Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Another Guantánamo prisoner death highlights Obama's hypocrisy...

A detainee at Guantánamo was found dead in his cell on Saturday, according to camp officials. He is the ninth person to die at the camp since it was opened more than ten years ago. As former Gitmo guard Brandon Neely pointed out Monday, more detainees have died at the camp (nine) than have been convicted of wrongdoing by its military commissions (six). This is the fourth detainee who has died at the camp since Obama's inauguration.

Although the detainee's identity has not been disclosed, a camp spokesman acknowledged that he "had not been charged and had not been designated for prosecution". In other words, he has been kept by the US government in a cage for many years without any opportunity to contest the accusations against him, and had no hope of leaving the camp except by death.

Indeed, dying in due process-free captivity now appears to be the only way for many of these detainees to leave. The last person to leave the camp via death was a 48-year-old Afghan citizen, Awal Gul, who died in February 2011 of an apparent heart attack. Gul, the father of 18 children, was accused by the US of being a Taliban commander – a charge he vehemently denied because, as his lawyer put it, "he was disgusted by the Taliban's growing penchant for corruption and abuse." But the due process-free indefinite detention policy still in place at the camp meant that those conflicting claims were never resolved, and he died after more than nine years in captivity – thousands of miles from his family, in the middle of a foreign ocean – despite never having been convicted of anything. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. ''Obama had no balls to close Gitmo''
  2. Eleven years after 9/11, Guantanamo is a political prison...
  3. Obama's Change: Killing without trial, spying without warrant...
  4. US doctors turned 'blind eye' to Guantanamo torture...
  5. 6 years of solitary confinement and torture for a teen at Guantanamo...
  6. Confessions of a Guantanamo guard...
  7. Bradley Manning's inhumane treatment continues ...
  8. A 48-year-old Afghan citizen dies at Guantanamo after 9 years in a cage and...

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