Spain drops request to extradite former Guantánamo pair

[Jack Rabbit]

Source: Guardian Unlimited (UK)

Spain today formally dropped its request to extradite two British residents who were held and allegedly tortured at Guantánamo Bay.

Jamil el-Banna, 45, and Omar Deghayes, 38, were released back to Britain in December but were arrested on an extradition warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate.

Today, guardian.co.uk has learned, papers were filed in a Madrid court dropping the request, blaming the men's poor health, which was caused by their time held in Guantánamo.

Spain accused both men of membership of an al-Qaida cell in Madrid that provided members to train in Afghan and Indonesian terror camps. The cell was alleged to have raised funds for terrorism and to have spread al-Qaida propaganda.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/06/spain.uksecurity

---

I'd still like to know if these men were tortured and have them testify to what happened to them in Guantánamo.

Lawyers for the Bush Junta will be more than welcome to ask questions.

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. All war is hideous and terrorism is one form of it, though usually defensive and

justified. However, the torture by the US authorities - however scant our knowledge of its details - evidently speaks of a reptilian bestiality matched in recent times only by the Nazis and Pinochet.

[Robbien]

2. Men of 38 and 45 in poor health

Raises many questions all on its own.

Kudos to Spain for dropping extradition.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Maybe that health care at Gitmo isn't what Michael Moore makes it out to be

Perhaps before releasing these men we should move them a hop and a skip away to Havana where they can get some good medical treatment delivered by the Cuban government?

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Like the Swiss. Sell arms, then send in the Red Cross.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Spain: Ex-detainees too damaged for trial

Source: Associated Press

Spain: Ex-detainees too damaged for trial
Posted on Thu, Mar. 06, 2008

BY DANIEL WOOLLS
Associated Press

MADRID -- A Spanish judge dropped terror charges Thursday against two former Guantánamo Bay detainees who recently returned home to Britain, saying their mental health had deteriorated so badly they were suicidal and it would be cruel to prosecute them.

In a 10-page order, Judge Baltasar Garzon said he was abandoning an extradition request and the original indictment he issued in 2003 against Palestinian-Jordanian Jamil el Banna, 45, and Libyan-born Omar Deghayes, who is 38.

The men spent more than four years at the U.S. camp for terror suspects in Cuba without being charged or tried.
(snip)

Garzon said Banna spent more than five years in secret prisons in Gambia and Afghanistan and later Guantánamo Bay, and had undergone torture and mistreatment that led to ``progressive deterioration of his mental health.''

Deghayes met a similar fate in jails in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Bagram, Afghanistan, and then in Guantánamo, the judge wrote.







Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/446518.html

[CoffeeCat]

6. What exactly do we do to these people???

I think we should know.

[mainegreen]

7. 'bathe' them

Just not so gently.

[dysfunctional press]

8. people forget that the key word there is "we"...

this is ALL being done in OUR names, folks...as a nation, WE are ALL equally culpable for these atrocities.

[alfredo]

9. Read "the Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Commentator: done to not talk about Spanish involvement at Guantanamo

Spanish practices

The collapse of Spain's extradition case against el-Banna and Deghayes should lead to an official British acknowledgement of their innocence


It is excellent that the case has been dropped, but the true reason behind the collapse of the case should be known. In a substantive court hearing in the UK for extradition, which was to have been heard in May before Judge Timothy Workman, the conduct of the Spanish government would have appeared extremely poor.

Lawyers for the two men had indicated that they would bring up in court the involvement of spanish intelligence agents in interrogations of them in Guantánamo Bay, overflights of Spain in renditions, and other matters. The judge is leaning on the documents reporting the men's fragile health as the reason for his decision, thus saving face for Spain, and for himself.

In Guantánamo Bay prison, Spanish security services interrogated these two men, and several others. One of these other men willingly left Guantánamo for Spain to face a court hearing. He was freed by a Spanish court, which found no evidence against him. El-Banna and Deghayes, who had also, in desperation, signed papers in Guantánamo agreeing to be transferred to Spain, were then forgotten again in the US prison. Their Washington lawyer met repeatedly with the Spanish ambassador and asked him to extradite them to Spain - where they would at least have a trial. But Spain did nothing, for years - until Judge Garzon produced his extradition warrant while the men were in the air.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/victoria_brittain/2008/03/spanish_practices_1.html

[Judi Lynn]

11. Really, REALLY good commentary. It gives us far more than we had on this sad situation. Thanks. n/t

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

14. I'm not buying this

Lawyers for the two men had indicated that they would bring up in court the involvement of spanish intelligence agents in interrogations of them in Guantánamo Bay, overflights of Spain in renditions, and other matters. The judge is leaning on the documents reporting the men's fragile health as the reason for his decision, thus saving face for Spain, and for himself.



Imagine if this got into a court.

Probably back room deals were made favoring the Bush Administration.

[pattmarty]

12. Wasn't Spain the "home" of the inquisition? Now it's the USA.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Exactly! Here are two very old illustrations:

~snip~
Less often observed is that the practice of waterboarding has roots in the Spanish Inquisition and parallels the persecution of Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation. Why did practices similar to waterboarding develop as a way to torture heretics—whether the heretics were Anabaptists or, in the Inquisition, Protestants of any stripe as well as Jews and witches and others?

Roman Catholics and Protestants alike persecuted the Anabaptists or "re-baptizers" since these people denied infant baptism in favor of adult baptism. The use of torture and physical abuse was meant to stem the movement and also to bring salvation to heretics. It had been held—at least since St. Augustine—that punishment, even lethal in form, could be an act of mercy meant to keep a sinner from continuing in sin, either by repentance of heresy or by death. King Ferdinand declared that drowning—called the third baptism—was a suitable response to Anabaptists. Water as a form of torture was an inversion of the waters of baptism under the (grotesque) belief that it could deliver the heretic from his or her sins.

In the Inquisition, the practice was not drowning as such, but the threat of drowning, and the symbolic threat of baptism. The tortura del agua or toca entailed forcing the victim to ingest water poured into a cloth stuffed into the mouth in order to give the impression of drowning. Because of the wide symbolic meaning of "water" in the Christian and Jewish traditions (creation, the great flood, the parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus and drowning of the Egyptians (!), Christ's walking on the water, and, centrally for Christians, baptism as a symbolic death that gives life), the practice takes on profound religious significance. Torture has many forms, but torture by water as it arose in the Roman Catholic and Protestant reformations seemingly drew some of its power and inspiration from theological convictions about repentance and salvation. It was, we must now surely say, a horrific inversion of the best spirit of Christian faith and symbolism. Is it the purpose of the United State nowadays to seek the conversion, repentance, and purity of supposed terrorists and thus to take on the trappings of a religious rite? The question is so buried behind public discourse that its full import is hardly recognized.
(snip)

http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive_2007/1129.shtml

[Ian David]

15. Oh, yeah. Torturing suspects makes us safer... NOT! n/t

[trashcanistanista]

16. Despite how this is spun, it is still statistically very

likely that these men were innocent from the beginning and at least they were let out of that gruesome place. Spain has done far more than the US in that regard. Spain has shown some humanity and it should shame America.