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It's heartwarming to watch all...,
2010-01-15 17:59:33
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The cosmo spread of the senato...,
2010-01-20 01:00:40
Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon probably wasn't aware he was describing his own organization when he said that:
"These guys were fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg."
Lucky for them there won't be any trial, let alone justice, or half-assed apologies issued through some other chump press officer. They'll probably get presidential medals of freedom, at this rate. Not so lucky for the deceased, or the many still in gitmo awaiting their show trials or further untimely acts of asymmetrical warfare.
Al-Zahrani was a brigadier general in the Saudi police. He dismissed the Pentagon’s claims, as well as the investigation that supported them. Yasser, he said, was a young man who loved to play soccer and didn’t care for politics. The Pentagon claimed that Yasser’s frontline battle experience came from his having been a cook in a Taliban camp. Al-Zahrani said that this was preposterous: “A cook? Yasser couldn’t even make a sandwich!”
“Yasser wasn’t guilty of anything.” Al-Zahrani said. “He knew that. He firmly believed he would be heading home soon. Why would he commit suicide?” The evidence supports this argument. Hyperbolic U.S. government statements at the time of Yasser Al-Zahrani’s death masked the fact that his case had been reviewed and that he was, in fact, on a list of prisoners to be sent home. I had shown Al-Zahrani the letter that the government says was Yasser’s suicide note and asked him whether he recognized his son’s handwriting. He had never seen the note before, he answered, and no U.S. official had ever asked him about it. After studying the note carefully, he said, “This is a forgery.”
Also returned to Saudi Arabia was the body of Mani Al-Utaybi. Orphaned in youth, Mani grew up in his uncle’s home in the small town of Dawadmi. I spoke to one of the many cousins who shared that home, Faris Al-Utaybi. Mani, said Faris, had gone to Baluchistan—a rural, tribal area that straddles Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—to do humanitarian work, and someone there had sold him to the Americans for $5,000. He said that Mani was a peaceful man who would harm no one. Indeed, U.S. authorities had decided to release Al-Utaybi and return him to Saudi Arabia. When he died, he was just a few weeks shy of his transfer.
Salah Al-Salami was seized in March 2002, when Pakistani authorities raided a residence in Karachi believed to have been used as a safe house by Abu Zubaydah and took into custody all who were living there at the time. A Yemeni, Al-Salami had quit his job and moved to Pakistan with only $400 in his pocket. The U.S. suspicions against him rested almost entirely on the fact that he had taken lodgings, with other students, in a boarding house that terrorists might at one point have used. There was no direct evidence linking him either to Al Qaeda or to the Taliban. On August 22, 2008, the Washington Post quoted from a previously secret review of his case: “There is no credible information to suggest [Al-Salami] received terrorist related training or is a member of the Al Qaeda network.” All that stood in the way of Al-Salami’s release from Guantánamo were difficult diplomatic relations between the United States and Yemen.
It's kind of funny when Al-Zahrani says that "There was evidence of torture on the upper torso, and on the palms of his hand. There were needle marks on his right arm and on his left arm. I am a law enforcement professional. I know what to look for when examining a body." As a brigadier general in the Saudi police he no doubt knows how to do that to a body.
Murdered, for all we know and among many others, in US custody. The fucking fried chicken and lemon fish was delicious, so we knew perfectly well it couldn't have been suicide.
Yee haw.
:: posted by buermann @ 2010-01-19 19:23:11 CST |
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