Hopefully some never will.
Posted on 03/05/2006 8:00:20 PM PST by NewLand
Guantanamo Inmates Despair of Ever Leaving
Sunday, March 5, 2006 9:13 PM EST
The Associated Press
By MIRANDA LEITSINGER
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Ahamed Abdul Aziz has been in the Guantanamo Bay prison for more than three years and, by his account, has been interrogated 50 times without being charged with any crime. He waits with anguish for freedom but fears it will never come.
"We are in a grave here," he told his lawyers, echoing the despair felt by many of the roughly 490 prisoners held as suspected terrorists at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba. Charges have been filed against only 10 of them.
Transcripts of hearings, which the Pentagon released Friday after a successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press, show the frustration among prisoners waiting for the military to decide whether to charge them, transfer them or release them.
"I don't want to spend any more time here. Not one more minute," Afghan prisoner Mohammed Gul said at a combat status review tribunal.
Another unidentified Afghan man told his tribunal: "I was not a Taliban. I was not against the Americans. I want to go home."
An Afghan man, identified only as Abdul in one of the transcripts, urged U.S. military officers overseeing his tribunal to free him so he could feed his family.
"I don't know what they have to eat," he said.
The United States has released or transferred to authorities in their home countries about 270 detainees since the prison opened in January 2002, months after the U.S.-led military campaign that ousted Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida bases.
Major Paul Swiergosz, a Defense Department spokesman, said that holding detainees who are considered a risk is necessary in time of war, while the review process ensures innocent detainees are released.
"Holding detainees in Guantanamo is not a punitive measure, it's preventive," Swiergosz said. "That keeps them from continuing to fight against the United States and its allies. The Defense Department will continue to work diligently to process all the detainee cases we have."
U.S. officials say the camp houses only people who want to kill American troops or civilians.
"The folks that are at Guantanamo Bay all have a valid reason for being sent here," said Army Maj. Jeffrey Weir, a prison spokesman. "Some are mainly security, others are intelligence. It's across the board."
Aziz, who is from Mauritania in West Africa, was captured in Pakistan in 2002, according to one of his lawyers, Anna Cayton-Holland. His lawyers do not know what he is accused of.
"He thinks he's going to die here," said another member of his defense team, Agnieszka Fryszman.
Many detainees are accused of specific deeds, but some complain they spend years in confinement before learning the allegations.
Boudella al Hajj, an Algerian cleric who said he worked with orphans in Bosnia for a humanitarian group and the Bosnian army, was accused of being in contact with al-Qaida member Abu Zubaydah and belonging to an Algerian militant organization, among other things.
In the transcripts, he denied the allegations and asked why he had never heard them before.
"I've been here for three years, been through many interrogations and no interrogator ever mentioned any of these accusations, so how did they just come now?" he said. "It's weird how this just came up now."
One tribunal member, who was not identified, later said: "We didn't realize you had never been confronted with these allegations."
Another man, Pakistani millionaire Saifullah A. Paracha, was told by a U.S. Air Force colonel running his hearing that he would one day be able to pursue his case in American courts.
"I've been here 17 months — would that be before I expire?" Paracha asked.
With some Bush administration officials now referring to the war against terrorism as the "long war," Guantanamo appears to be turning into a more permanent detention site.
A two-story prison building that can house 200 detainees is slated to open this summer. It is modeled after a mainland maximum-security prison and will be located near a similar facility that can house 100 detainees.
"It's becoming clear that we will need to continue to house some number of detainees for an extended period," said a Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Michael Shavers.
Pinch, you're awake now...
That is the point!
I can't recall exact names and incidents - but haven't we had people who were released from Gitmo go right back into terror activities?
I feel pretty sure we have. All the more reason to keep these a-holes at Gitmo - PERMANENTLY!
"I don't want to spend any more time here. Not one more minute," Afghan prisoner Mohammed Gul said at a combat status review tribunal."
the sweetest bed time story ive read.We must be doing something right.
something's fishy about you...
Certainly some of them. The general argument is "how much" (or what triggers a right of) access to courts. Another angle is delineation of POW v. "enemy combatant" and the very nature of a war on terror with an indefinite end point. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1590224/posts?page=8#8
The Hamdan case, and related, are right on the same point. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1581198/posts.
Suppose we had a spate of domestic terorism (cf Timothy McVeigh), with a Democrat government in charge. Welp, we have a system of secret prisons all set up already, for confining people who don't agree with the government, or who may have consorted with violent militia types! How convenient!
Civil war cases (Merryman, Milligan) and WWII treason cases (Quirin, Haupt) are illuminating.
There was an article where the guy said he left Saudi Arabia to fight in Afghanistan with bin Laden against the Americans. Said the treatment at Git-mo was good - they get to pray, good food, and ..... juice! But, "I still wish to go home to see my family."
IOW, "sympathy for the devil".
Nope.
LOL
ONLY questioned 50 times in 3 years. That's about once ever 3 weeks! That's unacceptable!
And why- pray tell- doesn't someone ask them why their Allah doesn't save them? Hmmmmmmm???
Go back to DU...that garbage wont fly here.
Call out the Viking Kitties!
Hopefully some never will.
You callin' me a troll too?
Let the AP give him an old patched-up innertube so he can paddle his way out of Cuba across shark-infested waters like all those non-terrorist Cubans whose plight under Castro's terrorist-supporting dictatorship the presstitutes willfully ignore. Oh, wait, he's not that desperate for freedom - he gets better meals and more opportunities in Gitmo than a Cuban could ever expect in the 'worker's paradise.'
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...not you; the n00b.
Check it out:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_4-9-2003_pg1_3
Sept. 4, 2003
Saif Paracha detained at Bagram: ICRC
By Maqbool Ahmed
KARACHI: Businessman Saifullah Paracha, who had disappeared from the Karachi Airport in mysterious circumstances on July 5, has been detained by the US authorities at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, shows a letter written by Mr Paracha in his own hand that was dispatched to his wife, Mrs Farhat Paracha, by a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Islamabad.
Talking to the Daily Times on Wednesday, Mrs Paracha’s lawyer Nisar A. Mujahid said the letter that was received by the ICRC Kabul on Aug 11 and was dispatched to the wife of the missing businessman by Francois Auffret, a tracing delegate of the ICRC in Islamabad.
Mrs Paracha received the letter on Aug 30, he added. When contacted at her home by phone, Mrs Paracha confirmed that she had received the letter but asked this reporter to seek further details from her lawyer. Mr Mujahid said the letter had been written on the specific form of the ICRC and on the similar forms provided by the ICRC his family had given their reply to the letter. About the contents of the letter, Mr Mujahid said it simply contained information about the well-being of Mr Paracha. Mr Paracha had written that he was getting proper food and was being treated well, the lawyer said. However, Mr Mujahid claimed that Mr Paracha had been detained somewhere in Pakistan and the ICRC was being used to route his letter via Kabul just to show that the person was not inside the territory of Pakistan.
Answering a question, Mr Mujahid said he would produce the letter in the Sindh High Court which was due to hear the final arguments in the case of mysterious missing of Mr Paracha on Sept 9.
His son Ozair Paracha is facing charges of assisting the entry of Al Qaeda operatives into the US before a New York court which last month rejected his bail application.
Mr [Saifullah] Paracha had cleared to board a Bangkok-bound flight of Thai Airways on July 5 by immigration authorities at the Karachi Airport, but his family claimed that he never reached Bangkok.
11 posted on 09/04/2003 11:59:14 AM PDT by Shermy
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