Revealed: full horror of Gitmo inmate's beatings

[leftchick]

The Guardian, today:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

Binyam Mohamed will return to Britain suffering from a huge range of injuries after being beaten by US guards right up to the point of his departure from Guantánamo Bay , according to the first detailed accounts of his treatment inside the camp.

Mohamed will arrive back tomorrow in the UK, where he was a British resident between 1984 and 2002. During medical examinations last week, doctors discovered injuries and ailments resulting from apparently brutal treatment in detention.

Mohamed was found to be suffering from bruising, organ damage, stomach complaints, malnutrition, sores to feet and hands, severe damage to ligaments as well as profound emotional and psychological problems which have been exacerbated by the refusal of Guantánamo's guards to give him counselling.

Mohamed's British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said his client had been beaten "dozens" of times inside the notorious US camp in Cuba with the most recent abuse occurring during recent weeks. He said: "He has a list of physical ailments that cover two sheets of A4 paper. What Binyam has been through should have been left behind in the middle ages."

U.S. Army] Lieutenant colonel Yvonne Bradley, Mohamed's US military attorney, added: "He has been severely beaten. Sometimes I don't like to think about it because my country is behind all this." . . .



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1135491/Revealed-The-truth-torture-row-Guantanamo-Briton.html


David Miliband was accused of rolling over in the face of U.S. demands for a cover-up of Mohamed's alleged torture.

The Foreign Secretary is now at the centre of a mounting furore after rejecting calls to press Barack Obama to publish documents detailing his treatment.

Mohamed's legal team has been told the 30-year-old's release from Guantanamo Bay is 'imminent' and arrangements are under way to fly him to Britain.

They described him as close to death after being emaciated by a hunger strike. 'The real worry is that he comes out in a coffin,' said Lt Col Yvonne Bradley, a U.S. military lawyer who saw him last week.

U.S. authorities claim Mohamed fought against anti-Taliban Northern Alliances forces and, because of his UK residency, was selected by Al Qaeda and trained to construct and detonate a radioactive 'dirty bomb'.

[virgogal]

1. War is hell! Always has been,always will be.

[leftchick]

2. um he is innocent

and it has nothing to do with 'war'. :eyes:

I can't wait until other countries start abducting US citizens and imprisoning them without charges in the name of the "WoT' and hear the rage from murkins when someone else does it.

[slay]

4. And yet torture is supposed to be illegal - even when at war - and just WHO are we fighting

anyways? You have to have a war on a country, not on a concept like terror. A war like that could last FOREVER - which I'm sure is the plan of those who rule us. I also don't think we ever officially declared "war" but that's beside the point. This man was tortured, by us, and appears to have been innocent. Very sad. :(

[Usrename]

7. War crimes are illegal.

[leftstreet]

3. K&R

[kentuck]

5. So that is why we had the "other two stories"?

Posted elsewhere on GD..

[w4rma]

6. That God-forsaken place needs to be closed. (nt)

[No.23]

8. Guantánamo 'is within Geneva conventions'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/21/guantanamo-geneva-conventions

• Inquiry ordered by Obama carried out by US admiral
• Inmates just need time to talk and pray, report says

A Pentagon review ordered by President Barack Obama into conditions at Guantánamo Bay has concluded that prisoners are being treated in line with international standards demanded under the Geneva conventions, according to US officials.

Admiral Patrick Walsh, the vice-chief of naval operations who carried out the inquiry, is to hand over the 85-page report to Obama this weekend. Human rights groups said they feared the review ordered by Obama could turn out to be a whitewash.

The Pentagon report looked into various allegations of abuse. But Walsh's report contains only two major recommendations for improving the prisoners' lives: allowing them more opportunities to communicate with one another and to pray together.

Obama promised on the day of his inauguration to close the Guantánamo detention centre, which has become synonymous worldwide with human rights abuses, within a year. Since his announcement he has faced criticism, mainly from former members of the Bush administration, saying closure of the camp was not that easy. Walsh's conclusions are basically the view espoused by the Pentagon over the last few years, which is that the international image of Guantánamo is based on the treatment and condition of prisoners when they first began to arrive seven years ago.

The camp since then has been well run, the Pentagon claims, insisting it is no worse and, in many ways, better than maximum security prisons on the US mainland. But defence lawyers for the 245 prisoners still held tell a different story: one of prisoners who have suffered severe psychological damage from force-feeding, beatings and being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.

Walsh concludes, according to the official, that force-feeding, in which prisoners are strapped to a chair while a tube is pushed through a nostril into their stomach, is necessary to fulfil the Geneva conventions' demand to preserve life.

Among recommendations, he suggests that prisoners be allowed to pray and spend recreation time together in groups of at least three.

Given that a prominent part of Obama's campaign platform was to close Guantánamo, it is unlikely he will renege on that promise. The Pentagon report is only one of several that Obama has ordered. The Justice Department is conducting one of its own into evidence against each prisoner and the new attorney-general, Eric Holder, is to visit Guantánamo on Monday.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer at the Centre for Constitutional Rights who represents many of the detainees, expressed concern that the review might turn into a whitewash, and that she had higher expectations of the new administration.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

9. remember when we used to be the good guys?

it was oh so long ago, but there was that - once.
It seems that we have become what we so hated.

[No.23]

10. I remember that time well.

We bought most things with our own money back then. Money that we saved.

Today, we prefer to buy most of our things with other people's money (AKA credit).

We're a lot more materialistic now, thanks to our credit-based economy.

And we care a lot more about our own stuff than we do about our neighbors' needs.

No surprises, though.

Systems always create predictable outcomes.

It's the system, stupid.

We need to return to the system that required us to be a lot more disciplined in our consumption habits.

Credit kills.

And the usary system will be a large reason for our downfall.

[leftchick]

11. I am so damn cynical

I don't believe we were ever good guys. :(