Meet the world's most dangerous terrorists

[zengrifter]

Meet the world's most dangerous terrorists

Delivery drivers, chicken farmers, sack makers, taxi drivers and students. Their weapons of mass destruction include battery chargers, Casio watches, and Peanut oil

Steve Watson | March 7 2006

The release of the names and backgrounds of the Guantanamo inmates has revealed what we knew all along, the world's "most dangerous terrorists" are nothing of the sort, they are poor farmers and the like who have simply been grabbed and stuck in cages and publicly tortured for the past four years.

We have tirelessly exposed how no Al Qaeda "leaders" have been captured or discovered at Guantanamo Bay either first hand or via information garnered through torture.

A US army official visiting Camp Delta was quoted in 2002 as saying there are "...no big fish there. Some of these guys literally don't know the world is round."

... continued here- http://infowars.net/articles/march20...terrorists.htm

[zengrifter]

Gitmo: The Worst of the Worst?

A report, based entirely on Defense Department documents, exposes the truth about Guantánamo

by Nat Hentoff
March 3rd, 2006 | Village Voice

Four years ago, the president was assured by his lawyers in the Justice and Defense departments that, as commander in chief, he had the ultimate power to determine which of our captives in the war on terrorism are "enemy combatants"—and to imprison many of them indefinitely at Guantánamo.

Then, after the Abu Ghraib photographs went around the world (recently, even more repellent pictures from that prison have been internationally distributed), Gitmo became a recruiting tool for our enemies, while causing increasing disquiet among our allies.

On February 16, a British high court judge, Sir Andrew Collins, emphasized: "America's idea of what is torture is not the same as ours and does not appear to coincide with that of most civilized nations."

He was referring to a February 15 report by five independent U.N. special rapporteurs on torture that Guantánamo be closed and its prisoners be tried or released.

What has newly inflamed human rights critics of Guantánamo's treatment of its prisoners—whom Donald Rumsfeld has described as "terrorists" and "the worst of the worst" of the suspected terrorists we have captured—are confirmed reports of the force-feeding of desperate prisoners, held for four years with no end in sight. At one point, 130 had refused food, but that number is now down to four because of the methods used to prevent one or more of the resisters from dying, thereby further shaming the United States.

As described to me by Tom Wilner, a Washington-based attorney for a number of the prisoners, and further detailed in the following February 9 National Public Radio account by Neil Koslowe, another attorney for a detainee there, the hunger strikers are tied down to a metal restraint chair as officers "force open their mouths and then they shove down their mouths through thick tubes in their noses nutritional supplements mixed with milk of magnesia and other ingredients. Removal of the tubes is often violent. The prisoners get nauseous, they vomit. They defecate over themselves. They urinate over themselves."

This goes on for hours a day, and screaming doesn't make it stop.

Responding to this vivid account of what the president has often called the "humane treatment" of prisoners at Gitmo, White House press secretary Scott McClellan brushed aside rising condemnations of the brutal force-feeding:

"We know that these are dangerous terrorists being kept at Guantánamo Bay. They are people determined to harm innocent civilians."

But who actually are these "bad guys," as the president refers to them? Soon, we may find out all their names for the first time. Federal judge Jed Rakoff of New York's Southern District has ordered the Pentagon—following an Associated Press lawsuit—to release uncensored transcripts of the sham hearings the prisoners have had to determine whether they will end their lives at Gitmo or be given more than the current fake "due process" at these hearings. The Pentagon has agreed to the order.

Already, however, we now know much more about how "dangerous" they really are because of a stunning, heavily documented investigation by the Seton Hall (New Jersey) School of Law. Titled "Report on Guantánamo Detainees," it profiles 517 of the prisoners at Gitmo

entirely based on "analysis of Department of Defense data." (Emphasis added.) The lead authors are Mark Denbeaux, a professor at the law school and counsel to two of the prisoners, and his son Joshua Denbeaux.

The data "are based on written determination the Government has produced for detainees it has designated as enemy combatants," and contain "the evidence upon which the Government relied on in making its decision that these detainees were (indeed) enemy combatants." (Emphasis added.)

Now dig this about "the worst of the worst" of the "bad guys" intent on killing Americans:

There are now about 490 prisoners at Gitmo, and "55 percent of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or coalition allies.

"Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

"Only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces. [A total of] 86 percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were turned over to the United States at a time at which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies." (Emphasis added.)

The Northern Alliance included Afghan warlords—not noted, to say the least, for their concern for any due process in rounding up "suspects" or the quality of the "evidence," if any, connecting their captives with terrorism. But these warlords were attracted by the generous sums the U.S. gave them for these suspects—many of whom were then warehoused at Gitmo.

The Seton Hall Law School report concludes with just two sentences—exposing the Bush administration's cold fraudulence in imprisoning these "enemy combatants" at Gitmo in the name of our national security and in total violation of due process, the basis of American rule of law, along with violating international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions on civilized treatment of prisoners:

"The detainees have been afforded no meaningful opportunities to test the Government's evidence against them. They remain incarcerated."

In a lead editorial on February 17, the British Financial Times said of the Abu Ghraib revelations, and this also applies to what has happened at Gitmo since: "There was no independent investigation and no real accountability: the two most visible privates in the photos were jailed, and a junior general was demoted.

"But responsibility lay—and lies—further up the chain of command, as far as Donald Rumsfeld . . . and officials such as Alberto Gonzales, now attorney general, who devised a framework for circumventing the Geneva Conventions. It is they who should be held to account."

But not the commander in chief?

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by zengrifter

Meet the world's most dangerous terrorists

Delivery drivers, chicken farmers, sack makers, taxi drivers and students. Their weapons of mass destruction include battery chargers, Casio watches, and Peanut oil

Watchout America, here they come!!! zg

[QFIT]

A few years ago, VP Cheney said that the people in Gitmo were all the worst of the worst terrorists and would never be released under any circumstances. Since then over 200 have been released. Only about 5% of the detainees were captured by US forces. Most were people "turned in" by various "informants", probably often by people that just wanted rivals to disappear. Many were reportedly people turned in by other prisoners that turned in random people to stop torture. Afghan warlords have made very good use of US forces by accusing enemies of being terrorists and asking for bombing strikes on rivals. The US wanting to show progress has been all too willing to comply.

[aslan]

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he'd made connections to high-level militants.

In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with Osama bin Laden at the top — Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.

A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38779.html

[aslan]

WASHINGTON — Had a majority of the men imprisoned at Guantanamo after 2002 attacked the United States or American troops?

It depends on whom you ask.

A study published by a professor at the Seton Hall School of Law found that 45 percent of 516 Guantanamo detainees examined had committed hostile acts against the United States or its allies, and that only 8 percent of them had been al Qaida fighters. The study drew on unclassified Department of Defense transcripts and documents from military tribunals at Guantanamo.

West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, however, working from the same set of unclassified documents, found that while the tribunals determined that 56 percent of the men had committed or supported hostile acts — such as direct combat, manning the front lines or planning combat operations — 73 percent of them posed a "demonstrated threat."

Seton Hall is an independent Roman Catholic university in New Jersey, and a professor who represented two Guantanamo detainees co-authored its study in 2006. West Point is the U.S. military academy, where many top Army officers receive their university educations.

So who got it right?

It's not possible to say definitively. However, a McClatchy investigation came to conclusions similar to the Seton Hall study, and West Point's statistical breakdown, under close examination, helps explain how Guantanamo's cellblocks became filled with innocents and low-level Taliban grunts.

West Point included in its "demonstrated threat" category anyone who'd committed hostile acts; been identified as a fighter; received training at a camp run by al Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces; or received training in combat weapons other than rifles or other small arms.

Of the 291 men included in the West Point study's hostile acts subgroup, 104 — more than a third — were those who reportedly manned the front lines. However, as the United States and its Afghan allies advanced in northern Afghanistan late in 2001, the front lines were manned by conscripts, young volunteers from Pakistan or low-ranking Taliban fighters. Top al Qaida and Taliban leaders already had fled.

The system of identifying men as fighters, a second subgroup, depended on the accounts of the men who initially detained the "fighters," often Afghan commanders looking for bounties from U.S. forces who paid more for men alleged to be Taliban or al Qaida leaders.

According to the Seton Hall study, in cases where the identities of the captors were known, only 8 percent of the Guantanamo detainees were captured by U.S. forces; 86 percent were turned over to U.S. custody either by Pakistan or by the northern alliance, a coalition led by anti-Taliban commanders who came to power after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The same bounty hunters often were the source of allegations about training in al Qaida and Taliban camps, the Seton Hall study said. While some camps were dens of dangerous radicals, others taught little more than how to use an AK-47, a skill known to many Afghan boys.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/38769.html

[aslan]

KHOST, Afghanistan — Guantanamo detainees appearing before the military tribunals that would decide their fate had little chance of receiving evenhanded hearings, an eight-month McClatchy investigation found. At least 40 former Guantanamo detainees of the 66 interviewed had tribunal hearings, but none was able to submit testimony from witnesses outside the detention facility.

Former detainees singled this out as the most serious flaw in the operation of the combat status review tribunals, but it was only one of many.

In its landmark ruling last Thursday, which granted detainees access to federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court said that there was "considerable risk of error" in the tribunal's findings of fact and that detainees might be held for "a generation or more" on the basis of error.

"The detainee has limited means to find or present evidence to challenge the government's case, does not have the assistance of counsel and may not be aware of the most critical allegations that the government relied upon to order his detention," the court said. "His opportunity to confront witnesses is likely to be more theoretical than real, given that there are no limits on the admission of hearsay," the ruling said.

McClatchy's review of tribunal transcripts and interviews with former detainees and military defense attorneys also showed that the tribunals consistently failed to distinguish hard-core international terrorists from low-level fighters and innocents.

Although the Supreme Court sharply criticized the tribunals, it stopped short of ruling them illegal.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/38887.html

[aslan]

Bush declared on many occasions that the "war on terror" was going to be of a long duration. How do they reconcile that with keeping detainees in prison without even knowing the charges against them for the "duration," the length of which is unknown? All we know is that it will be a long time. This is not an ordinary wartime situation where the war is fought and after several years, POWs are released or tried. This war could go on for more than a lifetime. Couple that with the fact that evidence suggests that some, perhaps many, of the detainees are probably not guilty of anything and what do you have? What was the administration thinking? Thank God that at least now there will be trials. There could have already been tribunals--for what reason there weren't, who knows. But judging from the abuses of detainees at Gitmo I have to question whether military tribunals would have been fair anyway. At Gitmo there seems to be a presumption of guilt. Should one expect anything different from a military tribunal? The military culture seems warped and out of step with American democratic rights and principles. We may have the finest weapons money can buy or invent, but we have a long way to go in shaping the hearts and minds of those who manage and man them.

[Opinion]

Originally Posted by zengrifter

Meet the world's most dangerous terrorists

Delivery drivers, chicken farmers, sack makers, taxi drivers and students. Their weapons of mass destruction include battery chargers, Casio watches, and Peanut oil

Steve Watson | March 7 2006

The release of the names and backgrounds of the Guantanamo inmates has revealed what we knew all along, the world's "most dangerous terrorists" are nothing of the sort, they are poor farmers and the like who have simply been grabbed and stuck in cages and publicly tortured for the past four years.

We have tirelessly exposed how no Al Qaeda "leaders" have been captured or discovered at Guantanamo Bay either first hand or via information garnered through torture.

A US army official visiting Camp Delta was quoted in 2002 as saying there are "...no big fish there. Some of these guys literally don't know the world is round."

... continued here- http://infowars.net/articles/march20...terrorists.htm

Al Zawahere is a doctor
Bin Laden owns a construction company
Some of the 9/11 hijackers were students

They had careers, were sons and had families before they became terrorists. Terrorist is not the day job!

[Opinion]

How are the American prisoners of war treated in Iraq? Oh wait they are killed and mutilated. Some Americans have had their heads sawed off while being filmed. Their heads were not chopped off but sawed while they are screaming!!!!!

Soft Bigotry of Lowered Expectations:
They (Islamofascists) don't have to live up to any morality.

We are criticized for waterboarding
They are not for sawing off heads

Now why is that?