America Locked (and Tortured) A Children’s Humanitarian Aid Worker In Gitmo For Seven Years

[kpete]

America Locked A Children’s Humanitarian Aid Worker In Gitmo For Seven Years
By Ian Millhiser on Jan 9, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Lakhdar Boumediene, the named plaintiff in a seminal Supreme Court case preserving Guantanamo Bay detainees’ right to challenge the legality of their detention, recounts his experience as a man falsely accused of terrorism and imprisoned at Gitmo for seven years in an op-ed in the New York Times. The whole thing is worth reading, but one sentence in particular stands out:

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.

Boumediene was not simply arrested and imprisoned for years despite no evidence that he was a terrorist, he was arrested while he was working as a humanitarian aide worker. For children. The man devoted his life to helping the youngest and most vulnerable victims of a terrible conflict, and we locked him up and tortured him.

.........................

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/my-guantanamo-nightmare.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/09/400296/america-locked-a-childrens-humanitarian-aid-worker-in-gitmo-for-seven-years/

[Hawkowl]

2. At least Obama closed Gitmo

Oooops!

[villager]

4. well, that's not what you meant by "change," was it?

n/t

[MrCoffee]

3. The biggest surprise is that I'm not at all surprised

Saddened? Of course.

Appalled? Absolutely.

Surprised? Nope.

[OnyxCollie]

5. Torture? We don't do that here.

Or, at the least, we don't investigate claims of torture here, even when it's done by the opposition party.

Looking forward, you know. And, um...

WINNING!

[malaise]

6. This is frightening

This is so wrong.

[sad sally]

7. We used to be able to blame the Bush administration for Guantánamo. No more

On January 11 it will have been a decade since the first of the men we once called “the worst of the worst” were brought to Guantánamo Bay, a location handpicked by the Bush administration so that it could detain and interrogate terror suspects far from the prying eyes of the law. In the intervening years much has improved at this remote US-controlled enclave in Cuba. Allegations of ongoing torture have ceased; the detainees have access to lawyers and court review; and more than 600 of the 779 men once held there have been released.
-----
President Bush undoubtedly committed the original sin. Had he followed the rules governing wartime detention from the outset, Guantánamo would not be an international embarrassment. It has long been established that in an ongoing war a country may detain the enemy for the conflict’s duration. But the laws of war require that we afford hearings to those whose status is in doubt, that we release them when the conflict ends and that we treat them humanely throughout. Bush refused to provide hearings, asserted the prerogative to hold people during a never-ending “war on terror” and authorized systematic cruel and inhuman treatment. For years, Guantánamo was synonymous with Bush’s defiantly lawless approach to the “war on terror.”

But we can no longer point the finger only at Bush. He’s been out of office for three years, and Guantánamo is still very much with us. Congress, with the support of many Democrats, has adopted a shortsighted “not in my backyard” attitude, making it impossible for President Obama to deliver on his promise to close Guantánamo. In provisions recently renewed in the NDAA, Congress has barred any transfer of Guantánamo detainees to a US prison, even for criminal trial, and radically restricted the president’s authority to transfer detainees to foreign countries, essentially requiring impossible guarantees that they won’t ever pose a threat to the United States. As a result, even though more than half of the remaining detainees—eighty-nine of 171—have been fully cleared for release by a joint review conducted by the military, CIA, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, they remain stuck there. Locking up people we concede need not be held is the very definition of arbitrary detention, but that has become the norm at Guantánamo.
----
Meanwhile, despite his assessment that “the existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained,” Obama appears to have abandoned his promise to close the prison. He vowed to veto the NDAA because of its restrictions on his authority vis-à-vis detention and trial of Al Qaeda suspects, but he reversed course and signed the bill after a House-Senate conference committee watered down some of its worst provisions. The bill is better because of his veto threat, but it still assures Guantánamo’s continued existence.

http://www.thenation.com/article/165443/guantanamo-ten-years-and-counting?du

[Larkspur]

8. Now that this story has made it into the public's view, what will Obama do

Will he demand his Admin investigate this situation and resolve it humanely?

[OnyxCollie]

10. What will likely happen

is that someone in the White House PR department will send out talking points to the Internet street teams, who will then make coordinated attacks on anyone bringing up the subject, labeling them Obama-hating Firebaggers who want Cain, Perry, Bachman, Romney to win, thereby discrediting them while derailing any discussion.

[JDPriestly]

9. K&R

We need to make Guantanamo a big election issue.

[Luminous Animal]

11. Here is Greenwald's article on this...

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/08/the_evils_of_indefinite_detention_and_those_wanting_to_de_prioritze_them/singleton/

[woo me with science]

15. This should be an OP. nt

[girl gone mad]

12. sigh.

[Scuba]

13. More shame brought on America by military profiteers. n/t

[_ed_]

14. Remember the campaign when he promised to close GITMO?

This will be one of the biggest sources of shame and disgrace for the Obama years. And before someone posts about "Congress is bad," Democrats had the Presidency, the Senate, and the House from 2008-2010.

[woo me with science]

16. K&R nt

[Fantastic Anarchist]

17. Shame on us.

[GeorgeGist]

18. No need for US citizens to worry.

Obama won't abide by the NDAA in that regard.

[Solly Mack]

19. K&R

[slipslidingaway]

20. knr, yet we're told to look forward :( n/t

[sabrina 1]

21. There are no words to sufficiently describe the shamefullness of our policies and the shame that NO

ONE has been held accountable.

Even if this was the only such case, there should be investigations into who is responsible, at least let's get SOME justice. But it seems that Human Rights Orgs ARE considered to be terrorists by the US Governement. Read the Wikileaks cables about how this administration views the most respected Human Rights Court in the world and its universally respected judge. That was a shocker to me. And how this administration has directly interfered in getting any kind of justice for the victims of our war criminals. It is thoroughly disgusting. And again, that word doesn't begin to describe it.

I wish I could assure him it 'will never happen again' because we the people will not tolerate it, but even the 'left' now appears to be oblivious to what once was a major cause for them.