Saturday, April 08, 2006

The Hell That Is Guantanamo...

Finally, the truth, from a few young ex-detainees tracked down by the British press in Afghanistan:

Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. "I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it...."
....He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth...

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.
The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. " Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. " If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."


Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," ... If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer- or an American soldier."

Where's Amnesty International and Teddy Kennedy when you need them? Don't these boys need to know that we have hurt them greviously, and must now beg for their forgiveness?

Also via LGF.

1 comment:

The probligo said...

Come on, be proud!! Tell the rest of the story -

"Naqibullah and Asadullah were arrested one night in November 2002, in Musawal village, Paktia province, by around 30 American special forces soldiers. More than 30 local men were also arrested, and remain in Guantanamo.

Naqibullah, the local imam's son, said he stumbled into the raid while cycling from a friend's house. Asadullah is from a village three days' walk away, in neighbouring Logar province, but was working for a local farmer along with several men who were also arrested.

It seems likely the Americans were looking for a local commander, Mansoor Rah man Saiful, who had fought against the Taliban for years, but joined the radical Islamists when America attacked Afghanistan. If so, they were unsuccessful: Mr Saiful is still at large.

The captives were taken to Bagram airbase, a short helicopter ride away. Naqibullah grins as he mimes the Chinook's whirring rotary blade; but he was less relaxed at the time. "It was terrifying, I didn't know what was happening to me," he said, seated cross-legged in a small reception room, cut into a thick fortress wall. "There were many of us in a small cell. Some men were screaming to be let free."

Naqibullah was interrogated every day at Bagram. "They kept asking me, 'Do you know the Taliban? Do you know al-Qaida? Have you given them shelter? Have you given them food?'," he said.

"I told them, 'I don't know these people, and I am too young to give anything to anyone without my father's authority'." After two weeks, Naqibullah said, he was asked whether he had any objection to being taken to "another place".

"I said, 'What can I do? You will take me wherever you want to'." That night, bound, blindfolded and fitted into orange overalls, he was loaded on to a cargo plane and flown non-stop to Cuba. Naqibullah's first 10 days in Guantanamo were the worst of his life, he said. He was put in a tiny cell with a single slit-window as his interrogation continued. Then everything changed. "I was taken to an American general who said, 'We will educate you and soon you will go home'. And my situation improved."
"

So, in truth, giving a naive teenage lad a bit of education and a couple years free holiday in a tropical paradise in return for wrongful arrest, and a healthy programme of indoctrination. :evil: