states he had been kidnapped by the Taliban and presented no threat to the US.

'Utmost care and diligence'

The Pentagon "strongly" condemned the leak, calling it "unfortunate".

 

It described the assessments as snapshots that may now be outdated and said reviews of all inmates in 2009 had in many cases reached different conclusions to those in the DABs.

 

Continue reading the main story

 

Profile: Bradley Manning

Is Manning being punished before trial?

"Both the previous and the current Administrations have made every effort to act with the utmost care and diligence in transferring detainees from Guantanamo," said the statement.

 

"Both Administrations have made the protection of American citizens the top priority and we are concerned that the disclosure of these documents could be damaging to those efforts."

 

The 779 documents were part of a cache of tens of thousands of secret US military files leaked to Wikileaks last year.

 

Bradley Manning - the US soldier accused of being behind the leaks - was arrested in May last year and is currently detained at a military prison in Kansas pending a court martial.

 

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, is battling extradition from the UK to Sweden, where he is wanted over allegations of sexual assault.

 

His supporters say the case is politically motivated.

 

The Guantanamo Bay detention facility was set up in 2001 under the Bush administration - President Obama pledged in January 2009 to close it within a year.

 

However, in March this year he announced he was lifting a two-year freeze on new military trials for detainees there.

 

The White House says Mr Obama remains committed to the eventual closure of Guantanamo Bay.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13184845

[LeazesMag 0]

no smoke without fire.

 

Shoot the cunts anyway, even getting rid of 1 = 1 less.

[ChezGiven 0]

Clearly Obama's fault.

[Happy Face 29]

Clearly Obama's fault.

 

Did you see that Obama has announced Manning is guilty before a trial has begun?

 

Oh dear!

[LeazesMag 0]

Clearly Obama's fault.

 

Did you see that Obama has announced Manning is guilty before a trial has begun?

 

Oh dear!

 

off with his head [unless someone tells him he's a naughty boy first and he sees sense]

[Happy Face 29]

Clearly Obama's fault.

 

Did you see that Obama has announced Manning is guilty before a trial has begun?

 

Oh dear!

 

off with his head [unless someone tells him he's a naughty boy first and he sees sense]

 

Unfortunately, it'll have to be his head. Obama refuses to admit his mistake and is floundering with excuses. The White House insist he was talking generally about the crimes Manning is accused of as being against the law....which of course he wasn't....as that wouldn't be any excuse for the punishment he's received. The quote is "He broke the law."

 

Richard Nixon initially tried the same sort of excuses when he announced Charles Manson's guilt, but the question being asked is why no-one in the White House will advise the President to retract his statement, or why he won't do it himself...like Nixon eventually did....

 

http://my.firedoglake.com/teddysanfran/201...-john-mitchell/

 

Perhaps he will later.

[Happy Face 29]

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011...mp;type=article

 

Good read from the lad who wrote the definitive book on al quaeda

[Park Life 71]

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011...mp;type=article

 

Good read from the lad who wrote the definitive book on al quaeda

 

Most of these stories are spun or briefed by the intelligence community to make sure funding is pukka.

[Happy Face 29]

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

 

 

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

 

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

 

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

 

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

 

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

 

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

 

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

 

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

 

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

 

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

 

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

 

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

 

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

 

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

 

Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

 

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

 

The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

 

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

 

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

 

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/opinion/hunger-striking-at-guantanamo-bay.html?hp&_r=3&

[Happy Face 29]

A British hunger striker inside Guantánamo Bay has laid bare the deteriorating conditions of inmates, expressing fears that he and others will soon die as a result of what he described as "systematic torture".

 

Shaker Aamer, the last UK resident still held at the camp, claims he is subjected to harsh treatment from guards and denied water, despite being in a weakened state due to severe weight loss, according to a written declaration filed by his lawyer.

 

He also alleges that the US base will soon be dealing with its first fatalities as a result of the current action: "I might die this time," he is quoted by his lawyer as saying, adding: "I cannot give you numbers and names, but people are dying here."

 

The testimony, seen by the Guardian, will form part of evidence presented at a hearing Monday into complaints from the remaining inmates at the notorious detention camp. Over the weekend, clashes broke out as guards attempted to break the hunger strike, which is thought to have begun on 6 February.

 

Clive Stafford Smith, director of legal action charity Reprieve and Aamer's lawyer, spoke to his client Thursday. Their hour-long conversation was written up as a declaration to go before US district judge Thomas Hogan, who is conducting this week's evidentiary hearing.

 

In it, Stafford Smith quotes Aamer, pictured, describing the dramatic weight loss of inmates since the hunger strike began: "One detainee has lost 55lbs, more than 25% of his weight," Shaker told his lawyer.

 

As to his own plight, Aamer says he is constantly weak, to the point that he is collapsing on a regular basis.

 

"I can't read. I am dizzy and I fall down all the time. I do not call (the guards), as it is humiliating. When they call Code Yellow (for when a prisoner collapses), they step on your fingers, your hands, they scratch you, even then you are living in fear when they say they are treating you.

 

"Yesterday they tied me on the board and they threw me in a cell because the medical people were busy. So they only took me to another cell. You are lucky if you get a medical space."

 

Shaker has now spent more than 11 years at Guantánamo Bay, despite official UK protest. He had been picked up by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in late 2001 and handed over to the Americans.

 

According to leaked files, the US believes the British resident met with Osama bin Laden during his time in Afghanistan and led a unit of fighters against Nato troops. They also allege an association with shoe bomber Richard Reid and convicted 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui.

But his supporters claim he suffered terrible abuse at Bagram air base and that an alleged confession he made to captors was obtained under the pain of torture.

 

Aamer has never been charged or faced trial.

 

Moreover he was cleared for release by the Bush administration in June 2007, a decision that was re-affirmed three years later. The British government has lobbied Washington on his behalf, stating on Sunday: "we want him released and returned to the UK as a matter of urgency". The UK Foreign Office said it continued to monitor Aamer's condition but stressed any decision to release him remained in the hands of the US government.

 

In the meantime, the father of three continues to languish in a cell. He has never seen his youngest son, Faris, born while Aamer was in captivity, now living with family in London.

 

In comments to his lawyer, he expressed a fear that injuries resulting from his experiences at Guantánamo Bay may mean that he will now never pick up the child.

 

"My back and my neck are getting worse day by day. I don't want the end of this torture here to be paralysed. I want to carry my kids when I get home; I don't want my kids to have to wash me," Stafford Smith reported his client as saying.

 

Aamer alleges that he is subjected to forcible cell extractions (FCEs) from his cell on a daily basis, during which time he suffers injuries as a result of roughness from the prison guards.

 

"I have bruises on my legs, knee, my arms where they carry me," he told his lawyer.

 

He also claims to be at risk of dehydration, as guards won't give the hunger striker water other than at dinner time – when plates of food are left in his cell for hours in a bid to break his resolve, it is claimed

 

"For three days now if I say I want more water – they FCE me, just to give me water. The first day I got FCE'd three times and Code Yellow two times (when Shaker fell down unconscious)," Stafford Smith quotes his client as saying to him.

 

During their conversation, Aamer conveyed a message to Stafford Smith to pass on to his wife in the event of his death, and the lawyer believes that his fears are genuine.

 

He told the lawyer that he was "dying inside" and that those around him were close to death.

 

"In the night people are dying from the cold. In the day they are dying from the heat. People cry from the heat and humidity – I could not put the prayer schedule on the wall because it was so damp. It is systematic torture," Aamer told his lawyer.

 

In an indication of the deteriorating condition of inmates, guards took action to move them out of communal areas over the weekend and into single, solid-walled cells in a bid to monitor them more closely.

 

The action sparked clashes, with prisoners fighting the move with the use of makeshift weapons.

 

During the confrontation, US troops fired four "less-than-lethal rounds". No major injuries were reported.

 

The clashes comes amid increased tension between guards and inmates at the centre. It is thought the hunger strike broke out as a protest against the indefinite detention of prisoners as well as tighter restrictions and intrusive searches of Qur'ans for contraband.

 

Of the 166 detainees still at the base in Cuba, 43 have been classified as hunger strikers, but lawyers claim the true figure of those participating is far higher. Of those, around a dozen are being force fed to keep them alive.

 

Aamer is not amongst those being forced fed, although he says his weight has fallen dramatically in recent weeks.

 

"No matter how much I show you I am tough, really I am dying inside," he told Stafford Smith.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/14/guantanamo-bay-last-uk-detainee

[Dr Gloom 21965]

remind me, when was it obama said he'd shut this place down? fail.

[Happy Face 29]

remind me, when was it obama said he'd shut this place down? fail.

 

A third of the 88 prisoners from Yemen have already been cleared for release, but Obama himself has made transfers more difficult after he issued a blanket moratorium on sending detainees to Yemen.

[ADP 0]

Not directly related, but I read this article in G2 at work today and thought of this thread. Maybe some people'll find it interesting:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/apr/15/oliver-stone-america-went-wrong