(Washingtonpost.com)
This story was written by Bob Woodward.
The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.
Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
If the truth be known there would be many more than just this one on the list of torture victims. There is no recourse but to release these men. They have become victims and would be set free under U.S. law. Also under U.S. law, the perpetrators of torture would be charged and tried if this crime happened in a state.
Where to release them seems to be an issue now. Letting them go in the U.S. is not palpable just in case one or two of them are actually guilty of terrorism, but this crime is our doing and our responsibility so me may have to take them all. The UK has said they will take some. There is a story about which conditions that they would accept them in the Times Online that came out a couple of weeks ago. I think consideration must be given on a case by case basis with each man having an advocate who can negotiate his release either to the UK or back to their home country.
The main problem here is this: if they are from Iraq then we return them there, the US military could grab them and detain them with the rest of the 20 to 30 thousand people that they hold now illegally without the right of habeas corpus. Some of the 30 thousand are women. There is another story of women prisoners here, and another here. Evidence that the US military is or has been holding women is not hard to find. Some stories tell of the US holding wives of suspects in order to get the husbands to surrender. That is kidnapping. The jailing of women and the possible maltreatment or even torture of them has been yet another fan to the flame of hatred toward Bush and yet another recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.
What are we going to do about the 20-30 thousand prisoners in Iraq? There must be an end to the kidnapping by the US military, the CIA, and Blackwater. Rendition must be stopped. These citizens, often held for no or little reason, must be released.
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