Bush Insider Reveals Guantanamo Deception: Hundreds of Innocents Jailed

[Mika]

Bush Insider Reveals Guantanamo Deception: Hundreds of Innocents Jailed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/bush-insider-reveals-guan_b_544030.html

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Hey, DU Cubaphobes.... let us know when Cuba opens up gulags in foreign countries and pays ransom for foreign born and residing "suspects" to be tortured, maybe then I'd consider joining your little chorus.

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[Downwinder]

1. Cuba's gulag is South Florida and they are not all innocent.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Especially when their bombings, internecine warfare, heavy use of C4, drug connections

earned them the FBI's title, "America's Terror Capital."

~snip~
Terrorism in Miami

Some of the same hard-line émigrés who now accuse Cuba of involvement in terrorism supported -and in some cases still support- Cuban émigré terrorism in the U.S. and against Cuba.

Militant hard-line émigré activities caused the FBI to designate Miami the "terror capital" of the United States. One of the most infamous attacks, in 1976, was that on Emilio Milian, who, on a Miami radio station, denounced terror tactics and intimidation by extremist émigrés. Milian survived, but lost both his legs in the car bomb attack.

Countless other terrorist attacks have taken place in Miami over the years, including the bombings of: the Cuban Museum of Art (in 1988 and again 1990); the home of Maria Cristina Herrera, the organiser of a conference on U.S.-Cuba relations (1988); Marazul Charters, which arranges travel to Cuba (1989 and again in 1996); Little Havana's Centro Vasco, prior to the performance of Cuban singer Rosita Fornes (1996); the Amnesia nightclub before a performance by Cuban singer Manolín (1999).<1>

But the terror was not limited to Miami; in Washington, DC, two Cuban émigrés, Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel and Virgilio Paz Romero, helped mastermind the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean diplomat, and his colleague, Ronni Moffit. The terrorists were each sentenced to 12 years in jail and served half of that time. Though U.S. law requires that non-U.S. citizens must be returned to their country of origin after incarceration, the two convicted terrorists remained in INS custody because there is no deportation agreement with Cuba. The Miami Herald reported upon his release in 2001 that Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) lawyers had "fought diligently" to get Paz Romero released from INS custody. A CANF spokesman insisted they did so because trying a harder case could clear the way for easier cases to be won. A convoluted explanation, at best, which in no way changes the fact that the Foundation went all out to set free a convicted terrorist.

Over the years, many Miami-based terrorist attacks have also been launched against Cuba. Cuban émigrés Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who are regarded as heroes by the extreme right-wing émigrés (the City Commission of Miami declared a "Dr. Orlando Bosch Day" in 1983), were charged and imprisoned in Venezuela for the bombing of a Cubana airliner off Barbados in 1976, an act of terrorism that resulted in the loss of 73 lives, most of them innocent young Cubans - including the entire Cuban fencing team.

Prior to the Cubana airliner bombing, Bosch was the leader of the Movimiento Insurreccional de Recuperacion Revolucionaria (MIRR), an anti-Castro terrorist organisation, and was convicted in the U.S. for firing a bazooka at a Polish Freighter in Miami<2>. After he was released from prison, he violated parole and left the country. He then founded the Coordinacion de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (CORU), an anti-Castro terrorist organisation which orchestrated numerous bombings in Miami, New York, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Argentina, and elsewhere. Bosch was subsequently jailed in Venezuela for his involvement in the 1976 Cubana airliner bombing. After his release, he returned to the U.S. illegally in 1988 and was jailed for his U.S. parole violation. In 1989, the Acting Associate Attorney General denied Bosch's petition to remain in the United States, stating that, "For 30 years Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence . . . He has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death."<3>

Nevertheless, Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a strident anti-Castroite, Senator Connie Mack and Ros-Lehtinen's campaign manager, Jeb Bush all lobbied for Bosch's release from prison, which they achieved in 1990.<4> In a July 20, 1990 editorial, the New York Times complained, "The release from jail of Orlando Bosch is a startling example of political justice. The Justice Department, under no legal compulsion but conspicuous political pressure, has let him out, winning cheers from local politicians-and squandering American credibility on issues of terrorism."

The first Bush administration pardoned Orlando Bosch in 1992 and he now lives in Miami. When questioned about the 1976 bombing carried out by the terrorist organisation that he founded, Bosch declared, "you have to fight violence with violence. At times you cannot avoid hurting innocent people."

Luis Posada Carriles, who escaped from prison in Venezuela in 1985, has admitted to the string of 1997 bombings of tourist hotels in Havana, which resulted in the death of an Italian tourist. When asked about the bombing that killed the Italian tourist, in a taped interview with the New York Times in 1998, Posada remarked, "It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop. That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time." He added, "I sleep like a baby."

In the same New York Times interview, Posada stated that his activities were financed by the late Jorge Mas Canosa, former CANF Chairman<5>. He said that Mas Canosa controlled everything and provided him with upwards of $200,000, often through other Cuban émigrés. "He never said 'this is from the Foundation," recalled Posada. Rather, the money arrived with the message, 'this is for the church.'"

More:
http://www.spectrezine.org/global/cubaandterrorism.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. It was never a secret, either, now some of those prisoners got there,

since all of us who cared enough to pay attention already heard, or read about the reality some of them had even been given to the U.S. by their own political enemies, to get rid of them, nothing less! This was all the way back to within months of the invasion and destruction of Bagdhad. From the article:

It soon became clear to him and other State Department personnel "that many of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo had been taken into custody without regard to whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all."

How was it possible that hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners were innocent? Wilkerson said it all started at the beginning, mostly because U.S. forces did not capture most of the people who were sent to Guantanamo. The people who ended up in Guantanamo, said Wilkerson, were mostly turned over to the US by Afghan warlords and others who received bounties of up to $5000 per head for each person they turned in. The majority of the 742 detainees "had never seen a U.S. soldier in the process of their initial detention."

Military officers told Wilkerson that "many detainees were turned over for the wrong reasons, particularly for bounties and other incentives." The U.S. knew "that the likelihood was high that some of the Guantanamo detainees had been turned in to U.S. forces in order to settle local scores, for tribal reasons, or just as a method of making money."

As a consequence, said Wilkerson "there was no real method of knowing why the prisoner had been detained in the first place."

Astonishingly dishonest, stupid, brutal.

[EFerrari]

4. I don't entirely trust Wilkerson on this or anything else

but it has been widely know for years that innocent people were sold to Rumsfeld.