Bush thinking of building jails abroad to hold suspects for life

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1390317,00.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0114-02.htm

Published on Friday, January 14, 2005 by the Guardian/UK

A Global Gulag to Hide the War on Terror's Dirty Secrets

Bush is now thinking of building jails abroad to hold suspects for life

by Jonathan Steele

The promise of imminent release for four British detainees held at the notorious US prison at Guantánamo Bay is obviously welcome, but it is only a tiny exception in the surge of bad news from the Bush team on the human rights front. The first few days of the new year have produced two shocking exposures already.

One is the revelation that the administration sees the US not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world's prison warden. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives - a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers.

The other horror is the light shone on the views of Alberto Gonzales, the White House nominee to be the chief law officer, the attorney general. At his Senate confirmation hearings last week he was revealed to be a man who not only refuses to rule out torture under any circumstances but also, in his capacity as White House counsel over the past few years, chaired several meetings at which specific interrogation techniques were discussed. As Edward Kennedy pointed out, and Gonzales did not deny, they included the threat of burial alive and water-boarding, under which the detainee is strapped to a board, forcibly pushed under water, wrapped in a wet towel, and made to believe he could drown.

Since its establishment after 9/11, the US camp for foreigners at Guantánamo Bay has become a beacon of unfreedom, a kind of grisly competitor to the Statue of Liberty in the shopfront of authentic American images. The trickle of releases of prisoners from its cages has brought direct testimony of the horrors which go on there. So it is no wonder that the Bush administration would like to find less visible places to hold prisoners, and keep them there for ever so that they cannot tell the world.
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[Liberal In Texas]

1. Yep. Let the outsourcing continue.

And it is a very good way to thumb your nose at the Constitution.

[ananda]

2. nose thumbing...

--it is a very good way to thumb your nose at the Constitution.--

... and at the world court, human rights conventions, indeed the entire world.

We're big, we're bad, we wear white cowboy hats, and we always get our man (Saddam).

Step outta the way or get run over.

Who cares about winning hearts and minds or actually making war on a real enemy who has attacked us.. which hasn't happened since WWII.

Sue

[Liberal In Texas]

6. get our man?

...and we always get our man (Saddam).
I think I would rather had him get Osama.

[havocmom]

3. One more argument for my premise that there are no nations anymore

only corporations and national dress up games. National laws, safe guards of rights have no meaning and no inhibiting effect on these people.

[MisterP]

15. the globalizers say that's a good thing

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. So he's going to file away people like he filed away his troublesome

Texas governor papers?

[sweetheart]

5. the final solution

It seems bush has crossed over with his SS guard corps, and now the
american people have no excuse. This nazi regime must go down, and if
it takes war, then sadly, that will be the dharma.

[clem_c_rock]

7. It's becoming obvious. These are prisons for those who know too much

It would make much more sense and it's pretty damn obvious. I think most of these people in Guantanamo and other secret prisons are there because they have too much inside information on things like 911 and the invasion of Afghanistan.


Look how far the Moussoui trial has gotten. The trial has been an amazing joke from the start. The minute he starts mentioning double agents being involved in 911, the trial goes under the news radar.

Just a thought, Maybe I'm full of sh**, but the official story that terror suspects need to be put away like this is even more so.

[hang a left]

8. I agree.

People that know too much.

[Stephanie]

9. I haven't seen anything about that

Moussoui is claiming double agents were involved?

[htuttle]

11. I remember that he said that he knew that the FBI knew what he was doing

I think there was a hint of there being US double-agents involved in at least one of his arguments before the court. I think that's why he's requesting to be able to question some other 'terror suspects', also currently in the gulag, on the stand.

[G_j]

12. link I found

on a quick search:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/atif-ahmed.htm

The Case of the Missing Terrorist
Where Is Alleged Moussaoui Henchman Atif Ahmed?

by Jacob Levich


>>> In a mystery that raises further questions about official accounts of the September 11 attacks, a man named as a key player in the Al Qaeda 9/11 conspiracy seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.

Atif Ahmed, 30, was scooped up by Scotland Yard detectives nine months ago after the FBI, working with the New York City police, linked him to accused "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. At the time of Ahmed's arrest, law enforcement sources told ABC News they had found telephone records and other evidence suggesting that Ahmed, a British national, was a co-conspirator with Moussaoui.

In his own trial on capital conspiracy charges, Moussaoui, an admitted Al Qaeda member, has identified Ahmed as a "very important part" of the 9/11 terror plot. Moussaoui has also claimed that Ahmed was a double agent working for British intelligence. That charge, if true, would have alarming implications about the extent of 9/11 foreknowledge among Western intelligence agencies.

Yet, since the day of his arrest, Atif Ahmed has been all but erased from the public record in what feels eerily like a deliberate news blackout. A comprehensive review of online newspaper archives, Internet search engines, unsealed court papers, and relevant government documents has failed to turn up any mention of Ahmed, apart from Moussaoui's pleadings and a single ABC News story dating from November of last year.


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[clem_c_rock]

14. Here's an article on this I've had file.

http://news.zdnet.com/5208-3513-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=2250&messageID=48578&start=-38

Sorry, I'm at work, I have more if you're interested...

[G_j]

10. kidnapped in Europe, beaten and flown to a US-controlled jail

(just one example from a large, but unknown number of kidnappings..)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5103186-110878,00.html

'They beat me from all sides'

A German car salesman says that a year ago he was kidnapped in Europe, beaten and flown to a US-controlled jail in Afghanistan. Now the German government is collecting evidence to back up his story. James Meek hears Khaled el-Masri's account of life in America's secret offshore prison network

James Meek
Friday January 14, 2005

Guardian

A man is walking alone along a mountain path in the darkness. He is carrying a suitcase. He seems frightened, tired and confused. He has long hair and a long beard, but they are untidy, as if he did not grow them voluntarily. He turns a bend and meets three men carrying Kalashnikovs.

The man shows them his passport. It indicates that he is a German citizen, born in Lebanon, called Khaled el-Masri. Using poor English, he tells them that he does not know where he is. They tell him that he is on the Albanian border, close to Serbia and Macedonia, and that he is there illegally since he doesn't have an Albanian stamp in his passport.

The story that el-Masri tells them by way of explanation, on this evening in late May 2004, is extraordinary: a story of how an unemployed German car salesman from the town of Ulm went on a New Year's holiday to Macedonia, was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled and blindfolded and flown to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but controlled by Americans. Five months after first being seized, he says, still with no explanation or charge, he was flown back to Europe and dumped in an unknown country which turned out to be Albania.

What really happened? With no way to prove his story, el-Masri's account remains in the balance, a terrifying snapshot of America's "war on terror". It is certain that he returned home to Ulm from Albania in May 2004, and that he was taken off a bus from Germany at the Macedonian border on New Year's Eve 2003. The only person who has offered a clear explanation for what happened in the five months in between is el-Masri himself. Yet that may change.

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[GreenPartyVoter]

13. He really DOES think he is King George

----------------------------------------------------------
Save our country one town, county, and state at a time!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm#why

[G_j]

16. Christian peacemakers have evidence of 'secret prisons' in Iraq

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_050114cpt.shtml

Christian peacemakers have evidence of 'secret prisons' in Iraq -14/01/05

Christian peacemakers in Iraq who documented abuses of Iraqi prisoners last year before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, say they have evidence of 'secret prisons' set up by the US military in Iraq.

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) a partner of Ekklesia in the UK, has maintained an almost continuous presence in Iraq since October 2002.

In January 2004 CPT presented the Coalition Provisional Authority with a dossier of statistical data compiled from seventy-two case studies of the treatment of Iraqi detainees, including torture.

CPT now say that they have a map which locates U.S. prisons scattered across Iraq. The map identifies eighteen prisons, though Multinational Forces (MNF) usually refer only to Abu Ghraib and Bucca Camp, and, sometimes, Camp Cropper, at the Baghdad International Airport, which holds more prominent detainees.

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