December 30, 2007, Asymmetrical colon cancer
It seems that 2007 wasn't going to end without at least one more Guantanamo (GTMO) detainee death (via Candace); in this case, the death of 68 year old Abdul Razzak, of Afghanistan, was attributed to colon cancer. This is the first "non-suicide" detainee death and fifth overall (three suicide deaths in 2006, one earlier in 2007), though, the death of a Saudi detainee earlier this year might well have been from medical neglect. Note that since that death, Saudi efforts to extricate its own citizens from GTMO have accelerated dramatically, and there are only around a dozen Saudis left at GTMO.
It's not as if we can any longer trust our own government to tell us (or could for some time). And as I've said before: if our government were up to anything good, it would want us to know. The very existence of a law-free zone like Guantanamo-- or the fact that it is but the tip of a much larger international gulag archipelago iceberg-- belies that anything good-- or truthful-- would be likely to come out of it. (For actual truth of the place from actual people who've been there, you can read any or all of my 36 interviews on the subject to date, including the most recent interview with Martha Rayner, with links to the others therein.)
Candace (interviewed here) has, once again, let me help with her historic original Supreme Court habeas corpus petition on behalf of her client Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, who is also suffering from medical neglect at Guantanamo, duly exacerbated from being in a super-max prison for nearly six years for having done nothing but being an Arab living in Afghanistan (with his Afghan wife and child) and then having been opportunistically sold to a bounty hunter for ultimate sale to American forces. Indeed, the military's own combatant status review tribunal cleared him, only to be overruled when a second CSRT appointed "got it right" and found him an enemy combatant on the same non-existent "evidence".
Another day at the office, if the office is Guantanamo Bay. Arbitrary, open-ended detention, without charge or trial, or reason. Waterboarding. Short shackling. Beatings. Hanging from hooks. Endless noises. Extreme temperature change. The lights never turned off. The hoods. Toilet paper doled out as "comfort items" for "cooperative behavior". The God knows what else. Habeas corpus revoked. Legal accountability gone. Tapes of the evidence conveniently destroyed. Will it ever end? And compared to some of our nation's other activities in this area, Guantanamo is relatively benign!
Just WTF has happened to this country?
Comments
I know it gets old but...George Bush happened to this country.
Posted by alicia at December 31, 2007 10:14 AM