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
* * *
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.
Much more after the Continuation…