Former Guantánamo prisoner urges Argentina to accept detainees

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Former Guantánamo prisoner urges Argentina to accept detainees

Abu Wa’el Dhiab, one of six former inmates admitted to Uruguay in December, says ‘I’m never going to forget my companions’ still in captivity

Thursday 12 February 2015 16.14 EST

A former Guantánamo detainee who obtained refugee status in Uruguay last December, made a surprising visit to neighbouring Argentina to ask the country to take in detainees.

Abu Wa’el Dhiab, also known as Jihad Ahmad Diyab, made an impassioned plea for Argentina and other South American countries to accept prisoners still held at Guantánamo Bay. Uruguay accepted six former Guantánamo inmates last December, Dhiab among them.

“I’m never going to forget my companions (in Guantánamo),” Dhiab said in an interview with the leftwing Argentinian website Barricada released on Thursday. “That’s why I came here to fight.”

Throughout the 19-minute interview, Dhiab sported the orange jumpsuit he wore during his 12 years in US detention.






Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/12/former-guantanamo-prisoner-urges-argentina-accept-detainees

[forest444]

1. Argentina is the only country in the world that has systematically prosecuted human rights abuses.

Rather than merely prosecuting a few of the brass, or a past dictator or two.

This makes the choice particularly appropriate. What's more, prosecutions related to Argentina's Dirty War have also extended to businessmen and other civilians who used their contacts in the right-wing dictatorship against "soft targets" (typically business and/or personal rivals). This included ransom kidnappings, usurping property, and personal vendettas - all executed under the cover of "fighting terrorism" (sound familiar?).

Most of the atrocities were carried out from 1975 to 1978, but most prosecutions did not so much as start until President Néstor Kirchner (the boogeyman of the right in Argentina) had the "due obedience" alibi repealed in 2003. I might add that the Dirty War was perpetrated lock-step with radical union-busting and banking deregulation policies straight out of the Scott Walker playbook. These led to the collapse of Argentina in 1981. The dictatorship stepped aside in 1983; but it took another 25 years for the country to recover.

A Foreign Policy article from 2013 notes:

There are not-insignificant parallels between the U.S. war on terrorism and Argentina’s Dirty War. Both had a similar incitation: They were launched in response to terrorism (note: and backed by big business). Some of the hallmarks of the U.S. war on terrorism also echo tactics deployed in the Dirty War, like indefinite detention, "hooding", and waterboarding. And, as in the United States, for a long time in Argentina it seemed like no one would ever be forced to answer for their actions.

For decades, the perpetrators of the Dirty War lived openly, and seemed immune from prosecution. Yet now many of them are behind bars.

More at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/03/argentine-dictatorshiprsquos-economic-crimes-coming-to-light/
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