Guantanamo: Many 'small fry'

[cal04]

Most of the 558 people named in a Pentagon list of inmates at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, are small fry, figures of little value in the international "war on terror", experts said on Thursday. The names released on Thursday by the US defence department did not include a single senior figure from al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremist groups, nor from Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, experts stressed.

"It's nonsense. Guantanamo is a gigantic failure," charged the French analyst Olivier Roy, a leading specialist on central Asia. "Even setting aside the question of international law, these guys don't know anything. "Even for those who do know a little, after four years what can their information be worth?" he asked. In an interview with the US weekly National Journal, Michael Scheuer, a former head of the CIA unit focused on al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, said the Guantanamo detainees appeared at best to be foot-soldiers.

'Wrong guys'

"They are going to know absolutely nothing about terrorism," he said, adding: "We absolutely got the wrong guys."
Of the 125 Afghans appearing on the list, for example, many are identified by a single name, such as "Hafizullah", "Nasibullah" or "Sharbat". "Since many people share the same names in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, many people were arrested simply because they bore the same name as another guy," Roy argued. "The Americans don't know who exactly they're holding at Guantanamo. Many were quite simply sold on to them - the Pakistanis picked up foreigners at random, from all over the place." "The Afghans did the same. Each time someone from the (anti-Taliban) Northern Alliance captured a foreigner, they handed him over saying: 'He's with al-Qaeda'. And the Americans paid up $500 or $1 000."

'National sport'

"It became a national sport," Roy said. For Tom Malinowski, of the Washington branch of Human Rights Watch, "the more that is learnt about these prisoners, the more holes appear in (President George W Bush's) narrative of a tough and triumphant fight against al-Qaeda". "Instead, when the full story is told, Guantanamo may come to stand as much for incompetence as it does for injustice." "Fewer than half were caught on battlefields in Afghanistan or by US troops. A majority were turned over by Pakistan," Malinowski said. "Few 'combatants' are even accused of having fought. Many are held simply because they were living in a house associated with the Taliban or working for a charity linked to the group."

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http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1920198,00.html

[sam sarrha]

1. most are there cause we offered a $5000 reward.. they got their land and

sold their children/wife into slavery... if there was a $5000 dollar reward for terrorists and i knew they would never come back... i'd get rid of that drug den next door and buy a new car.:dilemma:

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

2. Michael Winterbottom's "The Road To Guantanamo"

highlights the case of the "Tipton Three" and the ludicrous intelligence & reasons given for their internment. God only knows how pathetic the reasons why non-Western detainees are kept.

You can download the film here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QYOOL3RO

although I can't vouch for whether it works (I bookmarked this after the film aired on UK TV and it still seems to be working).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Guantanamo