Freed From Guantánamo but Stranded Far From Home

[Son Of Spy]

The abuses of detaining extraordinarily redited innocents from around the globe,
in a transparent attempt to deny them rights or due process of any kind, is one of the
most heinous of the war crimes committed by Bush/Gonzales and their MI complex. With
the increased interational outcry for their release comes new psychotic actions in an
attempt to avoid any accountability...while continuing even in release to maltreat their
erstwhile charges...see below:


WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — Early on May 5, five Asian men who had been detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for years as dangerous terrorists boarded a military transport plane at the United States naval base there.

The men had just exchanged their prison garb for jeans, T-shirts and slip-on sneakers but were still in handcuffs as they boarded the plane, where they were shackled to bolts in the floor and surrounded by more than 20 armed soldiers. About 14 hours later, the plane landed in Albania, a poor Balkan nation eager to please Washington.

Interviews with lawyers and several officials in the United States and abroad showed that the flight, to a freedom of sorts for the five men, involved intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity in Washington; Ottawa; Tirana, Albania; Beijing; and elsewhere.

It also held implications for a United States Appeals Court, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the relations of several European countries with China. And it underlined the Bush administration’s difficulties in reducing the population at the Guantánamo prison camp as international calls for it to be closed increased.

The five men were Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) captured in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. They had traveled there from their homeland in the Xinjiang province of China, where the Uighur people, most of whom are Muslims, have fought a low-level insurgency against Beijing’s rule for years.

For the Uighurs, the transfer to Albania meant exchanging a military prison camp on the southeastern tip of Cuba for a bleak and unpromising future in one of Europe’s poorest countries, where no one spoke their language. One of them, Abu Bakker Qassim, said in an interview, “I would rather be in a society where I can be with some of my countrymen, but where we are is better than Guantánamo.”
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[unhappycamper]

1. Son Of Spy:

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unhappycamper
DU Moderator