Banned Speech by Anwar al-Awlaki – Part 2 of 3

Banned Speech by Anwar al-Awlaki – Part 3 of 3

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Moussa Zemmouri

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Yvonne Ridley, Part 1

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Yvonne Ridley, Part 2

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Amir Sulaiman, Part 1

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Amir Sulaiman, Part 2

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Ahmed Ghappour, Part 1

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Ahmed Ghappour, Part 2

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Binyam Mohamed

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Mustafa Terry Holdbrooks

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Sami el-Hajj, Part 1

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Sami el-Hajj, Part 2

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Auction

Beyond Buy clomid online Guantanamo Event – Shaker Amer Letter and Mustafidh Ghani, Part 1

Beyond Guantanamo Event – Mustafidh Ghani, Part 2

- Moazzam Begg is Director for the British organisation, Cageprisoners. The opinions expressed are his own.

Little seems to have changed regarding the treatment of prisoners held at the U.S. military-run Bagram prison since I was there (2002-2004). The recent study conducted by the BBC shows allegations of sleep deprivation, stress positions, beatings, degrading treatment, religious and racial abuse have gone unabated. On a personal level though, I can’t help wonder if British intelligence services are still involved.

In April this year, a report issued by Cageprisoners entitled Fabricating Terrorism II highlighted through eyewitness testimony the cases of 29 people, all of them either British residents or citizens, who had allegedly been tortured and abused in the presence of British intelligence agents or at their behest.

One of them, the case of Farid Hilali, featured in the Guardian newspaper, showed how allegations of complicity in torture against British intelligence predated the Sept. 11 attacks. The story of Jamil Rahman too – regarding allegations of British complicity in his torture in Bangladesh – would have been included in the report but he was worried at the time about the safety of his family. The recurrent factor in all these cases is the extent to which denial and prevarication remain as much a part of the intelligence services’ arsenal as outsourcing torture and abuse. The others include the British cases of Omar Deghayes, Bisher Al-Rawi, Jamil Elbanna, Richard Belmar, Shaker Aamer and Binyam Mohamed – all of whom were held at Bagram.

Shortly after I returned from Guantanamo my father showed me a letter he received from the British Foreign Office. The letter, written in 2002, claims that UK officials were not given access to prisoners in Bagram. At the time, I was being held captive there by the U.S. military and, amongst other alphabet intelligence agencies, was being interrogated by MI5, who were aware that torture, abusive and degrading treatment was being meted out to prisoners– including British citizens.

During my time there I saw two people being beaten severely: one after he’d lost consciousness following days of having his hands shackled to the top of a cage; the other after a very crude and ultimately futile escape attempt. Both were killed.

In eleven months of custody in Bagram I was hogtied, punched, kicked, shackled to the top of a door, hooded, strip-searched regularly, put in stress positions and deprived of sleep.

Of course, this wasn’t always the case, and there were some decent soldiers who balked at the very idea of such abuse. (Some of the soldiers have even expressed clear remorse and regret to me since my return. One of them is Damien Corsetti who was brought up for charges of detainee abuse in both Bagram and Abu Ghraib prisons).

Nonetheless, such treatment wasn’t unusual. The worst of it for me was hearing the sounds of a woman screaming I was led to believe was my wife being tortured while an interrogator waved pictures of my children in front of me asking: “Do you think you’ll ever see them again?” or “What do you think happened to them the night we took you?” Several months later I learned that my family were safe but, those screams I knew were not make-believe.

In July 2005, four prisoners carried out an unprecedented but successful escape attempt from Bagram. Later, they participated in an interview on an Arabic language television channel describing how they had seen a woman in custody. After his release from Guantanamo earlier this year, Binyam Mohamed told me that he recognised the picture I showed him of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani woman – whom the U.S. authorities deny was ever held at Bagram – who he had last seen in Bagram in a state of near insanity.

I met at least five children in Bagram (2002) – four of whom were taken to Guantanamo and two of whom are still there. One of them, Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, was brought in at the age of fifteen so terribly wounded he looked like he was dead. His left eye was shot out and there were two huge exit wounds to his shoulder and chest. Another, a young Afghan teenager called Shams was shot in his hip by a U.S. soldier and unable to walk. I used to help to carry him to take him to the improvised barrel we had to use as a toilet – amongst 10 of us. Other than that walking and talking were prohibited in Bagram.

Earlier this year, when the new U.S. president was promising the world he’d close down Guantanamo and the secret detention sites and put an end to torture, I was touring the UK with a former U.S. soldier who had guarded some of us in Guantanamo. We were both telling the world that while we welcomed the announcement of the closure of the world’s most infamous prison, nothing was being said about places like Bagram. Several films, including the oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, were made about this place, but still little Bagram was off the international radar. As people who had served time on both sides of the wire we hoped that someone was listening. The truth is that by the time I’d passed through Bagram I was looking forward to Guantanamo.

After becoming the public relations disaster Guantanamo clearly is, we’re told days are numbered. But judging by the escalation of military activity in Afghanistan and the possibility that some Guantanamo prisoners might be transferred there , the abuses in Bagram may continue to get noticed – every couple of years or so.

SOURCE: Blogs.Reuters.com

U.S. Ampicillin buy cheap District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle issued a one-page judgment Tuesday ordering the release of Yasin Muhammed Basardh, a 33-year-old from buy cheap acomplia generic buy generic viagra professional cytotec Yemen.

The judge didn’t explain generic female viagra in the buy rimonabant buy cialis pills Tadalis online pharmacy SX amoxicillin no prescription ruling why Basardh should levitra buy be let go, but said it was explained buy buy real viagra without cialis brand prescription flagyl online during a sealed hearing in her courtroom earlier in the Cheap Accutane day.

Basardh has been fighting in court for Buy Bactrim Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed four years to be released. The diflucan buy United viagra buyviagra Silagra Buying levitra online cheap Cialis online buy href=”http://buylevaquincheap.com”>Buy Cialis daily cost cheap Levaquin pharmacy online buy real viagra without prescription | buy cialis fast shipping | low price levitra States had argued that Buy Online Viagra buy Viagra online buy buy viagra generic amoxil he buy generic viagra online was an enemy cheap Buy Brand Levitra Erectile Dysfunction medications Drugstore online were to buy viagra Ampicillin Buy Viagra online buy combatant and therefore being legally held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, but the cheap propecia specifics of his case were kept classified and sealed in online amoxil buy viagra order viagra court filings.

SOURCE: www.ap.org online propecia target buy cialis pills online buy brand viagra online amoxil Professional”>Levitra Professional Viagra”>Brand Viagra online order online levitra order amoxil order levitra buy Buy Cialis levitra pharmacy pharmacy levitra

viagra buy viagra online class=”Title_Big_News” style=”margin-left: 6px; margin-right: 6px;” dir=”ltr”>By Yvonne Ridley

Guantanamo Bay is, without doubt, the world’s most notorious prison, which has left an indelible stain on the Bush administration.

One of the first acts of U. S. President Barack Obama was to order target pharmacy levitra its closure and there is speculation that some of the detainees may now be offered asylum cheap ampicillin in Wales.

I Buy Generic Viagra am one of the few journalists to visit the sprawling naval base.

I traveled there with filmmaker David Miller, whose documentary “Guantanamo: Inside the Wire” is to be screened tomorrow.

I was invited by the U. S. military to Cuba to see the camp from the inside nolvadex to buy online pharmacy for myself… it was an offer I could not refuse.

The immediate reaction when I told people about my assignment was: Why on earth did they let you, of all people, in there?

A valid question, indeed. diflucan Why would Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription the American military extend such an invite to an anti-war activist, peace campaigner, journalist, and vociferous critic of the War on Terror?

In truth I don’t have an answer, but I am eternally gratefully that the Joint Task Force did let me spend four days at their U. S. Naval Base and, more importantly, let me out again!

I suppose it all began last year when Birmingham low where to buy cialis without prescription price levitra neurologist Dr. David Nicholl expressed his concerns about the medical ethics buy levitra low price and challenges faced by the doctors employed inside the prison during a discussion show I cheap flagyl was presenting for Press TV.

As part of my research I telephoned the base and asked to speak to a senior doctor, but the press officer at JTF-GTMO said this was impossible. A heated conversation ensued as I dropped in the words “torture and water-boarding” and from there we moved to discuss the Hippocratic Oath and medical ethics.

Clearly irritated at my challenging questions, he then read out, in a very loud voice, the entire contents of the oath which is signed by every newly qualified doctor around the world.

After making it clear I was singularly unimpressed, he then barked the invite: “Well why don’t you come over and see the medical facilities for yourself and talk to the doctors?”

Once he made clear it was not going to be a one-way ticket and I could take a cameraman, I agreed. And so, after five months of personal vetting, I and filmmaker David Miller boarded a pea-shooter of a plane run by Air Sunshine at Miami, destination Guantanamo.

We had read and filled in lots of forms before setting off, forms which would make any self-respecting journalist balk, but the option was simple — no signature, no ticket.

By signing one particular document I guess we signed away all our cheap levitra buy rights to the contents of David’s camera.

The first night we stayed in comfortable accommodation, segregated, on the naval base and then amoxicillin the next day we started our mission after being buy cialis overnight buy amoxicillin given more rules and regulations.

I Levitra Professional was told: The ground rules are established to ensure protected information such as classified information, intelligence collections capabilities, and sources and methods are not compromised and to protect the security of commission participants by preserving anonymity.

It Online Viagra buy was also made perfectly clear what would happen if the rules were breached: expulsion. In addition, disclosure of classified information could result in a criminal prosecution. Let’s face it, David and I had no option but to comply.

We could not film or identify any staff without buy cialis online overnight href=”http://mlmsuccessformula.com/images/”>Cialis online their permission — some of the guards genuinely believe Al-Qaeda will track them down to their civilian buy online acomplia homes and kill them and their families.

Security is as heightened as the paranoia, real or imagined, of all those serving at JTF-GTMO.

Section 8 of the media ground rules states:

The following media activities are prohibited and may be subject to embargo:

a. No front facial shots of detainees may be taken at any time, even with the intent of distorting or hiding facial images during production and broadcast. Front facial shots at distances are prohibited. Photos of other features considered distinguishing that could lead to the identity of a detainee may be prohibited by the Public Affairs Officer on scene and embargoed if discovered during the security review.

b. No audio, video recordings, photographs or other electronic images, or drawings, sketches or likenesses may be rendered of any detainee when that image or recording may reveal that detainee’s identity or nationality. Identities and nationalities of any detainee will not be disclosed unless previously released by OASD (PA).

Each evening David Miller went through the agony of replaying every single frame that he had shot during the day to a civilian officer who would then censor the contents if he felt it breached the rules.

For someone who has filmed and worked in Iraq under the watchful Saddam regime and the ever-controlling states of Saudi Arabia and Syria, I have to say I had never before experienced this degree of scrutiny.

Nor did I have as many military minders as I did when I made my Buy Levitra way around Guantanamo. It was a reflection, I believe, of the general state of online viagra pharmacy paranoia which is evident across American society as a result of whipping up fear over George W. Bush’s seemingly never-ending War on Terror, and I felt very sad that this fear was having such an impact in a country which used to boast about civil rights, freedoms, buy generic online viagra and liberties.

Hopefully, the new man in the White House will engage his people through empowerment and not use the politics of fear.

Of course, I know what you really want me to write about is what I saw inside the prison itself. Well, I can tell you that despite all the restrictions, I did get into Camp Delta and was given unprecedented access to camps 4, 5, and 6, the last two buy viagra onlin buy real viagra without prescription | buy cialis fast shipping | low price levitra e being part viagra brand of the shining new, maximum security facility.

Our film goes out tomorrow, so I don’t want to give too much away before it premieres, but we did see some detainees, Buy cheap Levaquin and heard the buy cheap propecia painful cries of others in the so-called “non-compliant” wing.

We were not allowed to talk to or interview them, nor were we allowed to film their faces. Our media minder told us that the Department of Defense policies prohibit the filming/recording of detainees in a way which would identify them.

Our mission is to ensure the detainee is protected under this policy, explained one of our minders.

Bizarrely, some buyviagra | buy cialis overseas | buy levitra drugs of the most stringent security presented itself when we went to Camp Justice (trust me there is no irony when these names are created). At first we were told the area was off-limits and then we were allowed to film a tight shot of the sign but were levitra website forbidden from taking a camera, any camera, inside the court room where the military tribunals are taking place.

This place is already defunct after the new U. S. president ended the military tribunals with immediate effect. Too late for the buy viagra Yemeni Salim Hamdan, who has already been tried and sentenced for his role as Osama bin Laden’s driver.

For two days buy acomplia online we were shown around the detention facilities and in to the medical and library wings. One of the most popular books on loan is from the Harry Potter series and the National Geographic magazines are also highly prized.

The intellectual content of the detainees’ library is a sharp contrast to the contents of the on-base online amoxil shop, which offers such picture-led magazines and videos with titles including Hooters and Debbie Does Dallas. We were not allowed to film the reading material of the off-duty military.

As I walked through the old Camp X-Ray, I had to tear away at the creepers and leafy tentacles which held the cages tightly closed — most are now overgrown with weeds and vines.

The only occupants are snakes and banana rats, so named because of the curious shaped droppings Kamagra these large nocturnal rodents leave behind.

My minders told me that they are most keen the rest of the world forgets the images of orange-clad Buy levitra online detainees being wheeled around the cages of Camp X-Ray to the interrogation block, which was open from January to April 2002.

And they felt that by giving us access to the new prison nestling on the edge of a bay and surrounded by razor and barbed wire, that we would go away Cialis Professional satisfied that the treatment of the detainees was humane and had improved.

I’m sorry, but what I saw did not make me rest easy at all. In some ways the supermax-style cheapest propecia prison is grotesque and an affront to civilized society. Every part of the supermax cell is designed to dehumanize and degrade the occupant.

Although I’m not sure who is more humiliated in the non-compliant wing when asking for toilet roll — the guard who has to count out around eight sheets of tissue paper or the detainee who stands there and watches him do this.

I did get a chance to interview the medical staff and was slightly concerned to learn that more than two thirds of the detainees had undergone colonoscopies — a medical procedure to examine the inside of the large colon and small bowel using Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription a fiberoptic camera. It is a procedure used mainly on older patients which does not fit the profile of the detainees.

The doctor I spoke to vehemently denied that the Viagra online detainees were being used as human guineau pigs to enhance their own medical CVs for when army personnel move to civvy street.

I requested an hour to sit down and interview the rear Ampicillin buy cheap online Drugstore admiral who buy Online Cialis buy amoxicillin is in charge of the whole facility. The interview began quite well and he even offered me his pips and resignation if he thought anything untoward was going on during his watch.

But there were a few silences and uneasy pauses as my questions about human rights became more and more challenging. The session was brought to an abrupt end by an overly protective PR man as I got into the arena of the now defunct Camp Iguana where children as young as 12 were once held.

I was assured all the children have long gone, but as Birmingham-based ex-detainee Moazzam Begg told me: “No Yvonne, some of the children are still there, but now they’ve grown up into young men like Omar Khadr.”

My documentary covers the haunting case of Canadian citizen Omar, buy cialis pills the last Westerner to remain in Gitmo. I defy anyone to watch the footage we later obtained which shows the child weeping over his blindness and injuries and crying for his mother during an interrogation.

Moazzam Begg is probably the best known prisoner to emerge from the cages of Cuba, but others have also chosen to break their silence for the first time by talking to me on the record for the documentary. Their candid interviews are also included in our film, although some still insisted on remaining in the studio shadows.

Rear Admiral Mark Busby has now moved on from Guantanamo, promoted earlier vaginal cytotec this month in the last few days of the Bush administration.

The most striking thing which emerged during my interviews with ordinary soldiers right up to the bossman himself was their total commitment to the mission in Guantanamo. I’m curious about buy brand viagra | buy cialis online cheap | buy levitra online their gut reaction to Obama’s swift decision.

They were clearly shocked, almost wounded, when I told them that buy generic zithromax politicians around the world were calling for its closure –including those sitting in the White House. It was as though they were wrapped in their own cocoon, sealed off and protected from world opinion.

“Honor bound to defend freedom. That is our mission and that is what we believe in,” said one lanky Marine as he stooped to hiss the words slowly in my ear when I questioned the point of the facility and its long-term future.

“Honor Bound” is embellished levitra buying on virtually every notice board and signpost around Guantanamo Bay. It’s on the coffee mug I was presented with — bought from the souvenir shop on the base where you can buy everything from a t-shirt to a baseball cap or key ring.

Some notice boards Levitra carry a special “value word” which is changed every week. When I was there, the buzzword was: RESPECT. There are still more than 200 men languishing in the facility while hundreds more have passed through buy amoxil online the facility, including children.

I know there has been talk that some of the detainees could be given a new home and fresh start in Wales as asylum seekers Brand Viagra because it is not safe for them to return to their country of origin. There is a twist of irony that the U. S. has refused to return 16 Uyghurs to China over the issue of human rights.

More than Viagra for sale 100 countries have been approached to try to find them a new home where they can resettle. Those countries that refused to accept detainees are now more open to requests from the Obama administration.

What I saw and what David Miller filmed in Guantanamo will haunt us both for the rest of our lives and our “Gitmo experience” lasted only four days, but there are other, more secret prisons around the world.

Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who we also feature, reckons there are still around 20,000 prisoners held in U. S. custody, beyond the rule of law, at various locations, including Bagram Air Base, where 680 prisoners are held without any due process.

It is worth remembering that 95 percent of those held in Guantanamo were not picked up from a battlefield, but many were sold like slaves for bounties of $5000; a fact acknowledged in Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography In The Line of Fire.

I hope that our film will move all of you who watch it, and if detainees are released to come and live near you, I also hope you will extend the hand of friendship and not point a finger of suspicion.

Yvonne Ridley is a patron of Cageprisoner and cheap Buy Brand Cialis Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed Viagra buy pfizer viagra online kamagra buy online Ampicillin Without Prescription information on all political prisoners, especially those being held in Guantanamo, can be accessed on the organization’s website www. cageprisoner. com. Guantanamo: Inside the Wire premieres on the English language satellite news network Press TV
(Sky channel 515) on Monday, February 2 at 9:35 am and 17:35 (gmt) and it can also be downloaded live on www. presstv. com.

SOURCE: freedetainees.org

Before the place closes, I might have cheapest acomplia a couple more opportunities to get down to buy levitra online Guantanamo Bay. Nothing very much has changed. Some of the ­soldiers have become disillusioned, knowing that their orders place them on the wrong side of history. They talk more, they try to make life a little easier on the prisoners. Their commanders have become more dogmatic, if that were possible, like terriers who refuse to buy cialis now give up a bone.

In a way, I am going to miss Guantanamo. It’s an odd ­notion, but I’ve been there more than 20 times, more than six months in all. Sometimes, the true joy of tilting at windmills comes when there is an ogre in the White House. Now they are gone, buy Without Prescription online Ampicillin cheap George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the entire Axis of Evil.

Only a few days ago, on 20 January, Americans welcomed in the new year with the inauguration of Barack Obama. The new president immediately demonstrated that he means business, taking a break between dances at his ten inaugural balls to start issuing executive orders. The first 24 hours saw four decrees: the closure of Guantanamo Bay (within a year), a review of US detention policies (including the closure of CIA “black sites”), a review of US “transfer” policies (the euphemism for extraordinary rendition), and an evaluation of what position the administration should take in the case of Ali al-Marri, the only person held in extrajudicial detention on US soil for more than seven years in the “war on terror”. Obama did more Levitra for the rule of law in one day than buy brand viagra George W Bush did in eight years.

However, while this may herald a new dawn, we are very far from the end of the day. If there is one lesson that must be learned from Bush’s catalogue of mistakes it is that we should not go hanging up the “Mission Accomplished” banner in too much of a hurry. Bush made his infamous announcement on the USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003, only 41 days after the invasion of Iraq. Almost six years later, it is sobering to note that more than 96 per cent canadian pharmacy levitra Provigil online No prescription of the US and coalition casualties came after Bush claimed that it was all over.

The battle for human rights is no more easily won. It is buy real viagra without prescription folly to think amoxicillin that Obama can sign four orders and fix an entire era of human rights abuses. A president, no matter how well-intentioned, can only achieve his goals if he has the necessary information and political support. In terms of information, Obama’s limited sources have to be a concern. With each policy review that flagyl online he has ordered, he has named the players who will issue the report: the cheap Drugstore Ampicillin online buy Online buy Levitra attorney general, the secretary buy cialis pills online of defence, the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security, the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the joint chiefs of buy levitra cheap online staff. For the most part, these are the very institutions that created the problem in the first place. Nowhere does this take into account those who have struggled for change. There are plenty of interest groups opposed to a close analysis of the recent past; others remain convinced that al-Qaeda presents a different paradigm to anything previously cheapest viagra encountered, one where the rule of law must give way.

Closing Guantanamo Bay will be a challenge, not least in terms of determining what will be done with the 240 prisoners detained there. The first group is the easiest – the 140 or so prisoners who can just be repatriated. buy Ampicillin Ninety-seven are from Yemen, and they would be home already if only the Bush administration had talked to President Saleh.

The second group Buy Viagra are refugees who need resettlement: there are around 60, most of whom were picked up in Pakistan for bounties. Here, Obama needs help from his allies to offer them sanctuary, and it is sad that the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, announced a few days ago that Britain felt it had done enough already. amoxicillin A country that played so integral a part in supporting the mess created by Bush might feel a greater obligation to clean it up.

Last, there is the group of prisoners who Cialis Jelly Viagra jet will be tried, perhaps price levitra 40 of them. President Obama has ordered that the Guantanamo military commissions be suspended. Now looms the struggle over the formulation of a process to replace them. Even liberals in the US are talking about a security court, a ­notion that would sound Orwellian were it not for the fact that Britain already has such a body – SIAC, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, with all its secrecy and its special advocates, all beyond the public eye.

Obama has also ordered the closure of CIA prisons. This is an interesting comment on his predecessor’s candour, since Bush assured us in September 2006 that there were no more prisoners in CIA detention. Indeed, there is no definition of what a CIA prison is: none has ever been designated as such. The overwhelming majority (more than 99 per cent) of the, roughly, 20,000 prisoners still held in US custody, beyond the rule of law, have never been in a “CIA prison”. Guantanamo is not a CIA prison. Bagram air Buy cialis online base is not a CIA prison, yet the US military continues to hold 680 prisoners without any due process.

What we do know is that, while in US custody, prisoners disappear. Reprieve, together with other human rights organisations, drafted a report called Off the Record which featured 39 people who have vanished in US custody. Only two have surfaced; 37 remain ghosts. The story of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi is an example of how the osmotic pressure of politics can result in prisoners being shuffled quietly off to a terrible fate. Al-Libi was seized in November 2001 and soon rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where torture viagra prices elicited the “fact” that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were in league over weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Bush cited this as a reason to invade Iraq; the then secretary of state Colin Powell repeated it in the UN. When 14 “high-value detainees” appeared in Guantanamo Bay in September 2006, Ibn al-Libi was not among them; what he might say to a lawyer was just too embarrassing for the administration. So he was rendered to disappear in Libya, where Reprieve has now tracked him down. His story must be told – both to expose the consequences of torture and how Libya is being used to spare Bush’s blushes.

Notwithstanding such important individual stories, the directive to close CIA prisons is only of passing relevance. There is also the question of the proxy prisons. The outsourcing of torture and imprisonment was one of the greatest horrors of the Bush years, and there are proxy prisons that have never been part of the public debate, including a particularly unpleasant one in Uzbekistan. Other countries – most notably Jordan and Egypt – continue to serve secret buy cialis soft American interests.

It would also be unwise to assume that Obama’s policy review is going to eliminate the practice of rendition. This was not a Bush brainchild; as far back as Ronald Reagan, suspects had been “snatched” – the preferred Silagra term – from abroad. There was enthusiasm for rendition during the Clinton era. Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism tsar to both Democrats and Republicans, Buy Erectile Dysfunction medications relates an infamous story in his book Against All Enemies:

The first time I had proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White how do i buy viagra online | buy cialis canadian | cheap levitra generic House counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the president to explain how it violated international law. Clinton seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the argument low price levitra on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, “That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, amoxil online that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.”

The euphemisms – “rendition to justice” buyviagra buy Cialis proscar is a favourite one, when someone is “snatched” and brought to face trial in the US – cannot disguise the fact that there is no legal distinction that buy augmentin sets it apart from kidnapping.

President Obama has ordered an end to torture, requiring that all interrogations abide by the Army Field Manual. Yet the ink was barely dry on his directive before talk of adding more coercive techniques to the manual began to surface even from within the Obama administration itself, possibly as a sop to right-wing critics. Obama also said nothing about accountability. With a wink and a nod, before his inauguration, there were signs that he had already come under pressure from both sides of the aisle not to look too carefully at the criminal practices of the Bush administration. Nobody in Congress seems to have the stomach for a bloody inquest, and I believe the Senate leadership have indicated that inquiries are not on their list of priorities. Obama’s reticence is understandable enough. He is embarking on a daunting mission, and he must seek allies where he can find them. Digging up the skeletons of the past might have suited the Democrats in the run-up to the election, but if they want Republican co-operation now, the prospect is less appealing.

The setting up of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to ensure that the truth comes to light, both for the peace of mind of the victims and so that history can record the mistakes, would be one option open to the new president, and there is no legitimate argument against it. But such a commission will not easily be born. A systematic structure of secrecy – couched buy levaquin in national security terms – may be the most dangerous and long-lasting legacy of Bush and Tony Blair. I have a US security clearance, and while I obviously cannot reveal classified material, I can state without hesitation that the overwhelming majority of it would not remain hidden in a sane world.

Looking to the future, it is enormously exciting to have a US president who is so powerfully in favour of human rights. But it is unclear buy generic levitra whether he could sustain his approach in the face of (for example) a further terror attack on US soil. Unfortunately best viagra online we should not discount the possibility of such an attack. Al- Qaeda must realise that a decent president is a danger to their cause, just as Bush’s policies provided the most effective recruiting sergeant to their banner that they could viagra online pharmacy imagine.

Clive Stafford Smith is the director of Reprieve, the UK legal action charity that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay. For more information, see www.reprieve.org.uk, or contact Cialis Professional Reprieve, PO Box 52742, London EC4P 4WS. Tel: 020 7353 4640

Inside Guantanamo/Moazzam Begg

Moazzam Begg was detained by Pakistani police and shop viagra CIA officers in January 2002 while he was living in Islamabad.

I was never arrested, I was kidnapped at gunpoint. Nobody ever questioned me until I was handed over into custody. It happened because the US offered bounties of thousands of pounds for each person. There was no justice system, absolutely none. They didn’t even pretend there was. You were simply in custody and that’s it.
I was held for three years – 11 months in Bagram and two years, one month in Guantanamo. Most of my time was in solitary confinement – it was monotonous and dreary, with nothing to look forward to. There was no window in my cell, and it was impossible to take more Buy elavil online than three steps in any direction. They had recreation three times a day in a caged area that was about three times the size of my cell. By the end, they had increased each time to an hour.
We welcome news of the closure – it’s seven years too late, but it’s better late than never. But we’re still concerned about the ghost prisons, where conditions cytotec order are even worse than in Guantanamo. Obama has said that he’s going to shut Guantanamo but he’s also said that he’s going to increase the numbers of troops in Afghanistan. So there are likely to be more people imprisoned there. I’m particularly concerned because I was held in Bagram myself for almost a year, and I saw some people killed there.

SOURCE: freedetainees.org Online buy Viagra

The day Franklin Roosevelt died, one reporter turned to another and said: “Now we’ll have to grow up.” The same might be said with the departure of George W. Bush. The era of Bush-bashing is over, and now we’ll have to grow up and start thinking seriously about a whole set of issues that don’t lend themselves to easy or even morally coherent solutions.

Take the detainee base at Guantánamo. Last Thursday Barack Obama signed an executive order that will close the prison within a year. Approval was worldwide — hardly a surprise since the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere has been subjected to a steady barrage of (deserved) criticism for several years now. Here, for example, is a list of only some of the books reviewed in the Book Review that have reported on the Bush-Cheney excesses:

• “The Way of the World,” by Ron Suskind
• “The Dark Side,” by Jane Mayer
• “My Guantánamo Diary,” by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan
• “The Challenge,” by Jonathan Mahler
• “Bush’s Buy vpxl online Law,” by Eric Lichtblau
• “Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power,” by Joseph Margulies
• “Guantánamo: The War on Human Rights,” by David Rose
• “Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak,” edited by Marc Falkoff

By prodding the nation’s conscience, these books, and many, many newspaper and magazine stories as well, have been in the finest tradition of American journalism. And yet, oddly, for the most part they weren’t wholly satisfying. They tended to be long on reporting, short on analysis. They relied on an implicit agreement between writer and reader that the rights and wrongs of Guantánamo were clear, so that all readers needed were the facts the writers offered. The horrors spoke for themselves.

But did they? What if the Bush administration provided brutal and clumsy answers to questions that still needed to be resolved? What if Gitmo’s closing is merely symbolic, not a policy but a temporary substitute for a policy?

Indeed, what we’ve been learning over the past week — if we didn’t know it before — is that closing Guantánamo won’t be easy. Here are the facts insofar as we know them. Approximately 250 detainees remain at Guantánamo. Of these, about 60 can be released without serious reservations. Another 80 or so could be tried. But that leaves around 100-110 who present the Obama administration with a grave problem. Those prisoners can’t be tried because the evidence against them is classified, or was obtained through torture. Yet they can’t readily be released because they are too dangerous.

Consider, for example, the case of the “20th hijacker,” Mohammed al-Qahtani. Recently, Judge Susan J. Crawford, the senior official for the Pentagon’s military commissions, ruled that he had been tortured and therefore could not be prosecuted. But she added that he is still “a very dangerous man. … I would be hesitant to say ‘Let him go.’ ” There is also Abd al-Rahman al-Zahri, who says he remains ready to kill himself for Osama bin Laden “and will also give my family and all of my money to him.” Last week The Times reported that a prisoner released in 2007 is now the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.

“We’re inheriting a very difficult situation,” Joe Biden has declared. “Not all of it is clear cut.”

It’s precisely because the answers aren’t clear cut that the post-Gitmo discussion is so fascinating, and why surfing the Net these days is both rewarding and surprising. The conservative Ross Douthat says that “the Bush administration’s broader record on detainee policy looks like a moral fiasco.” Yet Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor write in a cover story for Newsweek that “the flaw of the Bush-Cheney administration may have been less in what it did than in the way it did it.” In a post on NationalJournal.com, Taylor goes on to argue for a new “national security court” for the hard cases. But National Interest’s website, in providing a useful summary of recent editorial opinion, points to The Wall Street Journal’s observation that such a court would be “almost identical” to Bush’s military tribunals. The New York Times’s own blog Room for Debate has some excellent comments by a group of experts — among them one arguing that if Obama continues holding the most dangerous prisoners, then “the closure of Guantánamo will be something of a sham.”

The Times reports that Obama’s national security team is riven by disagreement over the issue (a refreshing change from the lockstep monolith of the Bush White House). After a quick survey of Net commentary, I’d say the best guess is that the Obama administration will eventually recommend some kind of national security court, even if it does resemble Bush’s military tribunals, and that dangerous prisoners will continue to be held. Many human rights groups won’t be pleased. At least one has already begun to grumble.

There’s more. Obama’s order last Thursday left open the possibility that harsh and secret interrogation techniques could be reintroduced if, for instance, some top leader of Al Qaeda were captured. Torture? Who can know? In their Newsweek article, Thomas and Taylor write: “The issue of torture is more complicated than it seems.” And they point out that “Obama has already shown a prudent willingness to bend or abandon his more sweeping campaign rhetoric.”

SOURCE: freedetainees.org

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor

Buy cheap online Provigil diflucan generic detainee buy cialis online in usa from Afghanistan with guards at the US prison camp viagra online in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ” width=”300″ height=”204″ />

When Barack Obama signs the draft order to tear down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, he will end at a stroke one of most shameful chapters in American foreign policy history.

Kamagra Soft Since cheap Ampicillin Drugstore buy online 2002, target Buy online Viagra pharmacy cheap levitra online levitra when the first Muslim prisoners were taken from buy cialis pills the battlefields buy generic cytotec of Afghanistan levitra buying viagra drugs to the cheap propecia US naval base in Cuba, the camp’s high razor wire fences and the inmates’ orange jumpsuits have become synonymous with Online buy Cialis the injustice of the US war on terror.

Repeated allegations of torture and abuse made amoxicillin buy by the prisoners have added to the controversy. But nothing seemed to sway President George Bush in his determination Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without buy cialis overseas Prescription to override international amoxicillin amoxil law and hold suspects in unlawful detention without charge 424 buy viagra | where to buy cialis without prescription | order online levitra or trial. Those brought here are classified as “enemy combatants” in a crude legal attempt to sidestep the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

In six years, nearly 800 Levitra prisoners have passed through the detention blocks of Guantanamo, where at least four inmates have committed suicide buy cialis online cheap and dozens more failed in their attempts. The high Viagra free sample security detention camp, known viagera as Camp Kamagra Soft Delta, houses three smaller centres called Camp Echo, Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray, but are collectively referred to as Guantanamo or, in militaryspeak, Gitmo.

The toughest task facing the Obama administration will be finding homes for the remaining 245 inmates. It is likely that 21 prisoners, including the mastermind of the 11 September viagra sales attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who are already facing military tribunals, will be put on trial in civilian or military courts in America. Cases against another 60 suspects where order buy cialis online levitra there is evidence to support charges where to purchase nolvadex will be reviewed by a new team of prosecutors.

Disposal Buy VPXL Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed of the remainder, including amoxicillin amoxil two men claiming British residency, will require delicate diplomatic negotiations with their home governments. Some, Viagra Jelly including a number levitra online of Algerians, cannot be rimonabant sent home because they face possible detention and torture by their own governments who view them as Islamic terrorists.

European buy buy cheapest viagra online | buy cialis with no prescription | cheap levitra generic Online Cialis Brand Cialis href=”http://onlineacompliacheap.com”>cheapest acomplia buy amoxil governments, including Britain’s, have been asked to help close the camp by taking prisoners who may have no links with their country. So far, Portugal Buy cheap Levaquin and, more recently, Ireland and Switzerland, are thought to be the only countries prepared to make such an offer. But it will be negotiations with the state viagra prices of Yemen which will be key to the success of any release programme.

More online pharmacy than 100 of the detainees are believed to be Yemeni nationals. But because the Bush administration has refused to negotiate with the Islamic state, little progress has been made.

Britain has formally requested the release of two of its detainees, Binyam Mohamed, 38, an Ethiopian refugee and British resident who has been held at Guantanamo for four years, and Shaker Aamer, 41, a Saudi married to a British woman. The British residence status of a third detainee, Ahmed Belbacha, 39, an Algerian who lived in London, is disputed by Britain. All three are now expected to be brought back to Britain.

Guantanamo has been described by senior judges all over the world as a legal limbo Buy amoxil online and a stain on the founding principles of American justice.

President Obama knows that if he really wants to bring America back under the rule of law which he promised to do during the electoral campaign and in his inauguration speech, then Guantanamo is the place were he must begin the job.

Detained without Buy Antibiotics medications online propecia rights: Three terror suspects

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

In March 2007, after four years in captivity, including six months at Guantanamo Bay, he confessed to masterminding the 11 September attacks, the attempt by the British shoe bomber, Richard Reid, to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia and the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993. He is expected to be tried by a court on the US mainland.

Binyam Mohamed

Binyam Mohamed, a 31-year-old Ethiopian granted refugee status by the UK, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and handed to US agents. He claims they flew him to a jail buy cialis fast shipping in Morocco, where he was tortured, before being transferred to a US prison in Afghanistan and then Guantanamo in buy real viagra without prescription 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year and he is expected to be returned buy online cheap Ampicillin Without Prescription to Britain.

Shaker Aamer

Shaker Aamer, flagyl online a Saudi national who lived in Britain and had applied for buy cialis soft tabs British nationality, was abducted in Pakistan and sold to US forces for $5,000. Mr Shaker, 40, and his British wife, Zennira, have four British children, aged buy levitra vardenafil between five and nine, the youngest of whom Mr Shaker has never seen. The British Government have offered him residence Buy Cialis online and he is expected to be one of Kamagra Gold the first released.

800 Prisoners cheap ampicillin buy have passed through Guantanamo.

SOURCE: amoxicillin freedetainees.org

Four of the men were transferred to Iraq, one to Algeria and one to Afghanistan, a military spokesman said.

They had each been detained at Guantanamo for “several years,” according to the military. None of them was charged with a crime.

“The transfer is a demonstration of the United States’ desire not to hold detainees any longer than necessary,” said a Department of Defense statement. “It also underscores the processes put in place to assess each individual and make a determination about their detention while hostilities are ongoing, an unprecedented step in the history of warfare.”

The detainees were among 60 whom the United States has decided to release. Those remaining have not been cleared for release as the government negotiates their return with their home countries.

“There is an inherent risk in detainee transfers and releases, as over 60 ex-Gitmo detainees have reportedly returned to terrorism,” Department of Defense spokesman J.D. Gordon said.

At its peak, Guantanamo held 770 people who the U.S. government believed may have been involved in terrorist activity or military action against the nation. The facility drew sharp criticism, including from Barack Obama as he campaigned for the presidency.

Human and legal rights advocates complained that many of the detainees were being held indefinitely although there were no criminal charges filed against them. Reports of mistreatment of detainees led many, including Obama, to argue that the facility was not ineffective in dealing with alleged enemy combatants or for gathering good intelligence.

Sources close to Obama’s transition team say he plans to make shuttering the facility a priority soon after he takes the oath of office Tuesday.

In all, 244 detainees remain at Guantanamo.

SOURCE: Freedetainees.org

A lawless experiment

The facts about the prison make for grim reading. A lawless experiment in arbitrary detention and coercive interrogations, Guantánamo was deliberately chosen as the location for the prison because it was presumed to be beyond the reach of the US courts.

The authorities decided that they needed complete freedom to interrogate the buy generic online viagra prisoners as they saw fit, even though they did not know who they actually had in their custody. The warnings that emerged from the mouths of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the days and weeks following the opening of Guantánamo — in which they described the prisoners as “the worst of the worst,” who were “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth”  — were in fact hollow rhetoric.

As a study of Pentagon documents by the Seton Hall Law cheap ampicillin buy 424 buy viagra | where to buy cialis without prescription | order online levitra School demonstrated (PDF) — and as I can confirm from my own research buy acomplia online buy cialis phentermine for The Guantánamo Files — at least 86 percent of the prisoners were captured not by US forces, but by their Afghan and Pakistani allies, at a time when bounty payments for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects,” averaging $5000 a head, were widespread, and the US authorities compounded the baleful effects of this essentially indiscriminate dragnet by refusing to grant the prisoners battlefield tribunals under Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions. Held close to the time and place of capture, these had been implemented in every US war since Vietnam, and allowed witnesses to come forward to help the military separate combatants from civilians caught up in the fog of war.

Further compounding these omissions, levitra online those Cialis Professional in overall charge of the lists of prisoners held for processing at shop zithromax prisons in Kandahar and Bagram (senior figures from the Pentagon, Online Viagra buy the military and the intelligence services, who were based in Kuwait) ordered that ever Arab who came into US hands was to be transferred to Guantánamo. As a result, not a single prisoner was ever adequately screened to ascertain if they actually constituted a threat to the US, or were innocent buy cytotec online men seized by mistake, but the Bush administration insisted that they were all “enemy combatants” without rights, and deliberately stripped them of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit “cruel or inhuman treatment,” to facilitate their interrogation.

Approving torture

The true horror of Guantánamo — and, it should be noted, of the “War on Terror” detention policies in general — became apparent when the administration responded to the meagre flow of intelligence from the Guantánamo prisoners by deciding that this was because they had been trained to resist interrogation by al-Qaeda, and not because, as innocent men and simple Taliban recruits, they had no intelligence to offer. As a highly critical Senate Armed Services buy proscar Committee inquiry made clear last month (buy cialis generic online href=”http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf” buy cialis professional buy clomid nolvadex target=”_self”>PDF), the authorities’ response was to find new ways to “break” the prisoners psychologically, which they did by reverse engineering Chinese viagra brand torture techniques taught in US military schools to train American personnel to resist interrogation if captured.

These techniques, known by the acronym SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), include “stripping detainees of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures.” In some circumstances, they also include buy real viagra without prescription Cialis online target=”_self”>waterboarding, a notorious buy cialis overseas torture technique, which involves controlled drowning.

The members of the Senate Committee were outraged that techniques that are illegal under the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, and that are designed to enable buying propecia US personnel to produce false confessions, formed the basis of the Bush administration’s online amoxil approach to intelligence gathering in the “War on Terror,” but the policy’s many critics (including the amoxicillin amoxil FBI, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the Defense Department’s own Criminal Investigative Buy Antibiotics medications Task Force) were brushed aside.

Moreover, when the administration felt that even harsher techniques viagra online were required for a smaller number of prisoners Silagra Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription regarded as particularly significant (both in Guantánamo and in secret prisons established by the CIA), lawyers close to Vice President price levitra target=”_self”>Dick Cheney — led by David Addington, Cheney’s former legal counsel, and now his chief of staff — attempted to redefine torture as the infliction of pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious buy Drugstore cheap Ampicillin online physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” as a replacement for its definition under the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, in which torture is correctly recognized as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.”

In terms of producing “actionable intelligence,” of course, the administration’s policy was an unmitigated disaster, as even the most cursory study of sanofi acomplia the history of torture reveals that it yields inaccurate information, and in Guantánamo this steady flow Viagra professional of coerced falsehoods was supplemented by further lies produced by bribery, as other prisoners took advantage of the promise of better living conditions to tell lies about their fellow inmates. It was, however, sufficient for the administration to claim to the world that the prison was full of dangerous “enemy combatants,” amoxicillin who could be held without charge or trial until the end of a “War on Terror” that the government itself admitted may last for generations.

Guantánamo now

For the prisoners still held at Guantánamo — 248 out of a total of 779 — conditions have Viagra online improved to the extent that the SERE-derived torture techniques came to an end in the summer of 2004, when the US Supreme Court granted the prisoners habeas corpus rights (the right to challenge the basis of their detention before an impartial buy generic levitra buy cialis internet judge), and lawyers were finally buy cialis fast shipping allowed access to cheap amoxil the prison. In other ways, however, Guantánamo remains an affront to all notions of decency.

Tadacip title=”A cell in Guantanamo’s Camp 6″ src=”http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/guantanamocell.jpg” alt=”" width=”256″ height=”171″ />The majority of the prisoners are now held in almost complete isolation in state-of-the-art cellblocks modelled on maximum-security prisons on the US mainland, order viagra online their opportunities to socialize or indulge in any of the leisure activities that convicted criminals on the mainland take for granted remain minimal or non-existent, and even the most minor infringements of the prison’s rules are punished with brutal assaults by armoured response teams, and imprisonment –- for a month or more –- in total solitary confinement.

In addition, those who embark on hunger strikes as their only means of protesting their conditions of confinement are force-fed Provigil online No prescription against their will, an experience that is both horribly painful and illegal. Disturbingly, the latest reports indicate that 30 prisoners are buy cialis canadian amoxicillin amoxil href=”http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/south/view/2009_01_08_Hunger_strikers_surge_to_10_percent_at_Guantanamo/srvc=home&position=recent” flagyl price target=”_self”>currently on hunger strike, complaining about the fact that they remain imprisoned without charge Cialis or trial while buy cialis online cheap cheap Without Prescription online diflucan buy Ampicillin target=”_self”>Salim Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden who was levitra drugs target=”_self”>convicted of providing material support for terrorism after a trial by Military Commission last summer, was repatriated in November to serve out the last month of his sentence.

SOURCE: freedetainees.org