McClatchy - "We got the wrong guys"

[kpete]

McClatchy - "We got the wrong guys"

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

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

Posted on Sunday, June 15, 2008
By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers

America's prison for terrorists often held the wrong men

........

Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."

But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.


much more here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38773.html

[pinto]

1. Kick

:kick:

[bluesmail]

2. Me too. K&R

Serious 11 month investigation. I wonder what else they found out?

[EFerrari]

3. Please leave a comment at the link if you have a minute.

You have to register but it's a nice short process and we need to encourage McClatchy. What a relief they are.

[varelse]

4. "He *was* a friend of the government"

How many friends has this government converted into enemies?

But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

And Cheney has the nerve to claim that we're *more* secure because of this administration's blatantly illegal activities in the name of "homeland security"? BAH.

[donco6]

5. An AF Reservist friend of mine . ..

. . . was in Qatar a few months ago, at a base with a detention center. He said it was populated with people who were in areas that had seen an IED or car bomb or some other action like that. Soldiers would just go door-to-door and round up anyone in the area, ship them to this base and "sort them out there". This process takes more than a year, sometimes two.

The men in the detention sometimes get the chance to have their family visit. They would take their govt-issued pajamas and cut them up to make little stuffed animal dolls to give to their children when they visited. This concerned my friend, as the nights in the desert get quite cold and the detainees then have nothing to wear at night. He started a drive to collect small stuffed animals to give to the detainees for them to give to their kids so they didn't have to cut up their pajamas.

Now, I ask, just how effing pathetic is THAT?

[Raster]

6. Guantanamo Bay is simply look the look and squawk the squawk.

Gitmo isn't about making the United States safer, it's about perpetuating the BOGUS war on terror. The BOGUS war on terror is about creating fear and warmongering greed. Of course cheney*/bush* don't want any of their "guests" to have access to fair and due judicial process. All it would take would be a few attorneys actually interested in habeas corpus and other rights of the individual to blow the whole charade to high heaven and expose the entire stinking mess for what it is.

[juno jones]

7. Now THESE are journalists!

All the sobbing in the world for a media talking head won't negate the fact that what he did wasn't really hard-hitting journalism.

These people are doing the real work. I hope they get heard. K&R.

[Oeditpus Rex]

8. This can't be true

Journalism is dead and the MSM are nothing but hod carriers for the Wregime — according to DU, anyway.

So this must've been fabricated.



:sarcasm:

(Just in case.)

[AlCzervik]

9. this is the frontpage story on my local paper this morning.

[Blue_In_AK]

12. Here, too. n/t

[followthemoney]

10. Innocent prisoners require show trials.

Stalin required show trials of innocents accused of treason.

To release the innocent would have brought discredit to his special investigators and secret police. The innocents must be silenced and die for the benefit of the state.

The people must have confidence in their government even if innocents must die.

Such is the requirement for the maintenance of power by the powerful.

[NNN0LHI]

11. If you don’t pay, they take you in and turn you over to the Americans as Taliban or Al-Qaeda

http://www.peacereporter.net/dettaglio_articolo.php?idc=0&idart=11179

Face to face with the mercenaries. Two years ago in May 2006, PeaceReporter conducted an investigative report on the topic from Helmand province. The following are extracts from that report. Just outside of Grishk stands a US military base: a small fortress in the middle of the desert with the stars and stripes atop a wooden tower. The base is home to one of the many “unofficial” US prisons where suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda are interrogated and tortured before being sent off to Kandahar, Bagram, and eventually Guantanamo.

But the base is manned by Afghan mercenaries, not American troops. The locals call them khakhprush, “men who have been sold to the enemy.” They are kids from nearby villages. They don’t wear a uniform. When they’re not out on a mission for or with the Americans, they’re hanging out on the carpets they put down in front of the barracks surrounding the walls of the base. They spend their days drinking tea, smoking hashish and maintaining their arsenal of rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers.

<snip> They just use fighting the Taliban as an excuse and they’re protected by the people who hire them. They’re criminals who go around killing and robbing people, breaking into homes, and terrorizing people just to make money. If you don’t pay, they take you in and turn you over to the Americans as Taliban or an Al-Qaeda terrorist.”

[FarCenter]

13. I think they were all terrorists

I'd bet we've got the confessions to prove it!

</sarcasm>