Inform for the police or go to Guantanamo Bay
The Guantanamo Bay facility and the rest of CIA’s secret jails are mostly outside of any normal Western judicial system. There are no juries, no judges, no lawyers, no witnesses, no appeals. There is only a (hardly impartial) military commission which may hear your case years after you are detained or kidnapped. Yet some people think that such a system is justified because it only detains “bad guys” — hardened mujahedeen, wannabe suicide bombers, and terrorist masterminds. The CIA are “good guys”, aren’t they? They would never knowingly put innocent people in Guantanamo Bay, would they? Yes, oh yes they would.
The following material is all taken from The Washington Post, April 2, 2006, pages A1 and A20.
Bisher al-Rawi (an Iraqi citizen who fled to Britain from Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1984) and Jamil el-Banna (a Jordanian citizen who moved to Britain in 1994) lived in London. They happened to be acquaintances of another London resident, a radical Muslim cleric called Abu Qatada. After September 11 2001, Bisher and Jamil were approached by MI-5 agents asking them to inform on Qatada. Bisher initially cooperated, but later broke off contact with his handlers. Jamil refused to cooperate altogether. In 2002, an MI5 agent warned Banna:
I returned to the choice which he could make; he could either continue as at present, with the risks that entailed, or he could start a new life and a new identity… It was quite possible that he could find himself swept up in a further round of detentions.
[emphasis mine] Meanwhile, Bisher, Jamil, Bisher’s brother Wahab, and two other friends pooled together some money to build a peanut oil refinery in Gambia (the al-Rawi family was apparently quite wealthy). On November 8 2002, Bisher, Jamil, and one of the other partners tried to fly to Gambia (Wahab and the fifth partner in the peanut venture were already in Africa). They police detained at London’s Gatwick Airport for a week, and sent a message to a “foreign intelligence service” (presumably the CIA) to meet them in Gambia. In Gambia, all 5 unlucky peanut investors were arrested. Initially, they were told it was because of visa problems, but soon it became apparent that the real reason was that the CIA wanted to interrogate them. After a month of interrogations, three of the partners were let go. However, Bisher and Jamil were taken to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay. They were repeatedly told that as soon as they would agree to work for the MI5 and the CIA, they would get freedom, money, and a US citizenship. Bisher and Jamil refused the offers.
Apparently, by 2004, the Gantanamo Bay officials decided that Bisher and Jamil were not going to crack. On the evidence that
- they were acquaintances of Abu Qataba;
- they wired money to Jordan;
- they had a “suspicious electronic device” in their luggage (identified as a battery charger by the British police in Gatwick)
Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna were decreed to be enemy combatants by a Guantanamo Bay military tribunal. Presumably, that is equivalent to life imprisonment, no chance of appeal.
In other words: two innocent men were told to inform on an acquaintance, who was suspected of terrorist ties. When they refused polite requests, the two men were kidnapped and sent to Guantanamo Bay. When they still refused to cooperate, they were given life sentences.
With such methods, how can the US claim to be fighting for freedom and justice?