Guantanamo detainees kidnapped for reward money

The good news is that up to 140 prisoners will be released from the
concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay sometime over the course of the
next month. However, as has become the norm these days, the story has
turned out to be more sinister than the media has reported. According
to an report from Time Magazine,
it has taken the US over two years to determine that up to 20% of these
detainees were completely innocent. During which time they were kept in
cages without access to families or lawyers:

So far, the processing of detainees, whether for trial or
release, has been slow; the Supreme Court's intervention, however, may
have delivered a jolt. A U.S. military official tells Time that at
least 140 detainees�"the easiest 20%"�are scheduled for release.
The processing of these men has sped up since the Supreme Court
announced it would take the case, said the source, who believes the
military is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release
them." U.S. officials concluded that some detainees were there
because they had been kidnapped by Afghan warlords and sold for the
bounty the U.S. was offering for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Just
to drive it home one more time: Almost 20% of the prisoners at
Guantanamo were innocent Afghanis who'd rounded up by warlords who
wanted to get their hands on reward money offered by American forces.
No due process. No communication with any family members. The only hope
for freedom being that a "politically propitious" time might come along
for their release.

British detainee Moazzam Begg is among the first six
prisoners cleared for possible trial. His parents say he had gone to
Afghanistan to do humanitarian work�set up a school, install water
pipes�and was picked up in Pakistan by American soldiers at the house
where he was staying. "It is nearly a complete year since I have been
in custody," he wrote to his parents early this year. "After all this
time, I still don't know what crime I am supposed to have committed. I
am beginning to lose the fight against depression and hopelessness."
According to lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Begg confessed to an al-Qaeda
plot to load a drone aircraft and then dust the House of Commons with
anthrax. Smith, who represents the British detainees at the behest of
their families, dismisses the confession as nonsense. "If you're held
in solitary confinement, you're going to start making things up just to
try and get out of that," he says. "Part of this whole Alice in
Wonderland world is that in order to get charged with an offense down
there and in order to get a lawyer, you have to agree to plead guilty."

Posted by flow Frazao on December 1, 2003 at 07:42 AM | Permalink