New Report From Guantanamo - Democratic Underground

kpete

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Sat Jun-10-06 10:33 PM
Original message

New Report From Guantanamo

Saturday :: June 10, 2006
New Report From Guantanamo
I just received this e-mail from Seton Hall Law Professor Mark Denbeaux, who along with his son Joshua, is representing some of the detainees at Guantanamo, inlcuding one of those on a hunger strike.

Joshua and I just returned from Guantanamo this week. One of our clients was forceably extracted during our interview day because he was attempting suicide and required force feeding. He said that he would rather die than stay in Guantanamo and they confiscated our news stories in which Bush announced that he wanted to close Guantanamo. The same detainee who was so depressed that he wanted to die, was prevented from seeing a news story that might have given him hope.

Our client Mohammad Rahman actually has serious health conditions that they will not address. When he was 32 he had a pacemaker installed and he had a heart valve replaced. The valve seems to be leaking again. We have tried to obtain his medical records, to no avail, and to obtain real medical assistance for his heart and other his serious health problems. They provide nothing-- but they will interrupt our client interview to "protect his health and life" by force feeding him.

This was the worst three days of my life. There is a great deal more. Now we hear the government's strident characterizations of these suicides.

more at:
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015058.html

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AusGail

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Sun Jun-11-06 12:25 AM
Response to Original message

1. Travesty of justice

Surely it has to be one of the biggest war crimes ever committed. How can the American government pick and choose when they follow the Geneva Convention or not. How many of the inmates went through rendition before ending up there?

I have an interest in the place because we have an Australian held there- David Hicks. Our government has not lifted a finger to help him for fear of upsetting Bush. Even Tony Blair, who was complicit with Bush in the invasion of Iraq, has arranged for all British citizens to be released from there, and have all since been set free in England.

I wonder if it is appropriate for the UN to step in. I realize that all the inmates may not be totally innocent but I know for sure, not one of them were flying the planes on 9/11.

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MikeNY

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Sun Jun-11-06 12:32 AM
Response to Reply #1

2. Agree completely.

The conditions they are living in are completely inhumane. They're killing themselves because they've been held against their will for 5 years without any word of the outside world, without any chance of release, without any closure or opportunity of a trial. I don't care if these people are the most heinous criminals the world has ever seen: If this has not been proven in a court of law, their detention is against American values - it is against everything we stand for.

The truth is outside of the DoD, there is no oversight on this facility... from Congress, from anyone... How about the rumors of secret detention facilities in E. Europe? What is wrong with this country? Fight your enemy hard enough and you'll become just like them.

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stellanoir

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Sun Jun-11-06 01:42 AM
Response to Original message

3. hmmmmmm

Yet the corporate whores insist on reiterating the gov's official utterly inhumane spin that those alleged "enemy combatants" didn't off themselves out of acutely profound "desperation" bereft of hope for improvement. As if suicide ever is the result of anything less. "They did it as an act of aggression." I just heard on the radio.

Huh???

The deafening counterintuitive nonsensical timbre of the spin is ever increasingly burning my ears and threatens to permanantly scorch my brain.

Now where did I put that tin foil hat?

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