Guantánamo detainee told Geneva rights 'irrelevant'

[shugah]

Guantánamo detainee told Geneva rights 'irrelevant'
· Tribunal proceedings revealed in US documents
· Transcript shows Briton's clashes with colonel judge

Monday March 6, 2006
The Guardian

A senior US military officer at Guantánamo Bay told a detainee that he did not care about international law and that the Geneva conventions did not apply to proceedings at the military prison, according to thousands of Pentagon documents released over the weekend by the US government after a court action by the Associated Press news agency.

The outburst by the air force colonel came during a hearing to determine the status of Feroz Abbasi, a Briton held for more than two years without charge or trial, and who was released last year. The officer was presiding over a tribunal convened to decide whether detainees were enemy combatants, as alleged by the Bush administration. Critics dismissed the hearings, called combatant status review tribunals, as kangaroo courts.

~snip~

Extracts: Six prisoners' stories

Emad Abdalla, Student, from Yemen

Mr Abdalla, 25, was captured at a university dorm in Faisalabad, where he was studying the Qur'an. He is accused of travelling to Afghanistan to participate in jihad. He spent 19 days in Afghanistan before being taken to Guantánamo Bay.

Abdul Razak, Minister of commerce, Taliban government, Afghanistan

Abdul Razak worked as the minister of commerce in the Taliban government. He said the Taliban had given him a civilian job because he had no military training. After the Taliban's fall, he said he took up farming, but months later Afghan authorities arrested him. At the time he had a Kalashnikov rifle, which his lawyer said he was carrying for protection. Razak said he did not oppose Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.

more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1724495,00.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. The USA is a rogue state...what about this does that detainee

NOT understand???

The USA doesn't do Geneva COnventions, US laws, International laws, ratified treaties etc any more. Where the fuck has that detainee been, he doesn't know this???

Sheeesh.

[951-Riverside]

2. Guantanamo Inmates Despair of Ever Leaving

I though it was a mistake when they moved this one from LBN way down to "Editorials & Other Articles"

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Ahamed Abdul Aziz has been in the Guantanamo Bay prison for more than three years and, by his account, has been interrogated 50 times without being charged with any crime. He waits with anguish for freedom but fears it will never come.

"We are in a grave here," he told his lawyers, echoing the despair felt by many of the roughly 490 prisoners held as suspected terrorists at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba. Charges have been filed against only 10 of them.

Transcripts of hearings, which the Pentagon released Friday after a successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press, show the frustration among prisoners waiting for the military to decide whether to charge them, transfer them or release them.

"I don't want to spend any more time here. Not one more minute," Afghan prisoner Mohammed Gul said at a combat status review tribunal.

Another unidentified Afghan man told his tribunal: "I was not a Taliban. I was not against the Americans. I want to go home."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x195012

[mom cat]

3. The transcripts of these "hearings" are a must read.

[MountainLaurel]

4. I'd like to see that colonel locked up

For a couple years, several thousand miles from home, with no way to contact or care from his family, stuck in a metal cage in the tropics, while being abused by his captors with no way to prove his innocence.

:evilgrin: