Testimony from Guantanamo
This is a short excerpt from a report posted at Common Dreams. Don't you just love seeing democracy in action?
Court documents publicized last week are giving dozens of Guantánamo detainees what the Bush administration had sought to keep from public view: identities and voices. The government is holding about 550 terrorist suspects at its naval base in Cuba. An additional 214 have been released since the facility opened in January 2002 -- some into the custody of their native governments, others freed outright.
The detainees appeared last year before the three-officer military tribunals which, after quick reviews, confirmed their status as ”enemy combatants” who could be held indefinitely.
In the transcripts, one terror suspect asked his U.S. military judge: ''Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?”
In another case, Guantanamo prisoner Feroz Ali Abbasi was ejected from his hearing for repeatedly challenging the legality of his detention.
''I have the right to speak,” Abbasi insisted in transcripts reviewed by the Associated Press.
''No, you don't,” the tribunal president replied.
''I don't care about international law,” the tribunal president told Abbasi just before he was taken from the room. ''I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law.”
Court documents publicized last week are giving dozens of Guantánamo detainees what the Bush administration had sought to keep from public view: identities and voices. The government is holding about 550 terrorist suspects at its naval base in Cuba. An additional 214 have been released since the facility opened in January 2002 -- some into the custody of their native governments, others freed outright.
The detainees appeared last year before the three-officer military tribunals which, after quick reviews, confirmed their status as ”enemy combatants” who could be held indefinitely.
In the transcripts, one terror suspect asked his U.S. military judge: ''Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?”
In another case, Guantanamo prisoner Feroz Ali Abbasi was ejected from his hearing for repeatedly challenging the legality of his detention.
''I have the right to speak,” Abbasi insisted in transcripts reviewed by the Associated Press.
''No, you don't,” the tribunal president replied.
''I don't care about international law,” the tribunal president told Abbasi just before he was taken from the room. ''I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law.”
posted by Mike at 6:33 PM
1 Comments:
I don't want to care, but this pisses me off too much. Talk about a kangaroo court. Guilty until... wait.. it doesn't matter..
*sigh*. Hopefully people in power will do something. Are the "combatants" US citizens? If not, can't they deport them? I know the US can deport people without specifying a reason (if it's not legal, they've still been doing it).
As a side note: This also makes me wonder when unification will start. I'm betting 25 years.
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