Imagine being arrested without charges and held indefinitely with no hope of release. Third world country? Nope the US.
People who assume that everyone the US holds in Gitmo are terrorists should read this story:
These five people were guilty of being Algerians in Bosnia planning to travel to Afghanistan. As a result of their nationality and travel plans they were locked up indefinitely and probably tortured.
Regarding the sixth, justice delayed is justice denied. They may have enough evidence for a trial, but so far he hasn't had one and he hasn't been found guilty of anything.
Anyone care to continue defending locking up anyone the US labels a terrorist without due process?
Anyone still believe everyone locked up at Gitmo deserves to be there?
Obviously this system is seriously flawed. As Canadians, we should be ashamed that we have done nothing to ensure fellow Canadian Omar Khadr (who was captured as a child in Afghanistan 7 years ago and held in this system ever since) has due process.
I agree with Dallaire:
But after seven years, I would expect Khadr to be angry and his al Queda beliefs strengthened as a result of his experience with western justice.
People who assume that everyone the US holds in Gitmo are terrorists should read this story:
Judge orders Guantanamo releases
Guantanamo Bay remains a controversial
part of the so-called war on terror [EPA]
A US judge has ruled that five Algerians held in the US prison facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for almost seven years had been illegally detained and must be freed.
Richard Leon, a US district judge in Washington DC, said the US government had "failed to show by burden of proof" that the five men had allegedly planned to go to Afghanistan to fight US-led forces there.
However the judge did find that a sixth Algerian man, seized alongside the other men in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 2001, had been legally detained.
The ruling follows the first hearings under a landmark US supreme court ruling in June - based on a case brought by lawyers for Lakhdar Boumediene, one of the Algerian men - that gave Guantanamo prisoners the legal right to challenge their continued detention.
The June ruling said that inmates in Guantanamo Bay had the right to know under what charges they were being held and what the evidence was against them.
Thursday's decision marks a fresh embarrassment over the camp for the Bush administration and comes after Barack Obama, the US president-elect, pledged to close the prison camp after taking office in January.
The White House said later on Thursday it disagreed with the court's ruling and that the Justice Department was reviewing the decision on the five Algerians.
"This ruling does demonstrate the need for Congress to enact procedures that allow these petitions to be adjudicated in a way that is fair to the detainee but that allows the government to present its case without imperiling national security," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman.
Controversial cases
The US government had accused all six of the men of planning to travel to
Afghanistan to join the al-Qaeda network and fight against US-led forces in the country.
About 250 people are still believed to be
held at the camp [GALLO/GETTY]But their lawyers say there is no evidence the men ever would have ended up on
a battlefield or posed any threat to the US.
Judge Leon said the allegation against the men was based on a single source and that he did not have enough information to judge the source's reliability or credibility.
However the judge ruled the government did provide enough evidence that one of the detainees, Belkacem Bensayah, had planned to take up arms against the US in Afghanistan.
Boumediene and the other five men were initially detained by US authorities on suspicion of plotting to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in October 2001, and transferred them to Guantanamo in January 2002.
However the Justice Department has reportedly since dropped the embassy bombing accusations.
Last month, US district judge Ricardo Urbina also ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslims, members of the Uighur ethnic group, after the government acknowledged they were not enemy combatants...
Al Jazeera English - Americas - Judge orders Guantanamo releases
These five people were guilty of being Algerians in Bosnia planning to travel to Afghanistan. As a result of their nationality and travel plans they were locked up indefinitely and probably tortured.
Regarding the sixth, justice delayed is justice denied. They may have enough evidence for a trial, but so far he hasn't had one and he hasn't been found guilty of anything.
Anyone care to continue defending locking up anyone the US labels a terrorist without due process?
Anyone still believe everyone locked up at Gitmo deserves to be there?
Obviously this system is seriously flawed. As Canadians, we should be ashamed that we have done nothing to ensure fellow Canadian Omar Khadr (who was captured as a child in Afghanistan 7 years ago and held in this system ever since) has due process.
I agree with Dallaire:
The civilized world condemns the recruitment of child soldiers. Yet Canada sits quietly by as one of its citizens, Omar Khadr, is prosecuted by the United States for war crimes he allegedly committed at age 15 as a member of al-Qaeda.
It is impossible to square. Al-Qaeda's recruitment of child soldiers is immoral and abusive; consequently, it is immoral and abusive to prosecute as a war criminal a child recruited by al-Qaeda, and punish him accordingly. We can't have it both ways.
Lately, it has dawned on Canadians that the United States may well have lied about its evidence against Mr. Khadr. Far from having proof that only he could have thrown the grenade that killed their soldier, the U.S. appears to have hidden the truth: that the teenage Canadian was in the company of an adult al-Qaeda fighter and was himself unarmed, on his knees and facing away from battle when a U.S. soldier shot him twice — in the back.
But the falsehoods are only part of the reasons why Canadians let the 15-year-old disappear six years ago into the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which he had no access to a lawyer for the first 27 months and no way to contest his detention. Canadians accepted that Mr. Khadr be held fully responsible for his actions. As if he were an adult.
Omar Khadr (undated family photo)
The irony has never really penetrated Canadians' consciousness. Canada, the country of the liberal Youth Criminal Justice Act, is the only Western nation to give the United States carte blanche with one of its nationals at Guantanamo. Britain, Australia, Sweden and Germany fought to repatriate their nationals — adults, all of them. And Canada let a juvenile languish.
The reply from our government is but a single, vapid refrain: "Let the process work." But this is a process that, even apart from its other flaws, aims at punishing Omar Khadr for the accident of his birth in an al-Qaeda family...
globeandmail.com: Omar Khadr: A most peculiar young offender
But after seven years, I would expect Khadr to be angry and his al Queda beliefs strengthened as a result of his experience with western justice.
