US says it doesn't know how many detainees in Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

US says it doesn't know how many detainees in Cuba

12.08.2003 11.21 am

SAN FRANSISCO - The US government said today it had neither an exact count nor all the names of hundreds of people captured in Afghanistan over a year ago and now detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

US government lawyers made the disclosure during a court hearing in a case on behalf of Falen Gherebi, a Libyan national believed to be in US custody in Cuba.

In May, a US District Court said it did not have the authority to consider whether Gherebi was being held lawfully and remanded the matter to an appeals court.

At the appeals court hearing on Monday, the planned debate over the government's right to hold Gherebi dissolved into a more basic discussion over whether the US government even had kept complete records on the people being held. (snip/...)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?storyID=3517653&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

[dbt]

1. Riiiiiight!

On the one hand, Murkins are supposed to believe that their gubmint will protect them from terra. And now that gubmint admits it cannot even count. I feel a lot safer now.

Christ, what if that Gore guy had been elected???

:scared:
dbt

[rock]

2. Gore guy

He was. What if he'd been installed?

[htuttle]

3. Oh, Bullshit

Somebody could just count the dirty plates after dinner.

They're lying.

Again.

[Zero Gravitas]

4. Yup

Of course they know exactly how many people are in Gitmo. Its just that the number is significantly different from the one reported in the corporate media & they don't want people to know this.

[THUNDER HANDS]

5. so, uh..

if a few of them escaped, you're telling me they wouldn't notice because they don't know how many of them are there at all?

Come on!

:eyes:

[Say_What]

6. How about those little kids??

We never hear anything about them. They range in ages from 13 and up. Given that they've been there a while, I guess the US *captured* them when they were 11 or 12. :puke:

<clips>
U.S.: Guantanamo Kids at Risk
(New York, April 24, 2003) The detention of children at Guantanamo poses grave risks to their well-being, Human Rights Watch said today, in response to the U.S. military's acknowledgement that at least three children, ages 13 to 15, are among the detainees at Guantanamo. In a letter sent today to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Human Rights Watch urged the United States to strictly observe international children's rights standards regarding the detainees.

"Secretary Rumsfeld called those detained at Guantanamo the 'worst of the worst,'" said Jo Becker, child rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "It's hard to believe that a 13 year old could fit that category."

A Pentagon spokesperson has said that the children are being questioned to obtain possible intelligence.

"Simply providing the United States with military intelligence does not justify the detention of children," said Becker. "If these children have committed offenses, they should be provided with counsel and adjudicated in accordance with standards of juvenile justice. Otherwise, they should be released immediately."

The conditions at Guantanamo pose particularly serious risks to children. Child detainees should never be held together with adults, but because there are so few children, they are held for long periods in virtual isolation. They have no access to lawyers, limited or no access to their families, and are subject to interrogation.

http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/04/us042403.htm

[gratuitous]

7. Oh, don't worry your pretty little heads!

Someone in this corrupt administration will "take responsibility" for not knowing how many persons are at Guantanamo! That will make everything all better, won't it?

I mean, you don't want to throw an incompetent Republican factotum out of his or her cushy government sinecure, do you?

[MO_Dem]

8. Typical repig lie

To IRS, they say, "Oh, I don't know how much money I made last year, not very much at all, just send me a big fat refund and we'll call it even"

Now they say they can't count prisoners either. I'd bet the press are the only ones gullible enough to believe all this shit.

[aquart]

9. Not only are they nazis, they're inept nazis.

Say what you will about the great exterminators, but they kept neat useful records of everyone they arrested and killed.

[tom_paine]

10. That's true -- 20,000 Jews died of Tuberculosis in one day at Auschwitz

But remember, our Busheviks are operating in a different environment, one with an atrophied tradition of Liberty and Openness.

They must bend, for the moment, to these exigencies. Therefore it behooves them to "lose" the records of their victims, rather than keep them meticulously.

[Emboldened Chimp]

11. Two words

Bull & shit.