Thursday, March 22, 2007

The disappeared get a trial

Before they are completely erased.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Trials starting at Guantanamo:

The Pentagon is launching its first trials of long-term detainees at Guantanamo. The trials will take place before military tribunals, which grant very few rights to defense attorneys. Ironically, it became clear long ago that the overwhelming majority of the prisoners at Guantanamo were not terrorists.

[snip]

For half a decade, the prisoners at Guantanamo have been in a state of legal limbo as they awaited their trial, but now the Americans are set to try the first of 385 prisoners still being held at the US military enclave on Cuba. The first group of prisoners arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002 dressed in orange overalls with hoods covering their heads. Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called them "the worst of the worst," presenting the world with the pictures of men cowering on the ground as a victory in one stage of the war on terror.

[snip]

Since establishing the camp in 2002, the Bush administration has released close to 300 of the roughly 770 prisoners with the explanation that they were "no longer enemy combatants" -- as if being imprisoned at Guantanamo had somehow had a cathartic effect on them. There have been many suicide attempts at the camp since then, three of them successful.

No comments: