Tag Archives: release

Guantanamo Detainee Ordered Released

23 Tuesday Mar 2010

Posted by in George W. Bush, Justice Department, Politics, torture, war on terror

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

In another victory for the rule of law and a defeat for the Bush administration’s “war on terror” policies (sadly continued by the Obama administration), U.S. District Judge James Robertson has ordered the release of Mohamedou Slahi, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2002, without charges. The Miami Herald has the story:

“A federal judge on Monday ordered the Pentagon to release a long-held Mauritanian captive at Guantánamo Bay who was once considered such a high-value detainee that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld designated him for “special interrogation techniques.”

About those “special techniques” ordered by Rumsfeld

“Slahi is the 34th Guantánamo detainee ordered freed since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled detainees could challenge their incarceration in federal court, but his name was already well known because of investigations into detainee abuse.

The interrogations were so abusive a highly regarded Pentagon lawyer, Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, quit the case five years ago rather than prosecute him at the Bush administration’s first effort to stage military commissions.”

Those probes found Slahi had been subjected to sleep deprivation, exposed to extremes of heat and cold, moved around the base blindfolded, and at one point taken into the bay on a boat and threatened with death. Investigators also found interrogators had told him they would arrest his mother and have her jailed as the only female detainee at Guantánamo if he did not cooperate.

And as if any further proof of the ineffectiveness of those interrogation methods were needed (emphasis added):

“In November 2006 he wrote his lawyers that he had denied any wrongdoing while in custody until he was tortured. “I yess-ed every accusation my interrogators made,” after they tortured him, he said. “I even wrote the infamous confession about me planning to hit the CN Tower in Toronto.”

The Obama Justice Department is “reviewing the ruling.” *Sigh* Here’s the only “review” needed:

“He’s been incarcerated, tortured and interrogated and rendered illegally,” said attorney Nancy Hollander of Albuquerque, N.M., who represents Slahi free of charge. “After almost 10 years the government has not been able to meet the minimal burden to detain him that’s required under habeas. He should be free.”

A Nation of Cowards

13 Saturday Jun 2009

Posted by in Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

We need to change the last line of our national anthem. No longer are we the home of the brave, we are home of the frightened, cowering in fear. Fear brought on by demagogic Republicans and  spineless Democrats who go along so as not to be portrayed by those demagogues as “soft on terror.”

This is the latest example that we have become a nation of cowards;

“The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to persuade European allies to accept them.”

I have a message for the demagogues and the jellyfish in Washington, as well as the American people who polls show are so easily manipulated and frightened about releasing the Gitmo detainees, it’s time we man up and accept the responsibility for our actions.

We are the country who captured and incarcerated people for 6 or 7 years without charges, without trials, without proof of any wrongdoing, just the fear of what they might do if not detained, and now the fear of what they might do if released.

Now that our courts have ordered some of them set free, as in the case of the Chinese Uighurs, we are asking Palau and Bermuda to take them. Even though there is a large Uighur community in Virginia who would gladly accept them.

But no, Virginia elected officials, Sen. Jim Webb and Rep. Frank Wolf, one Democrat and one Republican, opposed the Uighurs resettling there “as a matter of national security.” Our national security is threatened by people who have been proven guilty of nothing? Nothing other than being the object of irrational fear stoked by politicians with their collective moistened fingers in the wind.

We are also asking Australia and Germany to accept released detainees but they are understandably balking because we refuse to take any of them ourselves.

Do we owe anything to those we have imprisoned without cause or without due process? If a country held me for 7 years without charges because of mere suspicion would I feel I was owed something on my release? You’re damned right I would.

But that would have to be a country which takes responsibility for it’s wrongdoings and attempts to make amends, not one whose leaders and whose population are afraid of their own shadows.