McClatchy Investigates “Guantanamo: Beyond the Law”
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
A remarkable eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad. The 5-part investigative series is reported by Tom Lasseter.
Links to the full articles are provided below and I strongly recommend that you read the full articles. McClatchy has posted numerous related reports, video diaries and an archive of documents reviewed in its investigation for this series at its web site www.mcclatchydc.com. It is a compendium of the war crimes of the Bush administration. Highlighted snippets from the 5-part investigative series follows below.
Contact your television and newspaper editors and demand that they report this remakable piece of investigative journalism.
Part 1
McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/15/2008 | America’s prison for terrorists often held the wrong men
America’s prison for terrorists often held the wrong men
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An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.
This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.
The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.
Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.
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