Mahatma Gandhi once said: “Be the change you want to see”. But in George W Bush’s so-called “war on terror”, the extreme opposite applied. At Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram Airbase and in secret CIA torture facilities across the world, it was (and quite possibly remains) a case of: “Be the evil you want to see defeated”.
Each and every account I have read from former Guantanamo detainees describes some of the most gruesome (or, as recently released Briton Binyam Mohamed describes it, “medieval”) forms of torture. In Mohamed’s case, the torture took place in Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantanamo over a period of seven years. Being some six feet tall, Mohamed lost one quarter of his body weight. He now weighs a mere 57 kilograms.
Here’s a sample of Mohamed’s treatment before he even set foot on Guantanamo soil:
- In Morocco, he spent 18 months being deprived of sleep, severely beaten and had his genitals cut with a scalpel.
- In Afghanistan, he was kept in a small black hole in prison, beaten, strung up and subjected to extremely loud music.
Combined with his treatment at Guantanamo, it all reads like something out of an al-Qaeda or Taleban guidebook (minus the beheadings).
Mohamed’s lawyer reports Mohamed confessed “to anything those inflicting that treatment on him wanted him to say”. Who knows how many things Mohamed confessed to? Former Australian Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib also tells in his memoir about signing confessions after repeated torture and beatings.
Despite their confessions, both were released without any charges being laid. As if to underscore his complete innocence, Mohamed was released as soon as he arrived in London.
What makes all this even more scandalous is that Britain’s own security agencies may have collaborated with the Americans in Mohamed’s torture. At the very least, MI5 were likely to have been aware of his treatment.
Former US Defence Secretary told the world that those held at the Guantanamo Bay facility were “the worst of the worst”. Yet as Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc and An Oral History of al-Qaeda’s Leader, co-writes:
… only five percent of all detainees at Guantanamo were ever apprehended by US forces to begin with … Almost all of the detainees were turned over to American forces by foreigners, either with an axe to grind, or more often for a hefty bounty or reward. After U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, a reward of $5,000 or more was given to Pakistanis and Afghans for each detainee turned over.
Trial by ordeal should have been left in the Middle Ages. Our failure to do so means we have handed medieval forces of terror a moral victory they simply don’t deserve.
A most informative book called, “American Torture” shows the US use of torture from just after WW2 up until today. The difference now, is that the Bush Administration broke every rule there is in respect of the jailing of ‘suspects’, refusal to abide by Geneva Conventions, the refusal to abide by hapeas corpus principles; renditions of nationals to foreign jails; the use of British airspace to take these people to hell holes in Europe(with the permission of the then PM, Tony Blair). When these actions were coupled with Guantanamo Bay, Abu Graib & others, Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld & others took torture & imprisonment to an insidious level. At the same time, Bush ‘warned’ Iraq of its responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions.
Many innocent Iraqis, including women & children have been brutalized courtesy of the US. Australia, with the concurrence of Howard/Downer & others gave their support to such practices – lying about Mamdouh Habib’s rendition to Egypt- we were told that Downer/Ruddock did not know where he was.Evidence came to light later, that they certainly did know, and were quite happy for Habib to be brutalized by the Egyptians.
If there was any justice in the west, those responsible should be charged with war crimes – I doubt it will ever happen. We do now know many truths, of which I feel acute shame, distress and embarassment. The ‘West’ will not be able to spruik of the righteousness of their governments, until these horrific assaults on democracy, International Law, the Rule of Law and many other long held uttereances are defended by criminal actions against the perpetrators – Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Blair/Howard & those who carried out these atrocities! I understand, that all that changed at Abu Graib was the removal of cameras! Torture was still taking place under US direction! The FBI refused to work with these thugs! I need to be convinced that these practices have or will change!
The torture of prisoners is not acceptable but the definition of such needs to be set down clearly. I dont expect interrogation of prisoners to be a walk in the park especially when the lives of innocent civilians are at stake.
The practice of internment of suspected enemies and active combatants, without tria,l has ample and legitimate precedent and democracies and their administrations have every right to move to secure the lives of their citizens.
It is notable that the incoming American administration has made it clear that its foreign policy initiatives will not differ substantially from the Bush administration. They have even retained the Bush administration’s Secretary of Defence, which says it all.
Guantanomo will remain open for considerable time. I suspect a long time, because of the danger posed by the majority of its inmates. They are a security nightmare and the Left are dreaming, as usual, if they are
thinking that governments will gladly repatriate these thugs.
The postings above reveal the usual orgasm of Left hatred for all things western, including democracy itself.
Why should the priniciples of the Geneva convention apply to combatants who violate every aspect of the convention. They disguise themselves as civilians, they target, deliberately, non combatants and they summarily execute, without trial, most of those captured, including UN aid workers. During World War 1 and 2, they would have been regarded as spies and summarily executed. They’re lucky to be going home.
A nice piece on the above by Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090309/ehrenreich?rel=hp_currently
“Medieval forces of terror”? Who are the real terrorists Mr Yusuf? Surely not the people defending their land (Iraq; Afghanistan et al) against the forces of aggression represented by the illegal invasions of their countries by the US and its allies, including Australia.
I suggest you read William Blum’s Killing Hope for the depressingly long list of countries bombed, invaded, undermined, interfered with and otherwise ill-treated by the US in the past 60+ years.
As any careful reading of the history of terorrism will show, the overwhelming majority of terrorist acts are state sponsored and heading the list by a very wide margin is the US.
Google Operation Condor for some insights into how the US sought to maintain regimes friendly to its world view in its neighbours to the south.
Consider the more than 1 million Iraqis dead from sanctions between the two Gulf Wars. Or consider the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression, aided, abetted and armed by the Americans. Or the millions killed in Indo-China between 1962 and 1975, again at the hands of the Americans and their alliles. Then ask yourself again, who are the real terrorists.
it is da Pashtuns who make up 99.9% of folk at guantanomo
most of them are there coz they were dubiously fingered as terror suspects to satisfy and get even in old tribal civic disputes or they were falsely fingered by officials who collected the “dob in a terrorist” bounty set by the Hamericans
they are not terrorists and their imprisonment is a disgrace