Guantánamo-Pandora's Box of Western civilisation?

VRWCAgent said:

The US determined with the Barbary pirates that we don't need a nation to wage war. We can wage war against a group of people if they are a threat to our national security.

Your comment regarding 'which army' is precisely why they do not warrant POW status. They are not a legitimate army or even legitimate rebels/guerillas. Now personally, just to get the international community to shut the heck up because I'm tired of hearing them whine about Gitmo, I do think we should give them POW status, but they really don't deserve it.

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VRWCAgent said:

We possibly could have gone that route, but how effective would it have been? The Taliban sure weren't going to prosecute them.

I think it boils down to the sheer destructiveness of their attacks. You blow up a car and yeah, it might be acceptable do deal with you through criminal courts. You develop an organization with financing, training, and the ability to kill thousands at a time and it's no longer a prosecution under the law issue but an issue of naked aggression against a sovereign state that has to be dealt with via military force.

You'll note we did just prosecute the first attempt to take down the World Trade Center in 1993.

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VRWCAgent said:

McVeigh was not part of an organization, which I specifically mentioned. It was him and one or two co-conspirators.

Bottom line is that basic rights are not disappearing. They are being given housing, food, water, access to religious practices, etc. They rolled the dice and decided to play at war and are now paying the price for it. I'm not shedding any tears.

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REDY said:

Is Guantánamo show that western civilisation is similiar barbarian as terrorists, or it is new way to free world? Its show of new "1984 Big Brother" era, or first effective war on terrorism? Its necessary clear off civil rights to fight with someone who disallows all rights?

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Bozo Erectus said:

Dont read too much into it. The Bush administration is an anomaly. Guantanamo signals nothing about the West. Hopefully in a couple of years the Bush administration will be relegated to the dustbin of history (assuming elections arent canceled and a dictatorship installed, which isnt that unbelievable)

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MobBoss said:

I dont think these are just suspects either. These were people from Afghanistan fighting against us with weapons in their hands.

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anarres said:

(..)Do you want me to show you and embarass you?

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VRWCAgent said:

The US determined with the Barbary pirates that we don't need a nation to wage war. We can wage war against a group of people if they are a threat to our national security.

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A federal judge has criticized a secret military tribunal for keeping a German national jailed in Guantanamo Bay indefinitely based on a flimsy unsigned memo, despite information suggesting he had no terror ties, the Washington Post reports.

In a declassified portions of a January ruling obtained by the Post, the judge criticized the panel for ignoring the conclusions of U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities, in nearly 100 pages of documents, that Murat Kurnaz has no terrorist links.

The panel instead based its decision on a brief, unsupported memo filed just before Kurnaz's hearing by an unnamed government official.

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green wrote the memo "fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record." The judge reviewed all the classified evidence in the case.

The Kurnaz case may be the first in which classified material considered by the military tribunals that keep detainees in the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has become public, the Post reports.

The military is considering changing the tribunals to strengthen defendants' rights, allow for more independent judges and bar confessions obtained by torture, officials tell the New York Times.

However, Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff oppose changing the tribunal rules unless forced to do so by the courts, the officials said.

Judge Green ruled in January that the tribunal and the procedures that support it simply don't go far enough toward protecting the rights of detainees.

The men deserve to know more about the charges against them, more help from attorneys, and deserve to be able to mount a reasonable challenge to allegations against them, she ruled.

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A British terror suspect held in Guantanamo Bay for 33 months plans to sue the government, it is reported.

Martin Mubanga claimed in the Observer that an MI6 officer played a key role in consigning him to the US camp in Cuba, following his arrest in Zambia.

Mr Mubanga, 32, from Wembley, London, said he was brutally interrogated and daubed with urine at the camp.

The home secretary said he would not be launching an investigation and that the media reports were not "well informed".

Mr Mubanga, who has dual British and Zambian nationality, was one of four Britons who were released from the US camp in January.

'Effectively kidnapped'

He said he was sent there after being interrogated by a British man who said he was from MI6, shortly after his arrest in Zambia in March 2002.

Mr Mubanga said he had been in Afghanistan and Pakistan to study Islam.

But he said he was unable to return to the UK because he had lost his British passport, and was travelling on his Zambian passport instead.

Mr Mubanga said the "MI6 agent" told him the passport had been found in a cave in Afghanistan along with documents listing Jewish groups in New York and suggested he had been on an al-Qaeda reconnaissance mission.

Mr Mubanga said the man, and an American female defence official, tried to recruit him as an agent, but he refused and within three weeks was told he would be sent to Guantanamo Bay.

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http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=235142&rel_no=1

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Late last month, three Afghan men were released from Guantanamo after nearly a year of confinement. The Pentagon said they were not dangerous and had no intelligence value. The admission seemed to lend credence to the men's claims that they were wrongly sent there.

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The father of one of the freed Guantanamo Britons warned him not to go to a Muslim country, it has been revealed.

Lloyd Fiddler, whose son Jamal Udeen was released without charge after returning to the UK from Cuba on Tuesday, told the BBC's Panorama programme that he asked his son not to travel so soon after September 11.

He said: "After September 11th I said to him 'if you are going to travel abroad, don't go now, wait until when everything cool down'."

The website designer from Manchester, was taken to Guantanamo Bay after the Afghanistan war.

He had left the UK to travel to Pakistan at the end of September 2001, and says he was trying to get a lift out of Pakistan towards Iran when he was cornered by Afghan tribesmen and handed over to the Taleban.

Jamal, who changed his name from Ronnie Fiddler after converting to Islam in his 20s, was then imprisoned by the Taleban, accused of being a spy.

But after the regime collapsed, the prison was taken over by US Special Forces and Jamal was arrested on suspicion of fighting for the Taleban in Afghanistan.

The first his father heard of the detention was on the radio.

He told Panorama: "I heard it on the radio first. I heard it on the radio and then I saw it on the television, and the radio said he's the fifth British that got taken away to Guantanamo Bay. I break down and cry when I heard that."

Jamal's story about being arrested is back up by Craig Smith, a New York Times journalist, who found the Briton in a Taleban prison after the war.
He said: "I walked into the compound and there were five guys scattered around and Jamal was shirtless in one corner of the yard lifting weights.

"He was angry and frustrated that he was still in prison a month after the Taleban had fallen."

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REDY said:

I am not sure. In my opinion US way of developing will be in all other western countries as culture. In my opinion US administration isnt anomaly, its typically western administration on higher level. (I dont saying its good, but I see it in this way. USA has much more citizens than other countries, so I see it as what main number of western people want. Of course, some countries are developed(Israel) some will develop to this soon(UK), some later(Germany,...)

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