Wow, have you heard about this? Why don't we hear this story in the mainstream media? I think I know why. Rumsfeld is GUILTY.
I read about it in this Common Dreams article released May 6. It is pertinent now, because it contains descriptions of Koran desecration that these (now-released) detainees sent to our government last fall.
My hero, Rep John Conyers is on to it though. He posted a letter on his blog page at dailykos ,which he just sent to the Whitehouse Press Secretary,Mr. Scott McClellan.
Here is a key excerpt from Conyers' letter:
"Third, the public deserves to know what precisely the White House is asserting with respect to the mistreatment of the Koran by interrogators: are such reports categorically false or are they, in the words of one publication, "manifold?" For example, a May1st New York Times report indicated that a Koran was thrown into a pile and stepped on at the Guantanamo detention facility and "[a] former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." The incident where a Koran was allegedly thrown in a toilet was also recounted by a former detainee in a March 26, 2003 article in the Washington Post, and corroborated by another detainee in a August 4, 2003 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The question is: are you categorically denying that the mistreatment of the Koran occurred, or are you simply denying the Newsweek report is accurate on hyper technical grounds?" [my emphasis]
SYNOPSIS:
Rasul v. Rumsfeld represents four British citizens formerly detained at Guantánamo Bay: Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith. Three of them wrote a 115-page document detailing the torture and abuse they suffered and witnessed while imprisoned at Guantánamo, and it can be downloaded from the Center for Constitutional Rights web site at www.ccr-ny.org. I read quite a bit of it and it is a fascinating and detailed personal account of life from the inside of a cell in Guantánamo.
I'll paste in a bit of it below,(not the most disgusting parts).
The beginning of the document describes their horrific journey from Afghanistan to Cuba, in freezing weather, shackled and packed into trucks, where many died, and then the cargo planes. I'm skipping that part.
Shafiq Rasul (age 27) lives in England. Before he went to Afghanistan, he worked at an electronics store, and was attending the University of Central England. The other two men who give this amazing first-hand account are now 22 years old.
Here is the the pdf file of their document, which includes paintings (oil or acrylic) of the prisoners. Worth a peek for the paintings alone.
The suit, filed last fall in conjunction with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, seeks $10 million in damages for these detainees. It charges that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon chain of command authorized and condoned torture and other mistreatment in violation of the Alien Tort Statute, the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
None of the detainees had ever been a member of any terrorist group or taken up arms against the United States.
"This is a case about torture,” said Eric Lewis, lead lawyer for the detainees. “The government tries to ignore this, but it is clear now beyond dispute that detainees were tortured at Guantánamo as part of a deliberate policy devised and implemented by Secretary Rumsfeld and senior generals. If the United States’ policy is against torture—and the President says it is—then senior officials must be held accountable."
For a copy of the filing, e-mail the attorney: Paul Hughes at Baach Robinson & Lewis
Paul.Hughes@baachrobinson.com
excerpts from the document by three of the four plaintiffs:
Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay
Statement of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed
26th July 2004
1. All three men come from Tipton in West Midlands, a poor area with a small
community of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin. The school all three attended is
considered one of the worst in England. Rhuhel Ahmed and Asif Iqbal who are now
both aged 22 were friends from school, although one year apart. Neither was
brought up religiously but each was drawn towards Islam.
2. This statement jointly made by them constitutes an attempt to set out details of their treatment at the hands of UK and US military personnel and civilian authorities during the time of their detention in Kandahar in Afghanistan in late December 2001 and throughout their time in American custody in Guantanamo Bay Cuba. This statement is a composite of the experiences of all 3. They are referred to throughout by their first names for brevity.
72. They were never given prayer mats and initially they didn’t get a Koran. When the Korans were provided, they were kicked and thrown about by the guards and on occasion thrown in the buckets used for the toilets. This kept happening. When it
happened it was always said to be an accident but it was a recurrent theme.
73. Eventually the prisoners went on hunger strike because of the way that they were treated and in particular the way their religion was treated.
74. Asif says that ‘it was impossible to pray because initially we did not know the
direction to pray, but also given that we couldn’t move and the harassment
from the guards, it was simply not feasible. The behaviour of the guards
towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view,
designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the
Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it.’
129. Delta was placed very close to the sea and as such, the salt air would cause the
containers to rust. This meant that there was constant reconstruction work and
therefore large electric generators were running 24 hours a day. This made it
difficult to sleep. There was also constant noise from the 48 or so other men all
detained in the same “block”. An unusual, but foreseeable problem that emerged in
Delta was that the cages and the entire area around the containers were infested
with rats. These were huge “banana” rats which would climb over the containers or
around the cages. Every morning, the men would wake up to find rat droppings on
their blankets or on the floor. There were also snakes in Delta but less than Camp
X-Ray.
130. In normal circumstances such conditions would be difficult to endure. In
Guantanamo Bay however we were deliberately kept hungry the whole time.
We were constantly in a state of anxiety about our future and totally at the
mercy of the guards’.
133. Shafiq comments “while we were in Guantanamo each of us was
interrogated for hundreds and hundreds of hours by the Americans. The same
questions were repeated over and over and over again.
134. During the whole time that we were in Guantanamo, we were at a high level
of fear. When we first got there the level was sky-high. At the beginning we
were terrified that we might be killed at any minute. The guards would say to
us ‘we could kill you at any time’. They would say ‘the world doesn’t know
you’re here, nobody knows you’re here, all they know is that you’re missing
and we could kill you and no one would know’.
139. (In the first few months, they were allowed a one minute shower per week. Later
this increased to 5 minutes per week and after 7 or 8 months in Delta, they were
allowed 2 showers a week. This was still not enough because as a result of the
heat and the humidity they would be constantly sweating and feel dirty.
1. Medical – I said that I together with others were suffering with infections on
our ankles as a result of the scraping by the shackles. The officials would
tell us that we simply needed to wash our ankles with soap and water, but
this was impossible as we only had a one minute shower per week. Often,
when we were in the shower, we had barely put the soap on when they
would turn the water off and take us away.
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