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Dawn (Yawn) Guantanamo: the level of hell Dante forgot
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde
 In Camp X-Ray, my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog. He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, 'I want his rights,' and they replied, 'That dog is member of the US army'." This is Jamal al-Harith 's painful recollection of his time at Guantanamo Bay, as narrated by him to the Daily Mirror. Released in March this year, al-Harith is one of four British men, former inmates at Guantanamo, currently suing the US government for torture and human rights violations. The other three are Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed. They filed the suit in Washington DC. It names American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, among others, as defendants. The suit is backed by the New York based Centre for Constitutional Rights and it is filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act, Geneva Conventions and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
| AKA "The Usual Suspects"... |
The plaintiffs allege that they were arbitrarily detained and underwent harrowing torture and abuse; indeed the treatment meted out to them by the American forces was in contravention of all conventions on military conduct, the treatment of prisoners of war and universal human rights in general to which the US has been a very enthusiastic signatory.
| "Somebody tol' us they wuz gonna cut our heads off! That's, like, barbaric!" |
This leaves the Americans in no position to speak of Geneva Conventions, or any other convention for that matter, when speaking of the rights that are due to their servicemen taken prisoner.
| Sure it does. Even if there were violations, one side's violations don't justify violations on the other side except under certain circumstances. |
Posted by: tipper 2004-12-18 |
