Chinese Interrogation Of Uighurs In Guantánamo

[G_j]

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22088


House Threatens Obama
Over Chinese Interrogation Of Uighurs In Guantánamo

July 22, 2009 By Andy Worthington


Last Thursday, while most U.S. media outlets were focused relentlessly on the marathon endurance test that was Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights And Oversight held a hearing to investigate why the Bush administration had allowed Chinese interrogators to visit Guantánamo to interrogate the prison's 22 Uighur inmates in 2002.

Although 13 of the Uighurs are still held at Guantánamo (five were released in Albania in 2006, and four in Bermuda last month), all of the men -- Muslims from China's Xinjiang province, who had fled persecution in China -- were cleared of being "enemy combatants" by the Bush administration and by the U.S. courts. They were sold to the U.S. military by opportunistic Pakistani villagers, after fleeing from a run-down settlement in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains, and should never have been held in the first place.

Thursday's hearing involved some rather hard-hitting testimony about what those interrogations involved, about the complicity of the U.S. military and of senior officials in Washington D.C., and, most disturbingly, about the political motivations of the visit, and led to questions from the subcommittee about why members of Congress are prohibited from meeting prisoners at Guantánamo when Chinese intelligence agents were not, and to a demonstration of evasion on the part of the government's spokesman that was so thorough that one of the committee members threatened to declare him "in contempt of Congress" and to withdraw funding from his department.

>snip>

This infuriated members of the subcommittee. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca.), a long-time supporter of the Guantánamo Uighurs, who criticized Newt Gingrich for promoting "fear-mongering" about them back in May, was, as ABC News explained, "visibly upset by the Obama administration's apparent decision to continue the Bush administration's policy of barring detainee visits by lawmakers." Rohrabacher stated, "I am being denied -- all of us are being denied the same access that was denied during the last administration." After referring to George W. Bush as "a horrible man, a horrible president!" Rohrabacher added, "these very same restrictions on us are being reaffirmed in today's testimony by this administration."

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) was even more annoyed. In what was described as "a series of rhetorical questions," he said, "You allowed intelligence agents of a foreign country to interrogate , but you are concerned about their safety and that's why you don't allow United States members of Congress ?" and added, "You are concerned about ‘public curiosity' -- apparently you're implying we'd be seeing them out of some public curiosity?"

When Liotta diverted questions to the Justice Department, or claimed that he could not answer because of national security issues, Moran grew even more angry. "My frustration continues to mount," he said. "In order not to answer a question, you can suggest it be provided in classified form. That's not acceptable. There is no classification of that answer. This is a manipulative, evasive tactic you are employing." As ABC News described it, Moran suggested that Liotta "could be held in contempt of Congress, threatened to cut funding for the Office of Detainee Policy unless he got satisfactory answers, and said he thought Liotta ought to be fired," and exclaimed, "To take up two hours of our time and not directly answer any of the relevant questions is an absolute insult to the United States Congress."

..more..