7 Freed From Guantanamo, Returned to Kabul

By Jeralyn, Section Terror Detainees
Posted on Sat Dec 16, 2006 at 07:22:50 PM EST
Tags: Guantanamo, Detainees (all tags)

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7 Guantanamo detainees have been returned to Afghanistan and freed.

The AP has conducted an investigation into what happens when these "vicious killers" -- many of whom turned out to be harmless farmers kidnapped and sold to Americans -- are returned.

Through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo.

The findings are very interesting. I hope you'll follow the link and read them.

Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American attorney representing several detainees, said the AP's findings indicate that innocent men were jailed and that the term "continued detention" is part of "a politically motivated farce."

"The Bush Administration wants to be able to say that these are dangerous terrorists who are going to be confined upon their release ... although there is no evidence against many of them," he said.

What about those who remain at Guantanamo? Even for those not charged with a crime, things don't look too good. Pentagon officials have decided to clamp down on the Gitmo detainees.

This commentary makes a good point:

Whatever the government's motives for this ongoing horror, Americans need to wake up and recognize that Guantanamo and the so-called "War on Terror" have made America--and every one of us Americans--guilty of the most obscene of war crimes.

There will inevitably come a day of reckoning--a day when we will all be called to account for our collective crime.

Let us at least be able to say then that we spoke out against what is being done in our name.

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7 Freed From Guantanamo, Returned to Kabul | 4 comments (4 topical)

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Where are the bodies? (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by lambert on Sat Dec 16, 2006 at 07:55:27 PM EST

For some reason, our famously free press wants to focus on the 10s in stories like this, and the 100s at Gitmo. These stories are horrific, of course, but what about the 1000s known to have entered Bush's European prison camps? We have no accounting of their fate. Have they been released? Are they still in the camps? Have they been disappeared? Without an accounting, there's no way to know.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld must be held accountable (5.00 / 1) (#2)
by Al on Sat Dec 16, 2006 at 08:39:31 PM EST

and Rice and Powell and anyone else who has a hand in maintaining the neocon Gulag.

: I agree (5.00 / 2) (#3)
by aw on Sat Dec 16, 2006 at 09:01:50 PM EST

but it's probably going to be a long, hard process because I think most of our current representatives just don't have the guts to do it. Bush will probably be as old as Pinochet by the time it happens.

The horrific crimes committed in the name: (none / 0) (#4)
by Bill Arnett on Sun Dec 17, 2006 at 04:02:04 PM EST

of the United States of America mark a return to the Dark Ages when torture and unjust confinement were the norm of the day.

Once we throw off the yoke of tyranny brought upon us, it will take one or possibly two generations, to restore any semblance of credibility with the world, and more importantly, with the Communist Chinese, who will constitute the only true Superpower left in the world.

They will defeat us without a shot being fired when they call in our markers, devalue our currency, and, with no more technological superiority or even basic industry such as steel and textiles, we will have to watch as we are reduced to just another third-world country.

Mornin', aw.