Frank,
I won't go into my rant on the "Militarization of America", but the
evidence is too extensive to deny by anyone other than the Trumpsters.
The knee jerk reaction to 8 years of immobilized government, a
president who proclaimed his support to the working class and then
caved in to Wall Street, and the Republican Profiteers who sold out
America in order to feed their own greed, would lead, sane minds might
agree, to a rejection of both Heads of the One Political Party, and
the seating of Bernie Sanders. But instead, the American voters...at
least enough of them to carry the day, turned to an Entertainment
Personality, a liar of public record, a self proclaimed billionaire,
to "lead" us into a better life. We are in the process, according to
this professional liar, of returning to our "Greatness". And all the
Billionaires grin and cheer.
But in all of that, they full well understand that they can only sell
so much baloney before we wake up to the fact that we are being fed
bullshit. To be ready for any ingrates who decide to take to the
streets and object to being fleeced, these grinning Profiteers are
putting in place Laws and Law Enforcers. And yes, that means
militarizing and expanding the nation's police.
These are those Dark Days we read about in the late 1800's and early
1900's. This is the Great America being Trumpeted about.
"...From ghoulies and ghosties. And long-leggedy beasties. And things
that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!"
Carl Jarvis
On 3/13/17, Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl, yes I agree, no such thing as a "good war". That is why I deplore what
goes on in the streets of places like New York City, it might as well be
Bagdad. If we called the NYPD what they really are, an army; they would be
the world's 12th largest army. A fact that the boys at 1 Police Plaza like
to brag about. What you have is a military occupation, which in itself is a
sugar coated way of saying a war against the population of a city. If we
want to talk about regimes committing genocide, we should examine ourselves
first.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2017 5:50 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Tortured and Wrongly Held
at Guantánamo for 14 Years, Abdul Zahir Now Has Freedom, but No Justice
You're right. It's almost impossible to read articles such as this one.
Even though, once I'd grown to an age where I understood that there is no
such thing as a "good war", I still struggle with believing American troops
could set aside their upbringing, their religious beliefs and their human
compassion and turn into crazed wild animals.
Sad to say, the blood that is being shed around the planet is on all of our
hands, Think of it, if three young black teenagers go into a store and one
of them shoots the owner, and all three are considered guilty of murder,
then for every murdered innocent man, woman and child struck down by our
bombs, or blown away by our troops, all of us are guilty. All of us need to
stand before a jury and face charges of murder.
The only reason that it does not happen is because we are "top dog" on this
planet. But the day will come when we are no longer able to protect what is
left of our once prosperous nation. The real Terrorists will have stripped
all that is worth anything away from the Land and the People, and fled to
their guarded hideaways Carl Jarvis
On 3/11/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I can't even read this. And we talk about Trump's Muslim ban? What
kind of a country is this? What kind of animals does our military turn
our enlistees into?
Miriam
Tortured and Wrongly Held at Guantánamo for 14 Years, Abdul Zahir Now
Has Freedom, but No Justice Saturday, March 11, 2017 By Adam Hudson,
Truthout | Report
Two protesters of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay look solemnly
toward the White House.
Before Barack Obama left office, he released 10 detainees from
Guantánamo to Oman. Among them was Abdul Zahir, a 45-year-old man from
Afghanistan. Zahir was detained at Guantánamo for 14 years, even
though the US government later admitted that he was wrongfully held.
He was mistaken for another man who shared his nickname, Abdul Bari.
Zahir's story exemplifies the cruelty of Guantánamo and the policies
of indefinite detention and torture, which will, in all likelihood,
continue with Trump as president.
"I want to leave behind the bad things that happened to me while I
have been imprisoned. I want to focus on the positive things ahead of
me, seeing my family again, studying at university and perhaps being
able to help others,"
Zahir said, according a press release provided by his lawyers before
he left Guantánamo. Zahir has three sons and speaks Arabic, Pashto and
some Urdu, Farsi and English. Before his capture, he worked as a
translator, shuttle driver and Arabic teacher.
US troops captured Zahir on July 11, 2002, during a raid in
Afghanistan targeting another man named Abdul Bari -- an alias also
used by Zahir. The raid occurred at a compound in Hesarak village,
which is a few miles east of Kabul and northeast of Gardez. Abdul Bari
(not Zahir) allegedly helped produce and distribute chemical or
biological weapons for al-Qaeda.
A day or two after the raid, US forces recovered "suspicious items,"
according to a military intelligence assessment, including a white
powder that they initially believed was a chemical or biological
agent. However, on later examination, the substances turned out to be
salt, sugar and petroleum jelly. When the Periodic Review Board
determined, on July 11, 2016, that Abdul Zahir should be released, it
also concluded that Zahir "was probably misidentified as the
individual who had ties to al-Qaeda weapons facilitation."
Zahir was not the only Guantánamo detainee detained because of a
mistaken identity. In fact, another Guantánamo detainee among those
released to Oman
-- Yemeni Mustafa al Shamiri -- was also mistaken for another man with
a similar name.
Torture and Assault in Guantánamo
Like every Guantánamo detainee, Zahir was tortured. His military
defense lawyer, US Air Force Lt. Col. Sterling Thomas told Truthout
that after Zahir's capture, US forces "gave him the treatment that
they thought every Brown person, every Muslim person they captured
deserved -- they tortured him."
Zahir was tortured by US forces at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and
at Guantánamo, where he was transferred on October 27, 2002.
Thomas explained that Zahir suffered beatings, exposure to cold
temperatures, cramped confinement, stress positions, hog-tying and
sexual assault. "He would be kept in very small rooms with the air
conditioning unit running full blast without proper clothing -- so, a
pair of shorts -- and an iron bed," Thomas said. Zahir "would be
placed in interrogation rooms right under the air conditioner and they
would make the room as cold as possible, with his hands tied to his
waist, and then he would be tied into a fetal position on the floor in
that very cold room." In addition, Zahir "spent a year in a room that
he called 'a cage for animals.' And in that room, he had to eat,
sleep, exercise and shower all in the same place.
Including elimination of waste."
During the time he spent in that small room, a group of US troops
would come into the room "wearing outfits meant to make him
frightened" and "would spray a burning gas above his head," while he
was shirtless. Those troops would "drop him to the floor and two
people would sit on his lower back and tie his hands and feet behind
him," a practice known as "hog-tying." They would "then pick him up
like a sheep and take him elsewhere where they would quickly immerse
him in water that was flowing fast from a very big pipe."
After that, they would "take him back to where he was and drop him
from about one meter onto the ground still tied." Guards also grabbed
and pulled his testicles "violently, until he fell unconscious."
As a result of his torture, Zahir "suffered physically and
emotionally." He experienced major depressive episodes that led him to
attempt suicide.
Zahir
protested his treatment on numerous occasions. In one instance, after
he protested, a group of guards in riot gear (Forced Cell Extraction
team) tackled Zahir and "damaged his spine so badly that they had to
conduct surgery," said Thomas. Since then, Zahir has had to walk with
a walker and experiences internal organ issues.
Zahir's torture was par for the course at Guantánamo. As documented by
human rights groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights,
beatings, shackling, sexual assault and other forms of abuse have been
standard practice at Guantánamo, particularly in its early years.
During the 2013 hunger strike, striking prisoners were force-fed,
which is also a form of torture. Torture violates international law,
particularly the UN Convention Against Torture.
For years, defense lawyers tried to get Zahir released, or at least
secure a fair trial. Vermont lawyer Robert Gensburg challenged Zahir's
confinement with a habeas corpus action but was unsuccessful. Zahir
was then brought up for trial before a military commission, which is
when fellow Vermont lawyer David Sleigh and military co-counsel Lt.
Col. Sterling Thomas joined Zahir's defense team.
In 2006, Zahir was charged with conspiracy, materially supporting
terrorism and killing civilians in connection with a grenade attack
that wounded Canadian journalist Kathleen Kenna. However, the military
commission temporarily shut down, his case never went to trial, and
charges were dismissed. According to Thomas, Zahir made numerous,
contradictory statements under torture -- statements that the US
government tried to use against him -- but there was no physical evidence
tying him to the attack.
Thomas also mentioned that part of the reason Zahir was held for so
long is because the US government tortured him and did not want those
details made public in a civilian court.
How Do Mistaken Identity Cases Occur?
New Guantánamo intelligence reveals that the vast majority of
detainees are not the "worst of the worst" as the US government
claimed, according to the Miami Herald. In fact, some of those who
were captured and incarcerated at Guantánamo had nothing to do with
al-Qaeda.
This reality has always been clear to some people within the US
government.
One of them is Mark Fallon, a retired 30-year federal investigator
who, from
2002 to 2004, headed the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force
(CITF), established to investigate cases that would be brought before
a military commission. In the early days, Fallon said it was clear to
him and CITF that most of the people arriving at Guantánamo were not
the super-villain terrorists portrayed by the US government. "We were
frankly shocked at who wound up there going on the first plane loads.
It was clear it wasn't senior al-Qaeda leadership or main al-Qaeda
men. It was just people who were kind of scooped up and a lot of them
were paid bounties for.
They were not very effectively, for the most part, screened very well
in Afghanistan," Fallon explained to Truthout.
Only 5 percent of Guantánamo detainees were captured by US forces.
Meanwhile, 86 percent were captured by Afghan tribal allies or
Pakistani security forces and handed over to US custody, according to
a Seton Hall study. The detainees captured by Pakistan or Afghan
tribal allies "were handed over to the United States at a time in
which the United States offered large bounties for capture of
suspected enemies." Very few were actually al-Qaeda fighters. "Only 8%
of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters," according
to the study, while 40 percent had "no definitive connection with al
Qaeda" and 18 percent had "no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda
or the Taliban."
It's not a huge surprise that false charges and cases of mistaken
identity occurred amid this race to incarcerate. Fallon said that
JTF-GTMO (Joint Task Force Guantánamo), which runs the Guantánamo
prison, was looking for anything to pin on detainees. For example,
part of JTF-GTMO's threat indication criteria was whether a detainee
possessed a common item like a Casio F-91W or A159W wristwatch because
it was "the sign of al-Qaida, [which] uses the watch to make bombs,"
which Fallon called "sad" and "comical." Fallon said CITF concluded
"an overwhelming majority" of detainees had no intelligence or
investigative value and should be released, while JTF-GTMO argued for
further detention. However, it was JTF-GTMO's assessments that caught
the White House's ear, while voices like Fallon's were marginalized.
Fallon shares his insider perspective on how the US government
implemented torture in a book called Unjustifiable Means: The Inside
Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to
Torture.
Meanwhile, Abdul Zahir will be attempting to get back on his feet,
reunite with his family and begin rebuilding a life that was all but
shattered.
Despite his torture and horrific treatment at the hands of the US
government, Zahir says he does not hate the United States or harbor
any bitter feelings. Rather, he is focused on moving his life forward.
Sterling called Zahir's resolve "remarkable" and said, "He's been
through things that no human being should have to suffer through.
Regardless of what they did.
And he had done nothing that was a crime."
Moving on could be difficult for Zahir. Many former Guantánamo and CIA
black site detainees continue to face mental health problems even
after being released, such as depression and post-traumatic stress.
That makes it difficult for them to readjust into normal society. This
means true justice for Guantánamo detainees entails more than just
releasing them to another country. It also must include redress for
the torture inflicted upon them and the physical, mental and emotional
problems resulting from that abuse.
However, true justice does not currently seem within reach for current
and former Guantánamo detainees. There arecurrently 41 detainees in
Guantánamo, including 26 held in indefinite detention -- people whom
the government does not have enough untainted evidence to prosecute
but claims are too dangerous to release. Like torture, indefinite
detention also violates international human rights law. While the
Trump administration has dropped the idea of reopening secret prisons,
it does want to keep the Guantánamo prison open and put new detainees
there. According to the Miami Herald, the Guantánamo military prison
could hold another 200 or so prisoners.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Adam Hudson
Adam Hudson is a journalist, writer and musician based in the San
Francisco Bay Area. He typically covers US foreign policy and national
security, Guantánamo, police brutality and Bay Area gentrification.
His work has appeared in Truthout, AlterNet, Al Akhbar English,
teleSUR English and The Nation magazine. On the side, he plays drums
in an alternative rock band called Sunata.
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Tortured in Guantánamo, Uncharged Prisoner Details a US-Created Hell
By Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Little Brown and Company | Book Excerpt
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