Related Information to Guantanamo Prisoners: Justice or Revenge

Guantanamo Prisoners: Justice or Revenge - Page 9

This week, Amnesty International released its report for 2005 on International Human Rights Abuses. (click here for the report)

Within this document, it appears that Amnesty has a huge hatred for the US. They really hate the US for the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

With that in mind, there are a few (actually many) responses to the Amnesty report. Start with this article at National Review Online. This particular article goes into great detail about several aspects of Guantanamo that we have discussed in this thread.

Finally, read this interesting "fisking" of the Amnesty report. I am still reading it now, but have found it very informative already.

I don't expect any of this to change anyone's opinions about the US, its actions in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the internment of illegal combatants at Guantanamo. However, these articles should help everyone to understand how much of the fight about these things really is just disagreement over policies and procedures, and that the anti-US, anti-Bush rhetoric really is wildly exaggerated. After all, when you have officials of a huge human rights organization such as Amnesty claiming that Guantanamo is like the Russian Gulags, there really is something wrong.

Revenge Justice Prisoners Guantanamo

Here is another piece about the Amnesty International stance.
https://www.townhall.com/clog/archive/050529.html#051231PM
(I will quote the entire piece, as I am sure that the link will expire)

I might also add that Gitmo hosts detainees that were scooped up on the battlefield as they attempted to kill Americans; prisoners in the Soviet gulag were merely guilty of living in a country ruled by a homicidal maniac.

Irene Khan is free to think the war on terrorism is "undermining human rights in a dramatic way," but she's apparently too incompetent to understand how dramatically she and Amnesty International are undermining common sense.
(05:12 PM 02-Jun-05 | Trevor Bothwell | Comment)

Once again, this simple, short article makes many of the points I have tried to make in this topic. While the things going on in Guantanamo are not nice, neither are they torture or even abuse. The people incarcerated in them are not nice guys, they are not men who were just standing around in Afghanistan that the US military didn't like - they were illegal combatants, fighting against US forces. Many of them are clearly identified terrorists and terrorist enablers. They aren't run-of-the-mill criminals either.

Guantanamo Prisoners: Justice or Revenge History & Civil Business Politics

This is not true. An Australian detained in Guantanamo Bay for three years, Mammdouh Habib, has never been involved or connected with any terrorist organisation. He has never fought against US forces or anyone for that matter and is a very nice guy. He was apprehended in Pakistan by Pakistani officials because he asked them why they were apprehending a German national he had met on a bus. If he had kept his mouth shut none of this would have occurred.

The US then got hold of him after Pakistan released him without charge. The US had him tortured in Egypt through Extraordinary Rendition. This has been verified by other inmates he had been locked up with in Egypt. They then shipped him to Guantanamo Bay for over three years. He has undergone torture, he even showed me some of the scars, and described some horrific human rights abuses.

That man has severe psychological scars as could be expected if you are illegally apprehended in high security prison with no rights for three years. He is not the only case of an inmate in Guantanamo Bay that did not fight US forces. The US released him without charge or reason. His young family have also suffered greatly due to his absence. This whole situation is disgraceful and shameful.

So what if they are. Does this mean they are no longer human beings and don't deserve basic human rights? If they were such hardened terrorists why has the US Military Court been releasing some of them without charge? Many people around the world think the US Administration and the CIA are a bunch of terrorists, it's a very subjective term.

Amnesty International is a non government organisation that champions human rights. Guantanamo Bay is an abhorrent breach of human rights. The US Government controls Camp X-Ray. How on earth is criticism of Guantanamo Bay "anti-American". If another nation controlled Guantanamo Bay I am certain Amnesty would criticise that nation's government. Nobody asked the US to set up this illegal torture camp.

Furthermore, I find it amazing how the only US national apprehended had his case brought before trial after only a matter of months, unlike everyone else, when there is video evidence proving he was a combatant with the Taliban. This is blatant hypocrisy and just proves how farcical the war on terrorism really is.

Page 9 Revenge Justice Prisoners Guantanamo

U.S. Confirms Gitmo Soldier Kicked Quran

By ROBERT BURNS
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee's Quran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim holy book was splashed with urine. In other newly disclosed incidents, a detainee's Quran was deliberately kicked and another's was stepped on.

On March 25, a detainee complained to guards that ``urine came through an air vent'' and splashed on him and his Quran. A guard admitted he was at fault, but a report released Friday evening offering new details about Quran mishandling incidents did not make clear whether the guard intended the result.
Ref. https://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story...810.htm&sc=1152

Revenge Justice Prisoners Guantanamo

Now here is a good piece. A very liberal, anti-Bush, anti-war reporter for the very liberal, anti-war newspaper, the Washington Post, wrote about Amnesty International's case of foot-in-mouth from earlier this week.

https://www.aspenberlin.org/interesting_art...hp?iGedminId=90

I don't know anything at all about this particular case. I don't doubt at all that some mistakes were made in the people who were picked up. If 10% of the detainees were mistakes, it still doesn't make Guantanamo a "gulag" nor does it make what happens there into "torture." Nor does it invalidate the fact that almost all, if not all, of the detainees are illegal combatants under the Geneva conventions, and, in effect, terrorists. Your friend was fortunate under the circumstances that he wasn't shot out of hand, as IMO, that would be the proper thing to do with illegal combatants.

Guantanamo Prisoners: Justice or Revenge

In the eyes of who may I ask?. I suppose it all depends on yourdefinition of torture and abuse. It is obvious the fact that in the eyes of the US government and the people running Guantanamo, holding detainees without the possibility of allowing them to contact family, lawyers or judges (like ANY other normal criminal would have in the US) is not abuse at all, after all, it seems like a person has to be hooked to a whole set of wires over their bodies, being electrocuted, be near death and may be...just maybe he may be "elligable" to be consider a victim of torture or abuse. Bologna in my opinion. The fact that simple human rights are NOT being respected in Guantanamo is enough evidence of abuse to me without even starting to mention the things going on there.

I will agree with you here 100% the day that this people will have the right of a lawyer, will have the right of contacting family members and have the right of a fair court who will determine whether they are guilty or not. Until then, they have the right and MUST be treated as human beings, regardless of their crimes. If the US is so sure they are terrorists, let's them just hang them up and get over it, after all, these people are already dead being alive.

Edited: LDS_forever on 5th Jun, 2005 - 2:28am

Guantanamo Prisoners Justice Revenge - Page 9

Actually, there does seem to be some progress in getting the people trials.

As for torture, it is torture to break peoples' fingers. It is torture to whip them. It is torture to slowly saw a man's head off, while he is screaming. It is torture to cause deliberate, physical pain. Kicking a book is NOT torture. Holding a man in prison with three good meals per day, clean clothes, and other basic amenities is not torture. Nor is it abuse. It might be unlawful imprisonment, but not abuse.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that it is time to release these men. But not into the world - into the US prison system. Then the problems will be over for all of them.

There is no way they can be released back into Afghanistan.

Guantanamo Prisoners Justice Revenge Politics Business Civil & History - Page 9

I do not have a problem with Camp X-Ray. According to article IV (2) of the Geneva convention terrorist are not entitled to POW status. Article IV (2) states that:
"Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

a. That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

b. That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

c. That of carrying arms openly;

d. That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war"

The people being detained do not have a distinctive sign or uniform and do not follow the laws of war. I do not have a problem with a organized group defending their land or nation, we here in the U.S. did that back in 1776. The Vietmanesee did it until 1975. The problem I have is when non military and non governmental targets are intentionally attacked or when civilians are beheaded to shock the populace. The way the U.S. is treating these detainees is far better than any of our prisoners has ever been treated by the terrorist.

For a full text on the Geneva convention go here Geneva Convention