Evidence of Innocent People at Guantanomo - Public Radio

[JPZenger]

http://thislife.org/pages/descriptions/06/310.html

The public radio show "This American Life" had a great program last weekend about the innocence of some of the prisoners at Guantanomo. An audio link is available above. The reporter was also interviewed on Majority Report on Air America a couple days ago. "Act One" is the best part.

The piece explains that a group of anti-Communist Chinese Muslims were put into Guantanomo. Everyone realizes that they were not terrorists, but they are still being kept. They have been reclassified to no longer be "enemy combatants." US says they can't send them back to China because the Chinese would kill them, but the US won't find any other place for them. The reporter said he thinks the US doesn't want to release them because then the US would see that many harmless people have been imprisoned.

The report explains that a guy who simply ran a satirical website in Pakistan was thrown into Guantanomo. He had made fun of a Pakistani Cleric, and the Cleric told the US he was a terrorist.

The report said the US courts finally said that detainees have a right to an attorney, but the US is not letting those lawyers into the hearings.

The evidence against each person is classified. The detainee and their lawyers are not allowed to see it, and there were cases in which the military judges said they had not seen the evidence.

The worst was a case against one guy. His secret file was accidentally made public. It included 6 letters from US agencies saying that they had no evidence against the guy. That "evidence" was not shown at his hearing and was not made available to his attorneys.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

1. I hope they don't close Gitmo

After all, we're gonna need a place to put these rat-bastard NeoCons . . .

Alcatraz might be even better.

[LynnTheDem]

2. US military ADMITS innocent people at Gitmo!

Mistake` captives languish at Guantanamo

Five Chinese Muslims the U.S. military admits were captured by mistake want the U.S. Supreme Court`s help in getting out of the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Their capture and detention in the Cuban facility for more than four years has created a legal dilemma for the Bush administration, which fears releasing them back to China where they could face torture, yet refuses to grant them asylum for fear of opening floodgates to others.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1097256.php/%60Mistake%60_captives_languish_at_Guantanamo

Reports Find Tenuous Terror Ties at Guantanamo

Compiled from declassified Defense Department evaluations of the more than 500 detainees at the Cuba facility, the report says just 8 percent are listed as fighters for a terrorist group, while 30 percent are considered members of a terrorist group and the remaining 60 percent were just "associated with" terrorists.

55 percent of the detainees are informally accused of committing a hostile act. But the descriptions of their actions ranged from a high-ranking Taliban member who tortured and killed Afghan natives to people who possessed rifles, used a guest house or wore olive drab clothing.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32241

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. I can't understand why there's not more outrage about this

especially among Democratic legislatures.

I think even the more enlightened Republicans could understand the notion of "innocent people in prison."

(The hardcore wingnuts basically suspect anyone who's not a Wyte Omurrican, so they're hopeless, but most people are decent if you give the opportunity to be.)

[Plaid Adder]

4. They can't release people from Guantanamo whether they're innocent or not.

Imagine what happens when people start telling the stories about what happened there.

Eventually, Guantanamo is going to be what does these assholes in. Unless they plan to kill everyone they're holding there, they will eventually have to release these people. When they do, they're screwed, because there's no way that what's going on at Gitmo is any better than what was going on at Abu Ghraib.

They're holding on to them and playing these games with legal representation because they're trying desperately to stall the inevitable moment at which the whole thing blows up in their faces. They have no plan, other than "never release these people or allow anyone to find out about them."

OK, this administration is evil...but I think they would do less damage overall if they weren't so DUMB.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[JPZenger]

5. Christian Science Monitor on Innocent Chinese in Guantanamo

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0213/p03s03-usju.html

The above link is to a new article in the Christian Science Monitor about the innocent Chinese being held in Guantanamo.

The following article from last week describes how the 5 British detainees at Guantanamo were released by Britain because they were shown to not be a threat.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-03-10-detainee-released_x.htm

The author of the story on This American Life said that there is evidence that one of the people released from Guantanamo really was Al Qaida. He is now living free in California. This defeats the whole argument that the Administration would rather keep people in custody just in case they might be terrorists.

The whole process of habeas corpus involves having proper legal review of whether a person should be confined. The Bush Administration has used Guantanamo Bay because they feel it is outside the jurisdiction of the US court system, and therefore there is no right of habeas corpus. The report on This American Life describes the last time that approach was used in Britain. In the early 1600s, a top official in the British government sent a group of Pilgrims to a far off island for confinement to avoid the British court system. He was impeached for it.

[LynnTheDem]

6. KICK for America's SHAME.

WAKE UP AMERICANS.

This evil is being done by YOUR "government" in YOUR NAME.

[JPZenger]

7. Intelligence Reports of Innocence Were Hidden

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3868-2005Mar26.html

The above link is to a Washington Post report about Murat Kurnaz, who is still held at Guantanamo. His case is being publicized by Amnesty International. The evidence against him was accidentally declassified after his hearing. It showed that the US and German intelligence agencies had no reason to believe he was guilty of any terrorist activities. That "evidence" has now been made classified again, after it was published on the front page of the Washington Post. Except of 2005 Post article:

"...that evidence, recently declassified and obtained by The Washington Post, shows that U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no information that linked Kurnaz to al Qaeda, any other terrorist organization or terrorist activities.

In recently declassified portions of a January ruling, a federal judge criticized the military panel for ignoring the exculpatory information that dominates Kurnaz's file and for relying instead on a brief, unsupported memo filed shortly before Kurnaz's hearing by an unidentified government official. Kurnaz has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since at least January 2002.

"The U.S. government has known for almost two years that he's innocent of these charges," said Baher Azmy, Kurnaz's attorney. "That begs a lot of questions about what the purpose of Guantanamo really is. He can't be useful to them. He has no intelligence for them. Why in the world is he still there?"