Waterboarding? Hmpf. It's child's play.
Hello:
Last month, in response to increasing pressure over reports of British resident Binyam Mohamed's deterioration (he was on a hunger strike) in Guantanamo, Obama released him back to Britain.
Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, and legal resident of Britain was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. He was rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Gitmo in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year.
Ever since, he has been detailing the often brutal torture to which he was subjected over several years, torture in which British intelligence officials appear to have been, at the very least, complicit. As a result, despite the efforts of both the British Government and the Obama administration to keep concealed what was done to Mohamed, the facts about his treatment have emerged and a major political controversy has been ignited.
That's because torture is illegal in Britain, as it is in the United States. But unlike the United States, Britain hasn't completely abandoned the idea that even political officials must be accountable when they commit crimes. Their political discourse isn't dominated and infected by the subservient government defending apologists. And they don't have "opposition leaders" who are so afraid of their own shadows and/or so supportive of torture that they remain mute in the face of such allegations. To the contrary, demands for criminal investigations into these episodes of torture (including demands for war crimes investigations from conservatives) span the political spectrum in Britain.
A secret International Red Cross report quotes detainees describing, often in gruesome detail, how they were locked in coffin-size boxes; swung by towels around their necks into plywood walls; and forced to stand naked for days while their arms were shackled above their heads.
The UK Telegraph reports that two High Court judges wanted the release of the full contents of a CIA file on Mr. Mohameds treatment but the CIA held back seven paragraphs of information. The 25 lines edited out of the file contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.
Bush offered to let Mr. Mohamed out if he'd accept a gag order whereby Mohamed would have been freed from Guantanamo last year if he agreed (a) not to talk publicly about the treatment he received and (b) cease all efforts to prove in court that he was tortured and/or to obtain documents proving that he was mistreated.
He refused, and went on a hunger strike.
So, we put people into cages for years with no charges and tortured them, and then told them that we would release them only if they agreed to keep silent about what we did to them and renounce all claims for judicial accountability and disclosure. If they refused the vow of silence -- as Mohamed did -- they would stay locked in their cage.
Does it make you proud? Should we STILL look forward and forget about the past??
excon
