Is this seriously worth it? Guantanmo inmate never charged with a crime, dies after 11 years in US custody

[Autumnlicious]

Amazing what one word different can do.

[CliveStaples]

It seems like there might be a paradigm mismatch here. Aren't the detainees at Guantanamo being held as enemy combatants? Why would they be charged as anything? Aren't they essentially prisoners of war--even if some might not meet the criteria for Geneva protections?

I mean, if we were at war with Germany, and we had captured German soldiers, would we really have to choose between charging them with a crime and releasing them? Wouldn't we hold them until hostilities ceased?

[Tino]

You obviously started typing your reply before I altered my response. Theres a link attached, read it.

If I gave you a study, paid for by the US Government, that showed there's been no torture at Guantanamo, would you accept it as valid? I doubt it. Likewise, since the study you cited was paid for by the legal representatives of the Guantanamo detainees who allege torture, I don't consider it to be an independent study.

If you don't think that in combination with the video evidence of how they attempt to extract false confessions while ignoring obvious abuse of a Canadian citizen, the suspicious circumstances surrounding the suicide, the signs evident in almost all prisoners of severe physical abuse, the detaining without evidence, charge or trial and how desperately they try to stop anyone inspecting their prisoners or witnessing anything from inside the place then I'm really not sure what to say to you.
In a state where water-boarding is referred to as a "advanced interrogation technique" and therefore fair game I really have no idea how you can be so shocked by this.

Throwing a study paid for by the alleged victims on top of the Aljazeera-disclaimed article and the un-sourced video about another prisoner doesn't make the case any more compelling. But if you're trying to make this a thread about whether there has ever been EITs used at Guantanamo, don't bother because the US Government has already identified detainees who were waterboarded.

However, back on the OP, we (you, me, everyone else posting here) don't know what this guy did or did not do, we don't know what the US Govt knows about his actions, we don't know about his treatment. In the absence of information many people will assume the worst, and claim that the handling doesn't live up to the standards used with a US citizen in a US court of law. I consider this to be a prisoner of war situation, I don't assume the worst, and I don't think giving the detainees the legal rights of a US citizen in a US court of law is called for.

---

It seems like there might be a paradigm mismatch here. Aren't the detainees at Guantanamo being held as enemy combatants? Why would they be charged as anything? Aren't they essentially prisoners of war--even if some might not meet the criteria for Geneva protections?

Yes, exactly.

[Reforged]

You obviously started typing your reply before I altered my response. Theres a link attached, read it.

If I gave you a study, paid for by the US Government, that showed there's been no torture at Guantanamo, would you accept it as valid? I doubt it. Likewise, since the study you cited was paid for by the legal representatives of the Guantanamo detainees who allege torture, I don't consider it to be an independent study.

If you don't think that in combination with the video evidence of how they attempt to extract false confessions while ignoring obvious abuse of a Canadian citizen, the suspicious circumstances surrounding the suicide, the signs evident in almost all prisoners of severe physical abuse, the detaining without evidence, charge or trial and how desperately they try to stop anyone inspecting their prisoners or witnessing anything from inside the place then I'm really not sure what to say to you.
In a state where water-boarding is referred to as a "advanced interrogation technique" and therefore fair game I really have no idea how you can be so shocked by this.

Throwing a study paid for by the alleged victims on top of the Aljazeera-disclaimed article and the un-sourced video about another prisoner doesn't make the case any more compelling. But if you're trying to make this a thread about whether there has ever been EITs used at Guantanamo, don't bother because the US Government has already identified detainees who were waterboarded.

However, back on the OP, we (you, me, everyone else posting here) don't know what this guy did or did not do, we don't know what the US Govt knows about his actions, we don't know about his treatment. In the absence of information many people will assume the worst, and claim that the handling doesn't live up to the standards used with a US citizen in a US court of law. I consider this to be a prisoner of war situation, I don't assume the worst, and I don't think giving the detainees the legal rights of a US citizen in a US court of law is called for.

Who else is going to pay for it? You? We have evidence of torture by our own troops where there was a higher risk of them being found out and what, you think they're not doing the same at the bay where pretty much no-one is allowed to go into? You can't even check if the prisoners are ok, you're not allowed to get so much as a glimpse of their condition. Why exactly do you think that is?
If every lawyer were capable of claiming torture they'd all do it, the reason alot of these lawyers with clients at the bay do is because they have evidence. The bay is not a candy land, its a place they send people to break a confession out of.
Fuck the guys actions, we don't have the right to torture people innocent or not. We're not terrorists. Just because they're not citizens doesn't give us the right to do that. Every-time a confession is forced out of someone, everytime we detain without charges, everytime we turn a blind eye to what is right infront of us we are diminishing what it means to be a citizen and to be human.
Even if you ignore the evidence right infront of you we know for a fact they use waterboarding there.
The bay is perfect example of how we have compromised judicial process, our societies ethics and basic morality for a short cut to what appears to be desperate confessions that may or may not be true.

It seems like there might be a paradigm mismatch here. Aren't the detainees at Guantanamo being held as enemy combatants? Why would they be charged as anything? Aren't they essentially prisoners of war--even if some might not meet the criteria for Geneva protections?

You know its funny, the government claimed that we were going to war to protect human rights, the "american way".
Tell, me how does simulated drowning follow either of those? Or the broken bones and injuries discovered on the inmates?
We're not terrorists, we shouldn't be treating our prisoners like we are or we've already lost the only thing worth fighting for.
If you use them not being citizens as an excuse to ignore them being human then who are you to presume any morality? You've already shed it for technicalities.

[jonb]

From my perspective, this is just how things are, the innocent, will always have to pay the price. The mistake is that Guantanmo has anything to do with justice. The American government would have been in an impossible situation if they admitted they knew fuck all about Islamic inspired terrorism, and that they could do zilch about it. So they had to trawl for suspects, and they had no hard evidence. If they had only picked up people which there was hard evidence for committing acts of terror, not only would there still probably not be one imprisoned, but they would not even have an idea who they were. So any sort of lead had to be pursued.There is evidence which I have not got to hand, but I can vaguely remember a foreign office official saying that some eastern dictators used the American governments need for suspects to get in the USA's good books by inventing suspects, torturing them until they admitted something or other and then providing the USA with the concocted evidence. Now even when the US had a load of suspects. The US still could not really say it knew the extent of the threat that opposed it so naturally it went down the root of trying to extract information by any means possible. To have done any less after an attack like the twin towers would be hard to argue in-front of a patriotic crowd of voters. Whet is left after that is a set of individuals that you have mistreated that often have some standing in their communities, do you let the innocent go? Remember you have now done enough to them that they would often feel more than justified if they started physically attacking you. OK my argument rests on superposition, but I don't think that much. This to me is a question of 'real politics' and it has played out that way in many situations, from Northern Ireland, Algeria, etc. Wrong or right seem silly terms to me to look at this, it is just how the way things are, and if a solution is to be found it has to be found in the real world probably without loaded terms like innocence and guilt.

[Shell B]

Amazing what one word different can do.

Yeah, it can turn a dishonest statement into an honest one.

[Creed of Heresy]

It seems like there might be a paradigm mismatch here. Aren't the detainees at Guantanamo being held as enemy combatants? Why would they be charged as anything? Aren't they essentially prisoners of war--even if some might not meet the criteria for Geneva protections?

I mean, if we were at war with Germany, and we had captured German soldiers, would we really have to choose between charging them with a crime and releasing them? Wouldn't we hold them until hostilities ceased?

Nyet, comrade.

Er, wait, that's Russian- oh whatever.

The answer is; no. You see, German soldiers were that; soldiers. The people in Guantanamo are not soldiers. They are not professionally trained, they have no oaths of allegiance to a national identity and nor do they even have a unified cause; there are a lot of competing factions, not just al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and they all hate each other for their own varying bigoted reasons, and often end up in conflict.

This IS where the problems arise, but see, the terrorists don't follow a flag or a government with geopolitical borders, they follow an IDEA, and ideas are bulletproof. If we hold these people until we win [whatever "winning" would mean here] then they would die of old age in that prison because we're warring with an idea.

So how do you destroy the idea? You kill its roots. How do you kill its roots? Well, first, I would start with NOT HOLDING FOREIGN NATIONALS INDEFINITELY IN A MILITARY PRISON AND SUBJECTING THEM TO INHUMAN TORTURE REGARDLESS OF THE SOLIDNESS OF THE ACCUSATIONS LEVELED AGAINST THEM.

The only reason we aren't trying them is because the military would have to bring evidence to bear and the military is the biggest keeper of secrets in the world. They refuse to release secrets that have ceased being dangerous in any way for half a century solely for the sake of keeping secrets. Secrets are power..POLITICAL power, mind you, not operational power. Not necessarily operational power, anyway. Some secrets are important, but they could EASILY bring to bear information in a court of law without it ever compromising any of their operations. The Pentagon is paranoid, often needlessly so; take it from someone whose oldest brother is a regular in the Pentagon when he isn't running SOCOM operations involving Army Rangers in Afghanistan and other hotspots in the world.