Actually, Majid Khan -- whom I represent in my work as a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights-- is still very much alive. Yet his legal status as a person entitled to basic rights is under grave assault. You see, Majid is one of dozens of people who have been held in secret CIA detention centers around the world. They are known as "ghost detainees" because our government hid them away from everyone, even the Red Cross. Their existence is an enduring reminder of the shocking abuse of power taking place in this nation.
Por Carlos Alberto Montaner, escritor (ABC, 14/07/06):
LOS primeros norteamericanos que ocuparon Guantánamo llegaron disfrazados de ingleses. Fue en 1741 y entre ellos estaba Lawrence Washington, medio hermano de George. Ocurrió durante la «Guerra de la oreja de Jenkins», una feroz contienda librada entre Inglaterra y España porque un guardacosta español detuvo a un barco inglés cerca de la Florida, y el capitán, un tipo con malas pulgas y un carnicero sentido de las relaciones internacionales, le arrancó una oreja al británico y lo envió de regreso a Londres con un lacónico mensaje: «Dile a tu rey que si lo agarro por aquí le haré lo mismo».… Seguir leyendo »
Cuenta el Príncipe Michael de Liechtenstein a sus amigos que en el año 2003 fue llamado por la directora del colegio de su hija menor. Anunció la maestra a este primo del Soberano de Liechtenstein que tenía que tratar con él «serios problemas» relativos a la educación de la niña. El Príncipe Michael se apresuró a acudir al colegio, temeroso de lo que se iba a encontrar: desde una travesura más o menos sonada hasta algún consumo ilícito, se temía cualquier cosa que se le hubiera escapado en la educación de una hija que hasta entonces no había dado a sus padres más que motivos de orgullo.… Seguir leyendo »
Por George P. Fletcher, catedrático de Jurisprudencia de la Universidad de Columbia. Traducción: Robert Falcó (LA VANGUARDIA, 08/07/06):
La guerra contra el terrorismo ha obligado a las democracias a hacer frente a un gran esfuerzo para proteger los derechos civiles y las libertades de sus ciudadanos y extranjeros. El debate ha sido especialmente apasionado en EE. UU., donde a menudo se escucha la cantinela de que la Constitución no es un pacto suicida y que la seguridad nacional puede justificar medidas extraordinarias. Algunas de estas medidas - las investigaciones no autorizadas de cuentas bancarias y las escuchas telefónicas- ponen en peligro la libertad de todos.… Seguir leyendo »
Mourad Benchellali a été détenu aux camps X-Ray et Delta de Guantanamo de janvier 2002 à juillet 2005. Il doit être jugé par le tribunal correctionnel de Paris à partir du 3 juillet pour "association de malfaiteur en relation avec une entreprise terroriste" (LE MONDE, 17/06/06):
J'ai été libéré du camp de Guantanamo en juillet 2004. Alors que je m'apprêtais à monter à bord de l'avion qui me ramenait chez moi, en France, je me souviens que le dernier détenu à qui j'ai fait mes adieux était un jeune Yéménite. Il était submergé par l'émotion. "Dans ton pays, Mourad, il y a des droits, les droits de l'homme, et chez toi ça veut dire quelque chose.… Seguir leyendo »
Por Mateo Madridejos, periodista e historiador (EL PERIÓDICO, 16/06/06):
La muerte de tres prisioneros islamistas en la base de Guantánamo, que los responsables norteamericanos atribuyen a sendos suicidios, no solo desató una nueva crisis internacional y las airadas protestas de los grupos de defensa de los derechos humanos, sino que vino a confirmar y enconar las profundas discrepancias, por no decir el abismo, que separan a Estados Unidos de Europa en lo que concierne a los medios expeditivos y preventivos utilizados en la llamada guerra global contra el terrorismo.
La mayoría de los aliados de la OTAN y la Unión Europea (UE) deploran sin ambages la obstinación de Washington por mantener la prisión en una especie de limbo jurídico que vulnera tanto el orden internacional, en este caso las convenciones de Ginebra sobre el trato de los prisioneros, como el derecho humanitario.… Seguir leyendo »
When I hear U.S. officials describe the suicides of three Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday as "asymmetric warfare" and "a good PR move," I know it's time to close that camp -- not just because of what it's doing to the prisoners but because of how it is dehumanizing the American captors.
The American officials spoke of the dead prisoners as if they inhabited a different moral universe. That's what war does: People stop seeing their enemies as human beings and consign them to a different category. It was discomfiting to see this indifference stated so bluntly, and subsequent U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
Mourad Benchellali has written a book about his experience in a Qaeda camp andat Guantánamo Bay, with Antoine Audouard, who assisted in the writing of this article and translated it from the French. (NEW YORK TIMES, 14/06/06):
I was released from the United States military's prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in July 2004. As I was about to board a plane that would take me home to France, the last detainee I saw was a young Yemeni. He was overwhelmed by emotion.
"In your country, Mourad, there are rights, human rights, and they mean something," he said. "In mine they mean nothing, and no one cares.… Seguir leyendo »
By Michael Gove, a Conservative MP for Surrey Heath (THE TIMES, 17/05/06):
There is something strangely affecting about prison memoirs. From Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol to Jimmy Boyle’s A Sense of Freedom, there is a pathos in the writing of those who have been denied their liberty yet retain the composure to make some sense of their ordeal.
With Wilde the pathos rests partly in the inherent injustice of incarcerating a man for the nature of his love, and partly in the sympathy he evokes for his fellow inmates. In Boyle’s memoir we are left in no doubt of his guilt, but we learn how trust and compassion can bring redemption.… Seguir leyendo »
By P. Sabin Willet, a Boston lawyer with Bingham McCutchen, represents Saddiq Ahmad Turkistani, who is about to begin his fifth year of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay (THE WASHINGTON POST, 27/04/06):
I brought flowers to the isolation cell when I visited Saddiq this month. He likes to draw roses and often asks for gardening magazines.
Saddiq is one of the many mistakes at Guantanamo Bay. In 2005 our military admitted that he was not an enemy combatant, but the government hasn't been able to repatriate him. (By a curious irony, Saddiq's opposition to Osama bin Laden makes him too hot to handle in his native Saudi Arabia.)… Seguir leyendo »
Por Ariel Dorfman, escritor chileno; su último libro es Memorias del desierto (EL PAÍS, 20/04/06):
¿Puede alguien ser musulmán y también patrióticamente norteamericano? Es la pregunta que me planteé la otra noche, cuando cené con el capitán James Yee. Se trata del primer militar norteamericano que le ha contado al mundo lo que verdaderamente pasa dentro de las jaulas y detrás de las alambradas del centro de detención que opera los Estados Unidos en Guantánamo, Cuba: la tortura, la profanación del Corán, la hostilidad incesante que exhiben los interrogadores hacia el islam.
El capitán Yee conoce a fondo esta desolada situación porque ofició, a partir de noviembre de 2002, como capellán musulmán en Guantánamo, atendiendo las urgencias espirituales de aquellos enemigos del Estado norteamericano que se han visto encarcelados en ese sitio en forma indefinida bajo el rótulo de "enemy combatants".… Seguir leyendo »
By Colleen Graffy, the United States' deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy. Response of Trial by spin machine (THE GUARDIAN, 22/03/06):
Victoria Brittain rose to defend the innocence of Moazzam Begg from her unbiased position as co-author of Begg's book, Enemy Combatant (Trial by Spin Machine, March 14). She laid out her case on how three different journalists in three different papers were wrong to question his innocence by attacking the integrity of the journalists. Those who wondered why, for example, Begg and his bookshop were under surveillance by MI5 before he went to Afghanistan are dismissed as "spin machines".… Seguir leyendo »
By Victoria Brittain, co-author, with Moazzam Begg, of 'Enemy Combatant' (THE GUARDIAN, 14/03/06):
The coincidental release of Michael Winterbottom's prize-winning film about the young men from Tipton, Road to Guantánamo, and Moazzam Begg's book, Enemy Combatant, predictably brought the US and British spin machines into full swing last week - so that anyone reading the book or seeing the film would have got the idea that these men may have been badly treated, but they certainly were not innocent.Last week the Daily Telegraph flagged an exclusive on its front page. "Begg told FBI he trained with al-Qaeda," was the headline over a full-page article by Con Coughlin, the paper's security correspondent, using an FBI report which, as Begg's book explains, was written by two FBI agents.… Seguir leyendo »
By Eric Umansky. He writes the Today's Papers column for Slate (THE WASHINGTON POST, 05/03/06):
Walid al-Qadasi should have been thrilled he was finally leaving Guantanamo Bay. Al-Qadasi, a Yemeni man in his mid-twenties, had been held at the prison about two years. He was first arrested in late 2001 by Iranian authorities who, al-Qadasi later recalled, "sold" him to U.S.-allied Afghan forces for a bounty. With little evidence against him -- and no tribunal having established his guilt or innocence -- al-Qadasi was sent home from Guantanamo in April 2004.
In an affidavit taken by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit organization that leads a team of 450 pro-bono attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees, al-Qadasi says that he remembers almost nothing of the unexpected move.… Seguir leyendo »
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